In a world where privacy rights are becoming a thing of the past, one might want to think twice about hooking Big Brother up in your living room. It seems to me that the one question that should be on everyones mind should be how Microsoft is going to guarantee that this technology is not going to lead to some black-hat hacker looking into our homes or some Microsoft-core crony peaking into your game room.

Lets go through the technology that we are potentially allowing into our homes. First, we have a depth sensing camera that is capable of indentifying and tracking body parts to within a four centimeter cube in space, not to mention facial recognition capability. Tack on a multi-array microphone that is capable of voice recognition. Add these features to a platform that can scan the room by itself and a connection to the internet and you have a recipe for voyeuristic disaster. George Orwell would be giggling like a schoolgirl pointing at all the suckers that not only let this device into their homes, but paid for the privilege.

Unfortunately, there is a history of companies using the very technology that they sell us to delve into our private lives. Recently, there was report that Apple was collecting precise and real-time geographic location of its users. When they activated this feature, it prompted them to change their terms and conditions. Of course, you had to agree to the new terms to download any further media and apps. Apple is relying on the fact that 99.9% of the users dont read that dreck and most dont care in the first place. It is all too common in this Facebook and Twitterized world for this generation to not only give up their privacy willinglybut to wallow in it. Apple claims that they are using this feature to customize ads and to feed coupons to their users based on their geographic location. An altruistic endeavorwell, not really, but not necessarily evil either. but the potential is still there for anyone to abuse this technology. Who needs spy satellites when you have Apple?

A healthy dose of paranoia never killed anyone; it could have saved Socrates, so it doesnt hurt to question the use of some of the devices we put into our homes. How much of our privacy are we willing to give up in the name of geekdom and technology? Soo the question is , Do you think kinect is worth it ?