CABLE GIANT Comcast is backpedalling furiously away from the unguarded revelation by its Senior Vice President of User Experience, Gerald Kunkel, that it's developing spy cameras built into cable boxes to monitor customers.

The bombshell was dropped by Chris Albrecht at newteevee.com a week ago after interviewing Comcast's Kunkel at the Digital Living Room conference in San Francisco. There, he said Comcast is "experimenting with different camera technologies built into devices so it can know who's in your living room."

Readers were shocked and incensed to learn that companies are planning the imposition of such privacy-invasive surveillance technology in their commercial products and services.

A mortified Comcast responded by hurriedly attempting to minimise the scope of its customer monitoring ambitions, claiming that its device was "in no way designed to or capable of monitoring your living room."

Albrecht was having none of it, however. He pointed out to Kunkel, "After you granted me our initial video interview, you brought up the topic of Comcast knowing who was in the living room in a conversation between you, myself and another conference attendee."

"I actually left and came back to follow up on this point while you were talking with that same attendee. At this point, you were aware that I was a reporter and I took handwritten notes in front of you as we talked to make sure I had an accurate accounting of what you were saying," Albrecht continued, nailing him.

TiVo, Microsoft, Google and others have over recent years let slip plans to add similarly invasive technologies to products and services, including computers.

It seems that Orwell's dystopian vision of a fascist society in 1984 is on the way after all, and will be imposed by corporations under the guise of marketing. µ

L'Inq
Prison Planet