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Startup Wants To Peek Through Your Home's Wired Cameras

Posted by Soulskill on from the nope-nope-nope dept.

alphadogg writes "The little cameras in your home are multiplying. There are the ones you bought, perhaps your SLR or digital camera, but also those that just kind of show up in your current phone, your old phone, your laptop, your game console, and soon your TV and set-top box. Varun Arora, founder of startup GotoCamera in Singapore, wants you to turn them all on and let his company's algorithms analyze what they show, then sell the results as marketing data, in a sort of visual version of what Google and other firms do with search results and free email services."

14 of 186 comments (clear)

  1. Jennicam 2.0? by dtmos · · Score: 5, Informative

    Startup wants to peek through the wired cameras in your home, sell the data

    Wait, wait. Could we go back and cover the part about why I would want them to do this, again?

    1. Re:Jennicam 2.0? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Its not what *you* want. It is what advertisers want. You are just the product being sold.

    2. Re:Jennicam 2.0? by Bieeanda · · Score: 5, Insightful

      You missed a step. First they need to come up with some incentive, let's call it a Judas goat, to sign on and let their programs sift through our pictures. This is a little more complicated than web bugs and tracking cookies, since it requires more effort on our part than logging into Facebook or searching through Google.

    3. Re:Jennicam 2.0? by sunderland56 · · Score: 5, Funny

      let's call it a Judas goat

      If they gave every user a goat, then they'd certainly come up with some footage to resell.

    4. Re:Jennicam 2.0? by HapSlappy_2222 · · Score: 5, Funny

      Yeah. What's in it for me, Mr. Arora? And don't say "Access to ads for products you actually want!" because I'm a grown-up and know how to find things I want*. Besides, I doubt your "targeted ads" are any better than clicking I'm Feeling Lucky and dumping my CC# into the first 16 digit field I find.

      I could be persuaded to let you watch me pick my nose at $1000 per frame, though. Otherwise, you and your startup can feck right off, sir.

      *Who are we trying to kid, anyway? As a married father of two teenage daughters, I already KNOW what ads would best target ME: late-night Tampax/Midol shops, Rue 21 and Banana Republic clothing stores, and any vendor at the mall selling shit that confuses me. You should pay my kids as if they were on your marketing staff; they already did your research for you, buddy.

  2. Good Idea by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    I'd trade pictures of myself in my underwear for a "free" console. For an added fee, I'll even put clothes on.

    1. Re:Good Idea by KhabaLox · · Score: 5, Funny

      a printed picture of Goatse

      I read that as "a painted picture of Goatse." I thought, "You, Sir, are a connoisseur."

      --
      Ceci n'est pas un sig.
  3. The offering to the user... by Neil_Brown · · Score: 5, Informative

    a startup that provides online storage and software for web and Wi-Fi cams

    Sadly omitted from the summary (albeit in the article) — the user gets "free" storage in exchange for the analytics.

    Far too little to convince me to share such data, though.

    1. Re:The offering to the user... by ohnocitizen · · Score: 5, Funny

      After a week of analytics they shifted their business model slightly. "We are now offering users cash money to keep their cameras turned off, in the name of basic decency, animal rights, and several reports recently published by the FDA. When we say our users are sick we being literal in the most precise and correct sense of the word."

  4. Yeah right by Sean · · Score: 5, Funny

    Let a company spy on me constantly so it can make a profit by selling information about me? That sounds like a great deal for me. Where do I sign up?

    1. Re:Yeah right by twotacocombo · · Score: 5, Funny

      www.facebook.com

    2. Re:Yeah right by phrostie · · Score: 5, Insightful

      if ever there was a post that deserved a 6, this is it.

  5. Two sentence reponse: by fallen1 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Fuck you. No.

    Pardon me for being crude but - what are these nutjobs thinking? All it takes is someone in the household going "Sure, we'll do that!" and then little 15 year old Suzie walks by the camera on the way from her bathroom to her bedroom and *boom!* the company behind this has just analyzed child porn. Congrats!

    I cover up or disconnect all cameras in my home that might be turned on remotely for one simple reason -- it is my private home. Period. The end.

    --

    Dream as if you'll live forever.
    Live as if you'll die tomorrow.
    ~Anonymous~

    1. Re:Two sentence reponse: by QuasiSteve · · Score: 5, Insightful

      [...] and then little 15 year old Suzie walks by the camera on the way from her bathroom to her bedroom and *boom!* the company behind this has just analyzed child porn

      Putting aside for a moment that perhaps such households should think for a moment before opting into such plans, I have to ask... ...what, exactly, would be wrong with that scenario?

      For one thing, it's not child pornography. The law may perhaps interpret it as such, especially if it ends up being treated as such by the person caught on camera / their legal guardians, but naked people walking in front of a camera does not necessarily pornography make.

      For another, my computer could be analyzing child pornography all day long every day of the week. Perhaps it's analyzing it to see if it's known pornography or new pornography. If it's new pornography, perhaps it's trying facial recognition to see if this is of a person whose case has already been handled, or that it may be a new case and should be flagged as such.

      But given that the system doesn't know what the material is in the first place, perhaps it's analyzing the picture, sees what looks like a human form, detects that either there's no clothing or the person happens to walk around in a wetsuit that matches their skin color, and either way decides to discard the data.
      The analyzing software may be much more interested in that bright rectangular surface called your TV to see what programs you watch.

      People are way, way too jumpy about this stuff. Next thing you know an adult can't go to a lake for a swim because there's also kids who like diving into the water and have issues keeping their bikini bottoms on* and you just might see that. Oh noes.

      It's different if that's the purpose of going swimming there in the first place, of course. Just as it would be different if one of the goals of this company would be to catch people naked (adults: blackmail, kids: CP market?), or if, as part of its operation, the material would be made available to third parties who in turn might have such motives.

      ( * apparently, that's a thing? Here, have a plug: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/525823883/swimwear-that-stays-put-made-locally-made-responsi )

      Don't get me wrong, I'm not opting into such a program anytime soon.. but the whole "what if it catches X doing Y!?" thing? Not the biggest problem with this by a long shot.