Verizon has been dealt a crushing blow in their attempt to try to monitor their customers while those customers are watching fios tv in their homes, on a cell phone or on their home phones as the patent that they were seeking to try to get to pass has been rejected by the united states patent office. A "non-final" decision has been delivered to verizon and what that means is that verizon has had it rejected but that does not mean that they can not come back and apply for it again provided they modify some of what was part of the patent proposal. According to the patent in verizon's own words which is on line 2 the patent will be used to monitor customers who are in their homes through their set top boxes where cameras and microphones will witness customers sleeping, eating, humming, exercising, singing, laughing, reading, talking, cleaning, playing an instrument or cuddling in their homes so that verizon along with advertisers could determine what products it would be best to advertise to certain customers. Anywhere there is fios tv in a home there could be a potentially advantageous moment for advertisers provided verizon gets the application to go through so that they can relay back to those advertisers what products a customer might want. Now if there is a camera in someone's bedroom you would imagine that there would be a lot more than just cuddling going on in that room which has drawn the ire of privacy advocate groups like privacy rights clearing house. The director of that group beth givens wonders why verizon would even bother to apply for such a patent if verizon is not going to use it to spy on their customers all of the time. Beth also said "of all of the privacy intrusive technology developments that i've become aware of in recent years this one is at the extreme end of the scale." She also said "one of the things that troubles me about this patent aside from the privacy invasiveness of it is that there are engineers at verizon sitting around thinking up such things. It's quite obvious that for this to have gotten to the patent filing stage verizon engineers have been allowed, even encouraged to take privacy intrusion to the max all in the name of advertising dollars." Now it remains to be seen if verizon will apply again for the patent and whether their customers will have no problem at all with being monitored through their set top boxes if the patent is allowed or if verizon customers will instead voice their disapproval rather than just accept the fact that verizon's big brother will be watching them through their set top boxes. For more details about the patent rejection google "computerworld verizon" and to see the original story about the patent application along with the application itself where verizon in their own words make it quite clear that they want to spy on their customers google "verizon detection zone."
It does make one wonder if they want to do business with a company that even wants to spy on them!! Glad that the patent has been rejected, but do believe that they will try again. High moral standards have once again given way to coorporate greed!
I, personally, would rather give up my TV than my standards of right and wrong! Might be nice to go out to movies again!!!
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