Image text recognition redux: privacy advocate’s nightmare, dataminer’s wet dream?
As frequent readers of this blog will know, I recently blogged on some potential privacy issues which I see coming down the pike due to Google’s recent application for a patent for image text recognition.
Now, let’s hypothetically extrapolate a fictional scenario from a possible future a few years down the road.
Let’s say that today (or last year) a citizen of a “free country” (call him/her Agent Smith, if you like) uploads a few “harmless” home movie videos to a YouTube account. In one of the videos, a piece of Smith’s mail is lying on the coffee table with Smith’s name and address visible for a few frames. In another video, Smith walks down the street past his/her home and some license plate numbers of cars parked on the street are visible. In a third video, Smith walks past a bookshelf in his/her home. In a fourth, a piece of mail with no address visible is lying on the same coffee table as in the first video- from some organization- Greenpeace, PETA, the ACLU, NARAL, Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth, or whatever.
A few years down the road, the government of the “free country” which Smith now lives in is replaced by an authoritarian form of government (or perhaps just a few authoritarian leaders- “duly elected” of course) of some type. This particular government is on the hunt for “homegrown terrorists” in order to prevent any possible future actions by such individuals/organizations.
Surprisingly enough, an organizations which Agent Smith has a piece of paper from on his coffee table turns out to have been flagged as a potential “terrorist group”. Image text recognition has progressed by this point to the place where Smith’s government can say to Google- “we need to identify all the potential “blank organization” terrorists and associates and question their friends and neighbors, can you help us win the global war on terror? Google patriotically complies with this request, of course. The “blank organization” letterhead shows up in an image text recognition search, and it’s all downhill for Smith from there, despite the fact that only his Aunt Mildred was given permission to watch that particular “private home video”. His bookshelf- filmed for a few seconds in video #3- contains a “banned” used book that he inherited from his uncle Harry who bought it (paying cash, of course, so there was no official record of it until now) years ago in a “free country”. Also on Smith’s bookshelf is a limited printing home published ancestral genealogy book of the Smith family and relatives, so they’re all suspects too, whether or not they’ve ever used a computer. Smith’s email contacts get put on a list, his home gets broken into and searched (legally, of course) while he is at work and neighbors and random license plate numbers from video #2 get questioned for leads on this PETA (or whatever) cell. Because of a few “harmless” books, letters and private home videos which Smith was involved with a few years back in a “free country”. How about we name that fictional country America?
Remind you at all of any books or movies you might have run across? How far fetched is this scenario, really?
Tags: America: Freedom to Fascism, Big Brother, datamining, Google, image text recognition, privacy, rant, rants, youtube
