An odd one, this one. Microsoft filed a patent on December 20th, 2006, for a device called the “Guardian Angel”. The idea is to have a device to detect the number of people in a room, single them out and recognise them. And then gather information on them, presumably from the net, about previous convictions and stuff.. Hmmm, not saying that people need to be safe, but two things come to mind straight away:

1) If there are dangerous people in the room, shouldn’t they be in another room, like, oh I dunno, a jail or something?

2) If the device flags someone as “dangerous” I guess it doesn’t matter if that person has already served his time, and probably gone through rehabilitation? The person could be completely different to his criminal record now.

So I think I’m saying this is a massive invasion of privacy, and straight away sets a machine up to pass judgement on someone else in the room. Surely this is wrong? The original article by slashdot can be found here. Another interesting feature of the Guardian Angel was a “heart monitor” like people need a machine to tell them they’re having a heart attack, or that they’re dead? Well I guess it hasn’t stopped Microsoft in the past for providing “features” to things that they think the buying public need – just look at Vista..!