Thursday, March 8, 2012

Google Spying on You Through Your Microphone?


http://www.theipinionsjournal.com/uploaded_images/googlespy-768450.jpg
Author: Brian D. Hill
Note: Also before I am writing this my laptop was attacked by hackers again. Now I have to restore my laptop again right around when I am suppose to interview Dr. Michael Coffman via Webcam and Microphone.
I like to bring in this article a confirmed surveillance attempt by Google of my Laptops Microphone around April of 2011. It was even admitted on The Register in Sep 2006 that Google was developing eavesdropping software, that uses Audio ‘fingerprint’ for content-relevant ads, and that as I quote from their news website “to use the existing PC microphone to listen to whatever is heard in the background, be it music, your phone going off or the TV turned down. The PC then identifies itusing fingerprinting, and then shows you relevant contentwhether that’s adverts or search results, or a chat room on the subject.”

When I was sued last year by Righthaven LLC, after my attorney allowed me to be interviewed by theNYTimes reporter Dan Frosch in April then a photographer was hired to go by my home, come in and take pictures of me for the newspaper.
I had my laptop upstairs which the photographer wanted to get photos of me with. So after she took the photos I was commenting on how nice her Cannon camera was and it looked like a fancy and expensive camera. I am a photographer myself and just love looking at cameras with more features and that’s more fancy. Although I got a wonderful digital camera but I just love looking at all these different cameras that different photographers use. After just a few comments about how I liked her fancy and expensive camera comment then somehow later on after the photographer left, I immediately saw ads in my GMail for my USWGO Admin email account since I have a Google Apps account for my domain at uswgo.com. Those ads were tailored to expensive and fancy Cannon cameras same as the one the NYTimes hired photographer was using when she took multiple photos of me. It freaked me out as I never did any search on fancy cameras like hers and yet GMail knew what I was talking about which had only meant that the Microphone embedded in my laptop, as in almost every laptop computer these days, was recording my conversations with the NYTimes photographer without either of out consent to tailor ads as if it recognized my voice patterns using advanced digital software in server boxes. I had no software or even GMail up and yet my microphone was being tapped by Google. Back then I can’t remember writing an article and probably because I couldn’t search the right keywords to back up my story with evidence likely because I was in utter shock over the spying. I may have had the Google Toolbar but it’s insane that I wasn’t even on GMail and yet GMail had ads tailored to the type of camera that the photographer was using and more expensive ones.
If this isn’t Big Brother spying on your own private laptop microphone then what is? This isn’t even the Government it’s a private corporation such as Google that is conducting surveillance of users Microphones without consent or even notification that every word the person says is being monitored and that Google has algorithms to identify what words come out of your own mouth.
The laptop was on, I was 1-2 feet away from my laptop whenever I had a conversation with the photographer and yet my laptop was able to capture audio fingerprints of my conversation with the photographer.

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