I picked up my morning paper today and was shocked to read that the new Samsung “Smart TV” which is voice activated, has a 46 page privacy policy disclaimer that states, among other things: “Please be aware that if your spoken words include personal or other sensitive information, that information will be among the data captured and transmitted to a third party.”

Wow! There you have it, folks, right out there in public, bold as brass, an incredibly bold and bald face admission that your most private conversations, your most intimate moments vocalized, your personal political beliefs articulated CAN AND WILL be sent to a third party….This is of course exactly what George Orwell famously predicted in his classic book “1984,” published in 1949 about totalitarianism run wild, personal freedoms trampled on, and an all seeing, all knowing government run amok…

In the novel “1984” there is absolutely NO personal privacy, the television is a two way monitor that watches and records your every move, like some horribly distorted reality show, only you have no control…The society is run by a fascist government leader called “Big Brother” who is apparently modeled after Joseph Stalin, the Russian dictator back in 1949…

People whose beliefs, actions or spoken thoughts that do not follow the party line are detected, arrested and brought into custody where they are tortured, brainwashed, and if they do not make a 180 degree “attitude adjustment” and suddenly become party stalwarts, they are sent to labor camps for further indoctrination or executed…The book was considered extreme when it was published, but look at us now!

The reasoning behind this voice activated technology with Samsung and the other TV manufacturers is mostly benign, of course….It was meant to help people find different programs and suggestions for programs, likes, and personal preferences…. It connects you instantly to programs like Netflix, You Tube, Crackle, Amazon…It was meant to be an improvement over our customary hand held remotes, giving the user in this age of instant gratification instantaneous choices and results…

But any fool can see where this is going…I always knew that they tracked what shows you watched on cable or satellite TV anyway, because even the non smart televisions, if they are hooked up to cable or satellite, are basically two way streets, recording, analyzing and monitoring what TV shows you liked and what you watched….

They then instantaneously re-send this data to advertising agencies to better help them make up new products to sell and new marketing techniques that would appeal to different levels of consumers….That is the other obvious reason Samsung has the voice activation on it’s Smart TV’s, to aid in identifying what people would be willing to spend money on…

This same trend has been on the increase just in the last five years! The advertisers already use our cell phones of course, which routinely track our movements through their GPS functions, track our eating habits through our choice of restaurants, note our entertainment choices, monitor almost all of our purchases through a combination of computers and cell phones, see which bills we pay on line or on our cell phones…

They have taken the meaning of the word transparency to a new level, although it is a one way street as far as this information helps them and does not do anything useful for us….We are leaving electronic footprints everywhere….Advertisers have been monitoring consumer habits and patterns for years, it is just that now with this sudden explosion of technological marvels they are suddenly privy to our most private thoughts and opinions…I am protesting this new, unprecedented technological invasion of privacy!

Our homes are no longer our castles, they have been infiltrated by the very devices we so eagerly seek out and buy…We have become our own worst enemies, all in the name of convenience…I am not being politically paranoid here, I do not see the implementation of any Orwellian “1984” invasive, intrusive, all encompassing government take over here…That was basically 1949 politics…

The scary part is that they already have the technology for this data storage and usage in place! Consider the words of the brilliant British theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking…. He recently told the BBC:”The development of full artificial intelligence could spell the end of the human race. Humans, who are limited by slow biological evolution, couldn’t compete and would be superseded.”

So think about that before you order your new smart TV folks….I know I won’t be!