Try it. Call your cell phone using Gmail. Put the phone to your ear, your mouth to your computer’s microphone and talk. Most likely, you will notice the built-in amplification of your microphone. This is unique in that it will clearly pick up ambience from a longe range. Don’t think you’re safe to speak your mind even if you’re all the way down the hall; I have angered family members over conversations that took place 100 feet from the microphone. Why does this matter? Keep reading to find out.

“You’re attending a baseball game and call Google’s 411 service for information about a nearby restaurant. The cheers of the crowd and the sounds of the announcer are picked up by your phone. Google’s system analyzes the background noise, takes into account your location, determines that you’re at a ballgame and delivers related ads or links to your phone with sports scores and news.Or maybe you’re making the call from a concert hall, and the sound in the background is the instruments tuning up during intermission. Google figures out that you’re at a concert, and serves up musical news or ads about albums related to the performance.

Those are some of the actual examples described by Google in a patent just received by the company for “advertising based on environmental conditions.””

Or, how about while using Gmail to call your husband, your baby cries, and embedded adverts of pacifiers, baby food, and diapers come up on the screen. Let’s go one step further. Let’s go into the future for a second. How about audio chatrooms that are hosted by Google+ to allow people to chat with their friends and family which in real-time prompt specific adverts based on your discussion. And what if you just leave it running while you go to the bathroom, get food, take a shower, etc. I know I would; it’s free, why not? Now comes the really bad part.

What if the data Gmail analyzes were fed to the NSA for, say, national security reasons? Not that the “No Such Agency” answers to the media like other parts of government. The NSA was, in fact, created in 1952 by a secret executive order b..., so from the beginning they have operated in top-secret fashion.

It was already reported by the Wall Street Journal that:

“According to current and former intelligence officials, the spy agency now monitors huge volumes of records of domestic emails and Internet searches as well as bank transfers, credit-card transactions, travel and telephone records. The NSA receives this so-called “transactional” data from other agencies or private companies, and its sophisticated software programs analyze the various transactions for suspicious patterns. Then they spit out leads to be explored by counterterrorism programs across the U.S. government, such as the NSA’s own Terrorist Surveillance Program, formed to intercept phone calls and emails between the U.S. and overseas without a judge’s approval when a link to al Qaeda is suspected.”

However, never before has a program scanned and analyzed background noises in real-time with the sophistication to perform specific, complex functions (such as associating a noise or voice with something or someone and then performing a function, such as displaying a related advert). This, of course, is done with public consent yet largely without public knowledge. Most people won’t connect the dots between the advertisements and the phone call. That’s stuff only tin-foil hatters ponder. Now comes the connection. How hard is it for law enforcement or intelligence agencies in the name of thwarting cyberattacks, fighting insider trading, or prosecuting “extremists” to:

1-Compile a list of suspects that includes city of residence

2-Demand a list of subscribers for all available ISPs in that city

3-Request an IP address range for that suspect

4-Forward the IP address range to Google and demand that they analyze phone calls

Let’s take a closer look at the patent.

“The content 102 is not limited to advertisements, and can include various types of information useful to the users 104, such as weather and traffic information.” Hmm. Sounds useful, but what if that information is sent elsewhere?

“One or more sensors 114 provide information about environmental conditions of the user 104.” Say what?

“The sensors 114 can be configured to sense, for example, temperature, humidity, sound, light, and/or air composition.” What the?

“Sensing air composition may including sensing odors, smog, dust, pollen, pollutant, or other particles or molecules in the air.” Are you kidding me?

“The sensors 114 can include a digital camera to obtain images of the environment.” Why do they want this?

“The sensors 114 can include a positioning sensor, such as a global positioning system (GPS) sensor, that provides location information. The location information can be used to access services (e.g., weather channel websites) that provide environmental conditions of a given location. Location information can also be inferred from other means. For example, the client terminal 110 can be a cell phone, and location information can be derived from information about base stations that the cell phone is connected to.” Right.

Okay, let’s break this down real quick. Google is patenting technology (which means they can already do it) so they can not only take control of your video camera or microphone for “advertising,” but they also plan to roll out devices that can use GPS to pull up your location and know just about anything, environmentally speaking. Smoke pot? better not do it around a computer! Smoke cigarettes in an apartment in New York? Beware!

Wait, there’s more.

“The environmental condition monitor application 120 may request the user 104 to input address information during a setup process.” How convenient. Now I know why I used to falsify data online.

Here’s where I want to throw my computer out the window: “The environmental condition monitor application 120 may share the sensors 114 with other applications. For example, the sensors 114 can include a microphone of a personal computer or a mobile phone that is used in speech recognition, phone calling, or video conferencing applications. The microphone can also be used by the environmental condition monitor application 120 for sensing ambient noise.” Mmmmk. So let me get this straight. By agreeing to use software like Google Chrome or services like Gmail, somewhere in the 20 page TOS, they throw in a clause about allowing this “environmental condition monitor,” and this will intelligently utilize any program it understands to capture this data, and possibly work synergistically with “speech recognition, phone calling, or video conferencing applications.” Did I just travel through time? Because I swear it’s 1984.

The worst part is, innocent third-parties that make speech recognition, internet phone, online voice chat, or video conferencing applications that exist on computers that have google applications installed would be, via Google’s technology, be doing all the work for the NSA or law enforcement, forced to become a virtual arm of that bureau. The possibilities are endless. Imagine a wiretap on steroids, and the person will have consented simply by using Google’s products. It’s no longer any wonder why Gmail offers long-distance phone calling totally free.

This technology could be pushed with weather applications and for people with allergies. It could even be mandated via federal and even international regulations for the sake of “security.” Family’s carbon footprint? Measured and forwarded to the U.N. Carbon credits? Automatically deducted from bank account.

It just goes on and on: “In some examples, the user 104 may sign up for a service provided by a service provider, in which provision of the service requires information from the sensors 114. For example, a farmer may use sensors 114 to sense soil, crop, and livestock conditions on a farm. The data from the sensors may be sent to a service provider that remotely diagnose and monitor health conditions of the crops and livestock. The sensors 114 may be provided to the farmer at a subsidized cost in exchange for the farmer agreeing to receive ads 102 that are delivered to a terminal on the farm based on data feed from the sensors 114. The data from the sensors 114 may be used to target ads 102 from sellers of seeds, fertilizers, feedstock, pesticides, farm machinery, or any other potential supplier of the farm.” I bet Monsanto would be interested in that information. Organic farms? Kiss them goodbye. You just lost your certification because Google detected a trace amount of pesticides. Better convert to conventional!

“In some examples, location information obtained from the sensors 114 can be used to infer that the user 104 is waiting in a traffic jam. For example, the location information may indicate that the user 104 is located on a highway and moving very slowly.” Oh, I bet you like to speed in that new Porsche. Hmm, better get it out of your system now, because your cell phone or car’s computer just might report you, thanks to Google. Yes, if it can tell you’re going too slowly, it can tell if you’re speeding.

“As discussed above, the client terminal 110 has privacy protection features and allows the user 104 to enable or disable someor all of the sensors 114 for the purpose of gathering information to support advertisements.” SOME?

“The system 100 includes an environmental condition determination engine 122 that determines general environmental conditions of the user 104 based on information about the user 104 that is not obtained by the sensors 114. For example, the environmental condition determination engine 122 can be used when the client terminal 110 does not have relevant sensors 114, when the environmental condition monitor application 120 is not installed on the client terminal 110, or when the environmental condition monitor application 120 is turned off by the user 104. For example, when a user 104 accesses the search server 106, the system 100 may be able to derive the location of the user 104 based on an Internet Protocol (IP) address of the client terminal 110. The client terminal 110 may send location information (e.g., obtained from a GPS sensor) to the search server 106.” Even if I think I am smart and don’t use a microphone or camera on my computer I am still vulnerable. Or if I don’t use the application. Or if I refuse to install it. So by using google’s search engine it’s going to pinpoint my location by IP address in real time and send that information to Google.

“When a user 104 uses the web browser 108 to access the service provided by the server 160, the web browser 108 may forward information about environmental conditions (received from the environmental condition monitor application 120) to the server 160. The server 160 forwards the environmental condition information to the system 100. The server 160 also sends information about the user 104, such as the user’s residence address, to the system 100. The environmental condition determination engine 122 determines the general environmental conditions of the user 104 based on the information about the user, such as the user’s residence address. Information about the user’s environmental conditions provided by the environmental condition monitor application 120 and the environmental condition determination engine 122 can be used by the ad server 116 in selecting ads to be served to the server 160. The server 160 delivers requested information and the ads to the user 104.” So any “sensors” will provide their “environmental conditions” to Google anytime you simply use Chrome or search Google. Heard of Occupy Wall Street? How about Occupy Google.

Read the patent in entirety. This is serious. You have the power to resist.