The latest idea from Google goes beyond mere Orwellian Big Brother into full-blown automated robotic parenting. The company is planning a series of smart home technologies that will keep an eye on children and discipline them in lieu of their actual parents, warned an article from The Daily Mail.
Google filed a patent involving a smart home monitoring system that uses cameras, microphones, motion sensors, and thermal imaging to keep an eye on mischievous members of the family while the parents are away.
The real-time information will be analyzed by Google Home, the company's flagship smart speaker/home assistant product, which will formulate appropriate disciplinary actions.
Another potential product is a smart device that presumes to advise parents on ways to improve their relationships with their children, such as urging them to devote more time and attention to their kids during dinner.
“When children are near a drinks cabinet or are in their parents' bedroom alone, the system may infer that mischief is likely to be occurring,” Google explained in its patent. (Related: PragerU vs YouTube case has enormous implications for the future of online FREE speech.)
Google and Amazon are watching you
According to The Times, the planned smart device will keep track of chores such as taking the trash out. It will be able to remember who failed to finish or accomplish their assigned chores.
Misbehaving children will be punished by restricting their mobile phone usage. And like any good informant, the Google smart device can also report their bad behavior to their parents. It can use infrared sensors to record the body temperatures of the kids, and it would eventually learn to discern certain sounds such as crying and laughter.
“It may be beneficial to monitor the emotional state of occupants in a household,” the Google patent said.
Google filed the patent for its smart home surveillance system in 2015. Tucker Carlson of Fox News was the one who first dredged it up from the forgotten annals.
Google's products get more and more intrusive with every new patent they file. A third document identified a smart device that could spot and identify a copy of the crime novel "The Godfather" at the bedside of the user.
According to The Daily Mail, this seemingly innocuous tidbit could serve as subtle leverage to get people to watch the film based on the book.
"We file patent applications on a variety of ideas that our employees come up with," Google explained to Fox News. The company admitted that not all of its patents mature into real products or services.
When The Daily Mail asked for its side of this matter, Google chose to remain silent.
Digital assistants never truly sleep
The patent applications filed by Amazon and Google towards the end of 2017 read like a list of spying techniques used by their Voice Assistants to monitor their users, alleged Consumer Watchdog. According to the Santa Monica, California-based advocacy group, the patents prove Google Home and Amazon Echo can serve as surveillance equipment that collect massive amounts of information and deliver digital advertising.
Digital assistants are marketed as reliant on the detection of a "wake-word" such as "Hey, Siri" before they go "awake." But Consumer Watchdog warns that the smart device might be feigning "sleep" when you least expect it.
"Google and Amazon executives want you to think that Google Home and Amazon Echo are there to help you out at the sound of your voice," warned John Simpson, the privacy and technology project director of Consumer Watchdog. "In fact, they're all about snooping on you and your family in your home and gathering as much information on your activities as possible."
Learn more about protecting your privacy at PrivacyWatch.news.
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