Tech Watch | InfoWorld Staff » Microsoft 'spyware' to jack into your brain waves

January 16, 2008 | Comments: (0)

Microsoft 'spyware' to jack into your brain waves

TAGS: Friday fun, Microsoft

A recently published Microsoft patent application should send shivers down the spines of those already paranoid about companies' employee-monitorning capabilities -- and once the technology in question is developed, companies will gain access to those shivers to trigger a little heart-to-heart with the spine owners' managers.

According to a report in The Times, the patent, which was last month published by the U.S. Patent Office after an 18-month filing period, describes a monitoring system that would enable computers to wirelessly pick up on a user's heart rate, galvanic skin response, brain signals, body temperature, facial movements and expressions, blood pressure, and respiration rate.

Although the sense of this sentient system would seem to be to provide nefarious means for employers to spy on employees, the patent describes a more empathic rationale. Detecting frustration by mapping biorhythmic changes against profiles corresponding to employee's weight, age, and health, the system would gently nudge managers to conduct a quick, how-are-we-doing-today pop in -- certain to ensure further off-chart trajectories for the monitored biorhythms that alerted the system in the first place.

Not surprisingly, such a patent, which could be granted within a year, according to the U.S. Patent Office, pretty much shakes the notion of privacy to its very core. And civil liberties groups and privacy lawyers are experiencing elevated heart rates and noticeably troubled facial expressions over the patent.

According to The Times, one such expert on data protection law, Hugh Tomlinson at Matrix Chambers, said, "This system involves intrusions into every single aspect of the lives of the employees."

Fortunately, brain signals will likely not have to spike to keep such a system out of employers' hands, should it even come to fruition. Yet, as an analyst speaking to this editor yesterday pointed out, people are becoming much more identified with their technology, as the iPhone and iPod phenomena suggest. How much longer before, culturally, we become accepting of computing-human emotive kinship going two ways?

Related articles
• 12 crackpot tech ideas that could transform the enterprise
• 10 reasons to be paranoid
• You don't know tech: The InfoWorld News Quiz
• Test Your Geek IQ

Posted by Jason Snyder on January 16, 2008 11:04 AM

RATE THIS ARTICLE: