Privacy advocates are gonna love Verizon after this one. The company has filed a patent application for a set-top box that is similarly equipped as Microsoft’s Kinect — cameras, microphones and motion sensors, everything you would need to track movements in a room. What room, you ask? Why, you’re living room of course.

This would allow the company to select advertisements based on “ambient action” in the room. Possible implementations of this would be to show commercials for a theme park when a whole family is watching television, especially when kids are present with their parents. Another would be to show romantic vacation packages to couples watching together.

There are probably many more ways they could leverage this technology but that won’t do any good to stop the privacy concerns. If it’s anywhere near the technology present in the Kinect, it would basically be a window into your living room — to show you advertisements.

Do you think this is an invasion of privacy? Or would you allow this technology into your living room for more “personalized” advertising? Let us know in the comments!

[via Mashable, image via BenFrantzDale]