Google Is Watching, Perhaps Soon in Your Home

ACM TechNews observes that regardless of the continual worries of privacy advocates and government officials that it knows too much, Google is after even more user data.

In a recent paper written by Google researcher Bill N. Schilit and computer scientists Jeonghwa Yang of Georgia Tech and David W. McDonald, of the University of Washington, propose "home activity recognition," or tracking people's activities at home through network interactions.

"Activity recognition is a key feature of many ubiquitous computing applications ranging from office worker tracking to home health care," the paper explains. "In general, activity recognition systems unobtrusively observe the behavior of people and characteristics of their environments, and, when necessary, take actions in response -- ideally with little explicit user direction."

When applied in certain circumstances, as with the elderly, such action might be beneficial. On the other hand, others might perceive it as positively Orwellian.

See details at InformationWeek.