Private eyes

They’re watching you

“It was a crowded primary field and Tony Evers, running for governor, was eager to win the support of officials gathered at a Wisconsin state Democratic Party meeting, so the candidate did all the usual things: He read the room, he shook hands, he networked.”

“Then he put an electronic fence around everyone there.” —The Los Angeles Times, last week

Pretty good lede in the LA Times. The story, by Evan Halper, only gets better. That is, worse. If you think technology is amazing these days, you ain’t seen nothing yet. But the tech guys have.

The team working for the candidate above was able to track all the smartphones in the room, and begin to push ads onto them. Technology allowed the campaign to track all the phones home with the owners, then jump to all the laptops and computers in those homes, to push even more ads on those devices.

There are people out there who’ve created the technology to track you, find out what you play online, what you read online, even where you go when you’re offline, then sell that information. Sometimes to politicians looking at your demographic. What can be next?

If even “next” is what we’re talking about. For all we know, the last time we plugged in for free WiFi at a hotel, our room service selection was sold to a national food chain. Then followed us home, where the food chain was able to tell our television to run more ads about Italian food.

Experts call this “micro-targeting ads.” We call it Orwellian.

Those who keep up with these things say that customers always have a way to opt out of such tracking. If you don’t want your phone to give its information to the nearest Internet hookup, then just go to “settings,” download the privacy app, click on “accounts,” go to “my accounts,” click on “my accounts opt-out,” double-click on “setting accounts,” go to “privacy,” click on “privacy services” . . . .

You see where we’re going. It may be easier to program the microwave. If that thing isn’t watching you, too.

Your television might be in on the action as well. The Times story said smart-TV systems can monitor what you watch, then tell “data brokers” back at the mother ship what you’re watching and when. Campaigns can then target your television with ads. We don’t mean as in targeting viewers, such as running Chevy truck commercials during football games. We mean targeting your television, the one you’re watching. Because the data brokers know that you like Italian food. Or might vote in the Republican primary.

Stories like this keep making the papers, and it makes the hair on our arms stand up. Congress and state legislatures can’t keep up with Silicon Valley. If you saw the congressional testimony last year in which Google’s CEO testified, you might have noticed that some congressmen don’t even know the difference between Google and Apple products. How are our elected officials going to rewrite the plot when they don’t even know the characters in the play?

Right now, it’s “only” advertising on our phones and televisions. But we can see more nefarious activities coming soon enough.

What happens when the Russians start using this stuff? Or is “start” the wrong word?