RFID to predict human behaviour
Mick Meaney
rinf.com
Researchers at Adelaide University in Australia are adapting RFID and sensor technologies to automatically monitor and predict human behaviour.
By using a network of sensors, which are attached to objects in a person’s home, they now have the ability to track a person’s daily routine and feed the information back to let ‘Big Brother’ know what you’re doing.
“Our work will be among the first few projects in the world conducting large-scale common-sense reasoning in automatic human activity recognition”, claimed Chief Investigator and researcher Michael Sheng.
The technology is currently being branded as a way to help the elderly, which takes existing RFID “solutions” to the next level by predicting if someone is in trouble.
With sensors attached to household items like televisions, toilets and cooking stoves, the software will analyze data about someone’s daily activity and if they significantly deviate from their routine, will call for help.
While the intention of the researchers might appear good on the surface, all too often we have seen surveillance technology being used to restrict freedoms and personal privacy.
The potential to use this technology in order to decide if suspected criminals, activists, or even children are conforming to “normal” behaviour, is nothing short of alarming.
Mick Meaney is the founder and editor of RINF Alternative News, founded in 2004 as a response to increasing levels of control and corruption.
