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The new Graph Search engine on Facebook
makes it easier than ever for marketers, or hackers,
to assemble detailed profiles of users.
We’re even developing technologies that can
reach through the screen to gather data on the
physical you, using the monitor’s camera to
track what you are looking at on the screen
and how you react to advertisements.
Just carrying a cell phone makes you a target.
Retailers can use smartphone signals to capture
serial numbers and track users’ locations.
A firm hired to install bomb-proof trash bins
in London prior to the Olympic Games embedded
tracking technology that used phone
signals to follow people through the streets.
Being off-line, even sans phone, is no protection.
Our world is saturated with sensors that
watch you in the real world. How many video
cameras do you pass in the course of a day?
Video is data, and enormous amounts of information
can be gleaned from a feed. Stores use
facial recognition software tied to video feeds
to analyze the demographic profile of shoppers—age,
gender and even race—to tweak
everything from what merchandise they display
to what kind of music they play to appeal to
their typical client at a given time of day. Some
high-end stores are using facial recognition
software to spot VIPss so staff can be alerted
via iPad or smartphone and provided with data
on the celeb’s preferences or buying history.
The abilities of these systems border on telepathy,
analyzing facial expressions to infer feelings
and moods. One retail system specializes
in deducing shoppers’ “emotional engagement”
with products from video streams
in-store or onscreen. The Department of
Homeland Security is testing Future Attribute
Screening Technology, a “pre-crime” detection
program based on sensors that secretly
collect video, audio, cardiovascular signals,
pheromones, electrodermal activity and
respiration, and applies algorithms to identify
suspicious individuals (hopefully distinguishing
between the elevated heart rate of a mere
nervous traveler and cues denoting a true
“unknown terrorist”).
Museums are adapting surveillance technology
to their own purposes. They are using
the feed from security cameras to create
safety perimeters around objects on display.
Some are monitoring (and responding to)
real-time tweets and location data. (See, for
example, how the Tate Modern used Twitter
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