{"id":75,"date":"2008-01-20T23:49:42","date_gmt":"2008-01-21T07:49:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cubist.cs.washington.edu\/Security\/2008\/01\/20\/say-goodbye-to-saying-hello\/"},"modified":"2008-01-20T23:49:42","modified_gmt":"2008-01-21T07:49:42","slug":"say-goodbye-to-saying-hello","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/secblog.cs.washington.edu\/Security\/2008\/01\/20\/say-goodbye-to-saying-hello\/","title":{"rendered":"Say goodbye to saying ‘Hello’"},"content":{"rendered":"

Microsoft has filed a patent<\/a> application for a monitoring system that collects data such as heart rate, respiration rate, body temperature, and brain signals and interprets this into the worker’s stress, frustration and productivity levels. Microsoft claims that it will optimize management and production by allowing employers to view current reports of their employees and allowing coworkers to be alerted when their fellow employees need help. Yet the ethical implications are unnerving. A friendly conversation at your workstation could lead to a warning that your productivity was below average. Or if you’re having trouble at home and bring it to work, your coworkers could be notified.<\/p>\n

I’m sure Microsoft only has the best intentions for this system, yet it sounds too close to Orwell’s “Thought Police.” Adversaries wouldn’t need to interpret your purchases on amazon or intercept wireless signals beaming your thoughts to a game console, they’d just need to be your coworker and in a company as big as Microsoft, you may find yourself with a lot of adversaries.
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\nNote: While this article is marked in the “Current Event” category because of it’s recent posting in Scientific American<\/a> and Techdirt<\/a>, the patent was actually filed June 27, 2006.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Microsoft has filed a patent application for a monitoring system that collects data such as heart rate, respiration rate, body temperature, and brain signals and interprets this into the worker’s stress, frustration and productivity levels. Microsoft claims that it will … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,7,9],"tags":[211,60],"class_list":["post-75","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-current-events","category-ethics","category-privacy","tag-privacy","tag-spyware"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/secblog.cs.washington.edu\/Security\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/secblog.cs.washington.edu\/Security\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/secblog.cs.washington.edu\/Security\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secblog.cs.washington.edu\/Security\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secblog.cs.washington.edu\/Security\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=75"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/secblog.cs.washington.edu\/Security\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/secblog.cs.washington.edu\/Security\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=75"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secblog.cs.washington.edu\/Security\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=75"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secblog.cs.washington.edu\/Security\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=75"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}