

If Google buys Dropcam, say goodbye to privacy forever - davidiach
http://pando.com/2014/05/27/if-google-buys-dropcam-say-goodbye-to-privacy-forever/

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x1798DE
Bit of a hyperbolic title for an entirely-speculative article here. I'm
concerned about privacy myself and I wouldn't be running some surveillance
camera that streams my video in anything but an end-to-end encrypted manner
anyway, but it seems a bit strange to imagine that _this_ is the end of
privacy "forever". The article doesn't explain exactly what the privacy
violations would be, but implies that Google would monitor you at all times -
which seems unlikely given that surveillance videos aren't exactly machine-
readable data. Unless they're just storing videos of everything you do to
watch them for market research (seems very unlikely according to their
business model, and would likely be a dumb PR move to even do it in secret),
what extra information could they really get? When you come and go? They'd
probably be able to get that much more accurately from data they're already
getting from Android location data.

Sure it's creepy that the company that reads your e-mail and tracks your web
searches and locations wants to buy a surveillance camera company, but
realistically, this is likely to be much less intrusive than what they're
already doing.

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anigbrowl
It's a dreadful article, just overwritten adolescent FUD pandering ot he
biases of readers.

At the extreme, though, with an evenly-distributed network of security
cameras, you could track one individual's comngs and going and activities by
aggregating Kinect-like motion/gait recognition across a (theoretical) array
of always-on cameras. Realistically pulling data from people's phones already
delivers 90% of the same capability, but this could track you when you leave
your phone at home.

