Verizon–and it is apparently not the first in this–has filed a patent to listen in on at least your cell phone to determine what you are doing. Among other things, it lists eating, exercising, laughing, reading, sleeping, talking, singing,
humming, cleaning, and playing a musical instrument. It will detect if you are making love, arguing, or whatever, communicate this information to a central database, which will then send appropriate content to your TV.
Now, it also “looks” into the room, which could be done by the phone, but which would fail often, since the phone will likely not be in a place where the camera can see the room. But many people do videoconferencing, or have WII’s or Kinects, and other such inputs, so these could at some point all be bundled and turned on remotely.
What needs to be added to this is that if Verizon is filing patents now, the government has this capability, in all likelihood NOW, since they are always ahead of the curve. They are not interested in ads, though, but of mapping the social terrain. Add this fact–that of pervasive spying on you at all times, if your cell phone is within audible range of you–to the ability to connect your social web to this. If you are talking about committing a crime, they can hear you, even if you don’t think your cell phone is on. Or take it a step further: they can track you as surely as if you actually HAD an RFID chip on you, if you carry your phone, and can map all the places you go every week, who you talk with, who you eat with, what websites you access, and build PROFILES on you. They know how often you get angry, how often you make love, how often you exercise, what shows you watch, how you react to them. All of this analysis can be computerized.
A prospective dissident list can be created, and graded according to personality type. If they catch you doing something, they immediately know who else might have been involved. We are told this is for our protection, and possibly it is to some extent–this would have been the method for arrests we read about from time to time that were in the “planning” stages, and the reason the occasional attacks are from loners–but it is also true that Big Brother is now. They can hear you NOW.
Aaron Russo claimed that Nicholas Rockefeller claimed the goal was for all people to have RFID chips implanted in them. What I would submit is that to the extent people keep their cell phones next to them at all times, what has been achieved NOW is much more than that. They can’t yet tie our bank balances to our behavior, but the goal of nearly perfect information has, for all those who participate in our culture in normal ways.
To be clear, I don’t know how corrupt the NSA is. I don’t know if there is some Big Plan. But I do know what is possible.