This sounds paranoid, but what exactly would keep a large cable
company from installing hidden cameras and/or microphones in
the digital two-way cable boxes their customers are required to
use?
Most cable systems today offer high-speed Internet connections,
and cable boxes already transmit data about pay-per-view programs.
It would be simple to install a miniature camera and microphone
in the cable box and spy on every living room in America. A
microphone is more likely, it could be embedded within some other
electronic component and never detected.
Since cable companies are now telecom companies, and since all our
other telecom companies have complied with the government's secret
request to monitor all telephone calls, it would be no surprise if
large cable companies like Comcast, Cox, and Time-Warner complied
with the government's secret request to install bugs in all cable
boxes.
Knowing that the telephone network is tapped, the terrorists might
meet in private residences to discuss their evil plots, and the
government could easily argue it has as much right to bug your home
as it does to tap your telephone.
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"He did not know how long she had been looking at him, but perhaps for
as much as five minutes, and it was possible that his features had not
been perfectly under control. It was terribly dangerous to let your
thoughts wander when you were in any public place or within range of a
telescreen. The smallest thing could give you away. A nervous tic, an
unconscious look of anxiety, a habit of muttering to yourself - anything
that carried with it the suggestion of abnormality, of having something
to hide. In any case, to wear an improper expression on your face (to
look incredulous when a victory was announced, for example) was itself a
punishable offense. There was even a word for it in Newspeak:
'facecrime,' it was called."
-- 1984
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