Slashdot Mirror
The Spy In Our Living Room
An anonymous reader writes "Ben Kuchera at Polygon ponders the surveillance capabilities of our gaming consoles in light of recent NSA and GCHQ revelations. 'Xbox One Kinect can see in the dark. It can keep a moving human being in focus without motors. It knows how to isolate voices from background noise. The privacy implications of having a device that originally couldn't be removed pointed at your living room at all times was always kind of scary, and that fear has been at least partially justified.' Kuchera, like many of us, habitually disconnects cameras and microphones not currently in use. But he also feels a sense of inevitability about the whole thing: 'If the government wants this information they're going to get it, no matter what we do with our gaming consoles. It's important to pay attention to what our government is doing, but this issue is much bigger than our gaming consoles, and we open ourselves up to much greater forms of intrusion on a daily basis.'"
Reminds me of the TVs in "1984".
Coder's Stone: The programming language quick ref for iPad
How many does that make today? I've lost count.
What if I put an XBox360 in a locked room with no windows, turned it on with a kinect camera pointing at a sign which threatens a top political figure. If someone acts on it, how would they justify their actions? Legally it would be extremely questionable and ultimately, it would not be a threat as much as it would be a trap for the government to fall into. After all, discovery would result in all manner of details which should enter public record. ...or I could disappear into a puff of darkness.
More pernicious BS I have never heard. By the same token, there is no reason to use either door-locks or condoms.
BTW, I do not have a Kinect and have covers on all web-enabled cameras, including the one in my laptop.
Microsoft and the like can track what games I own (fine), what DLC I download (fine), what searches I do (fine), what music I listen to or movies I watch (fine)
But when they want to scan my room, listen to what I say? I ask, why would I want to buy an overpriced gimmicky motion controller that so obviously does more than just track my gestures.
Microsoft started failing by pushing ads through my connection, against my will, and charged me for the pleasure. I can only imagine what they're getting out of the Kinect.
Last I checked the way kinect works is it basically shines an infrared light that you can't see but the cameras can. It uses this light to illuminate things. BTW, your cell phone's camera can also see in infrared. (As can the sensor on the Wii.)
Did you know 80 to 90% of the moderators on slashdot wouldn't recognize a troll even if one dragged them under a bridge.
A worthless gaming peripheral!
Our kid's XBox is not connected to any network. It really is as simple as that.
If you don't want your game console to spy on you, don't own one. There are plenty of other gaming options.
What's that you say? Cool kids need to own consoles to be cool kids? Guess what, kids? Big Brother is cool! Big Brother loves you! Big Brother wants to fuck you up the ass, and the best part is, you want to enjoy it! Idiots.
The landline telephones in the old USSR didn't hang up when the user put the handset back in the cradle and so people routinely put a pillow over them.
I have a computer which doesn't really shut down fully, but rather has one of those motherboards that will keep powered up enough to charge USB devices etc.
It's annoying as the PSU also has a bit of a whine from either the capacitors or transformers.
My solution is an old single-outlet power-bar which has an on/off button. It plugs into the regular power-bar, and then the computer plugs into it. When I'm not using the computer, I just turn off the juice at the bar.
For those worried about other electronic devices with cameras etc, I'd imagine a similar method would work. If in doubt, pull the plug.
This is the entire point of parallel construction. They can't or won't reveal how they are monitoring you secretly. Instead they can claim that you were acting suspicious based on something else you've done which has nominally taken place in some kind of public space. Then they get a warrant based on that, and "find" the threats you are making, and charge you with that too.
Footage would be nearly useless as the remotes are generally pointed at the TV or flailing about.
That and the Wii Remote firmware summarizes the picture from its 128x96 pixel IR camera into the positions and sizes of the four largest bright spots anyway.
Anything they can do with an xbox they can do with a cell phone / laptop as well. I just bought one of these:
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00H9...
discrete static cling covers for your glass-front equipment. you can still peel off when you want to facetime or whatever, then put them back.
I don't know how to muffle the microphones when I'm not using them, does anybody have ideas?
If you think that is bad enough that the government is doing it, think that in fact the ones doing it is the people of the government, the same ones that spied the conversation between US soldiers and their fiancees/wives when they were at Afganistan, and shared between themselves the hottest parts.
Probably the biggest repository of child porn of the world is in NSA servers for their "investigative" use. And we are speaking about people that have power over you and your family.
It can't do shit if it is unplugged
"When life gives you lemons, don't make lemonade. Make life take the lemons back!" -- Cave Johnson
'If the government wants this information they're going to get it, no matter what we do with our gaming consoles.
Stop using them.
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
1 - Don't support products that spy
2 - unplug when not in use.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Ben Kuchera is a fucking tool who has no business writing about anything. The same goes for Polygon.
Kuchera was one of the assmunches on the front lines defending MS's initial DRM and always-online schemes for the XBOX One.
His opinions were so bad and so obviously paid-for that he got kicked out of Penny Arcade for shit like this http://penny-arcade.com/report... (I think they pulled it down because it was so bad) and this https://twitter.com/BenKuchera... .
Penny fucking Arcade realized how shitty he was, Yes, that Penny Arcade. The one run by the no-standards shills that did an instant 180 from gamers to tools once MS started paying them. The PA that bullies its own fans and offers a kickstarter to remove ads from their massively-profitable website, with stretch goals to remove more ads, but still not all the ads.
Ben Kuchera's internet fame was spawned from PA, and he became such an insufferable goon that even PA realized he needed to be cut loose. He shat around Arse Technica for a while and now he's shitting it up at Polygon.
We all know games "journalism" is about one of the most laughable things ever, but Kuchera and Polygon represent the fucking highest echelon of shilling, shit-flinging, and all around douchebaggery. There is zero integrity involved with Polygon as a whole and with Kuchera as a person. You shouldn't simply distrust their reviews, news, opinions, etc., you should actively trust it to be complete and utter paid-for horseshit.
And, after reading this, I'm happy with that.
Don't buy a console.
-
It's going to get a lot worse, because most people do not care. Bread and circuses.
Brainwash them early to be comfortable with 24/7 surveillance.
"If the government wants this information they're going to get it" is only true if we let them. In a democracy this should be a achievable by the ballot box. Even if it seems we don't have anyone to vote for that's no excuse to surrender to the 'get over it' mantra; doing nothing is never neutral; it will always count against you.
+10
... morons.
Nowhere can this clearly be seen more than in the videogame industry, with the rise of STEAM DRM and the gullible people who lap it all up while gaming history (games you can own, modify, and not be spied on, watched, datamined) is going down in flames. Console players are among the most stupid on the planet, so videogame consoles would be an easy in for any government wanting to spy on its citizens.
The planet is just filled with stupid illiterate fucks who breed and pay for this shit because they don't have the brain cells to rub together to understand the implications sadly. They'll fork over any amount of money to feed their game addiction sadly all while being gouged, fleeced, DRM'd and DLC'd up and down six ways to sunday.
This possibility is why I don't OWN an X-Box One and why my existing gaming console ( which lacks a video camera and microphone ) is isolated to its own VLAN on my home network. For that matter, all the phones are on their own VLAN, the gaming console on another, the alarm system a third. I don't allow them to talk to anything other than the internet or ( in the case of the phones ) each other.
Don't really want the X-Box camera watching me when I walk through the house, the mic picking up my conversations, or any of the other devices being used as a jump off point of entry to the rest of my network.
Your phone has been spying on you for years and you never complained. And you take it with you everywhere. Your camera and mic can be turned on remotely, so a third party could eavesdrop on your surroundings through your pocket, can turn on the camera while you're talking to see what's around you. Everywhere you go, not just your living room (where you also likely take your phone). Amazes me all the Chicken Littles with their little chicken heads cut off.
Originally the Xbox One required a CALIBRATED Kinect 2 sensor bar to be active at all times, and instructed ALL game developers, especially those with no need for ANY Kinect functionality in the main gameplay, to constantly check the functioning status of the Kinect 2, and to demand that users 'recalibrated' the Kinect, if it identified blockage of the sensors (like tape, or pointing Kinect at a wall).
Originally the Xbox One required a permanent connection to the Internet. The reason for these two requirements (only rescinded when market research proved that Xbox One sales would be disastrous unless these policies were altered) is no mystery.
Every Xbox One is constantly monitoring the people in the room, even when the console is "off" but still connected to the mains. Put a 'kill-o-watt' meter on both the Xbox One and PS4, and measure power use in 'standby'. You will discover the Xbox One is still pulling masses of power, enough to keep the 25% of Xbox One hardware dedicated to Kinect fully functional. Examine the Internet traffic from the console, and watch how the console is ALWAYS uploading and downloading at regular periods, even when the console is not in use. Of course, we are all used to MS Windows doing exactly the same thing on the desktop, with MS issuing various lame excuses for the traffic.
By unchangeable default, every Xbox One, even in standby or in the dark, is tracking every person who enter (or leaves) the room, taking high-definition photos of their faces, and uploading these images with datestamps to NSA servers that are in the so-called Microsoft 'cloud'. The NSA runs face recognition algorithms against the mugshots, and even if an actual name is not matched, still give the particular face a unique code - just like a fingerprint is still useful and unique even when you lack the name of the owner. The face recognition software is mostly the work of Google.
By unchangeable default, every online Xbox One registers that fact with NSA master-servers. Microsoft has provided the NSA with a complete list of encryption keys that are unique to each console. The key allows an NSA agent to order any onlne Xbox One to begin capturing, encoding, encrypting and uploading a video stream of user-controllable quality and bandwidth. Should the agent fear the sudden upload bandwidth may raise suspicion, Microsoft sets aside a large part of the internal HDD for local storage of such streams, so they may be uploaded at a less 'difficult' time, like when the target is asleep.
The Kinect cameras can see in the dark. The Kinect cameras can frequently detect heart and breathing rates of individuals in the room. The Kinect micophone array can usually hear conversations in adjoining rooms. The INCREDIBLY EXPENSIVE 'time-of-flight' military grade sensor that Bill Gates personally instructed Microsoft to spend billions of dollars to develop, while lousy for low-latency accurate video game input, is brilliant for identifying forms of human movement. Kinect 2 motion recognition has ZERO relationship with the god-awful bad joke technology Microsoft bought from a hopeless Israeli company for the original Kinect.
Via its Human motion processing, the Xbox One, for instance, can recognise the various forms of all Human sexual activity. This fact has massive significance. Snowden already leaked documents showing how mindless capture of video data by the NSA and GCHQ flooded the government goons with so much data, they didn't know where to look first. They WANT to, and do collect all available electronic traffic, but they crave automatic ways of knowing when it is 'interesting'.
Here's where the innovation of the Xbox One really kicks in. Bill Gates originally pitched to the NSA the ultimate in 'smart' domestic spying. A camera and microphone system that would be so smart, it would know WHEN to start recording, and when to alert the NSA. The Xbox One is designed to accept remote lists of 'trigger' conditions. The NSA can send to any given console or range of consoles a 'script' that controls
unplug
It's that easy, unplug.
...through the house going "WOO WOOOO WOOOOO!" every time I get out of the shower, I would not begrudge them the spectacle.
I refuse to own a gaming console which is required to be connected to the internet.
I disconnected my XBox 360 when it started showing me ads, and since I don't play games online or use it to stream videos, I have no use for a game console which requires the internet -- especially if we have to treat the privacy implications as inevitable.
I'll give up gaming before I put an always connected camera in my living room.
Make me a gaming console which doesn't need to be connected to the internet, or don't expect me to buy one that does.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Duct Tape works on all kinda materials.Can be painted too .
Jack of all trades,master of none
Another reason I'm missing a proper "power off" switch on many devices, besides the residual power use (wastes power, so wastes my money). One that physically, not electronically, breaks the power supply to the device. More and more of our devices do not have an "off" switch any more, it's really a "stand-by" switch. Of course that's convenient, as it's always listening for you to press the remote control "on" button for it to spring to life, it also means many other functions can be kept working secretly.
While there is no evidence that this happens on a big scale nowadays, as other comments mentioned (the telescreens from "1984", phones in the Soviet Union), it can be done either in fantasy or reality. Mobile phones are never off, they alway have to stay on to receive calls. And they carry cameras and a microphone. The laptop that I'm using now has a camera pointing at me, and it has a microphone. No way to physically switch them off, short of opening the device and cutting the wires.
Matrix multiplication means picking up where multiple factors can be combined to produce a high score. It can analyze threat = capability x intent. I think this approach can be used as much by the individual trying to get a handle on reality (multiply news by what you know is possible) as by a massive organization (crunch data streams to find exploitable juicy bits).
If you think this way you will be paranoid. But, if you just want to imagine where things can go if they get even worse than they are now, say if unlimited resources are deployed by utterly immoral actors, it can be useful.
For example, without formal training I came up with the above threat equation. After typing the equation into Google, it turns out that it is correct and part of formal risk/threat assessment calculations. I figure that's because it is common sense.
http://www.aci-na.org/sites/de...
Capability matrix:
Look. The entire data stream starting from the time a Kinect is plugged into electrical power can be automatically saved forever in a quiet data center.
XBox+Kinect is a very powerful listening device because of its smarts. It can download a program or search parameters and seek high-quality data, such as a conversation with a certain person's name in it, and filter it before sending it upstream. It can also compress a raw feed and gradually upload it over time.
So if anyone ever does something criminal or suggestive, like maybe your child has a party and someone does drugs in the living room, that data can be silently tagged and stored without any human's knowledge.
Any of your computers, or any computer ever in your vicinity throughout your daily life, or the lives of other people, can do the same thing. Just silently record at all times. There are too many ways it can be done in software. Free apps, buggy malware, browsers..
All phones, networked hardware, your car's On-Star navigation system and black box, can be additional channels.
Intent matrix:
Years later, if someone wants to find something on you they just make a mining query.
Queries can ultimately matrix multiply all locations x all channels x all individuals x all conversations files or positioning data.
Such as any conversation that mentions a target name or keyword ever held in front of anybody's XBox, personal laptop, tablet, wall phone, mobile phone, desk at work in any company. If you ignore any difficulty associated with processing/telecom/power/time capacity you will understand that rather than simply being "overheard" it is like you are leading your life by crawling over a jungle-gym moving from one data capture point to another. Your life over time and space, and those of all people with whom you interact, together become an immense transparent crystal object that can be observed at one's convenience from any angle.
Matrix Product: (exploitable output, or the threat)
Forget trying to end-run around the NSA, there is no point. But worry about other actors.
The U.S. data will be privately owned and controlled by other actors.
Any big company or country has a chance at subverting these streams and building their own global capacity.
A criminal organization could pressure a Verizon sysadmin.
The captured data does not have to go to court. It can be shown to someone else, or to you in order to embarrass you into tilting you towards a given course of action, for example if a target was shown video capturing an infidelity. The actor can dial in any degree of formality, truth or fairness.
Data that might have saved you (such as data proving innocence or entrapment) can be deleted, ignored, or modified in whatever private data center it is stored.
Parallel construction means all of this dark activity, a dark war against humanity, can be kept in the dark, but leveraged when some other expedient is selected.
Comments:
Once you or someone many steps removed who you don't even know has been targeted or an annotation has been made
I don't mean rant in a negative light exactly, but that you are behaving similar to what you are complaining about. The Article is about how game consoles can monitor people, which does not have positive consequences for society and citizens. This writer and source is not the first to cover the topic, just the most recent. Spending 4 paragraphs telling everyone how bad the author and source without mention of the topic distracts from the article and topic.
Welcome to the game, if you were not playing intentionally you just became a sucker. If you were playing intentionally, well, go find a sand box and pound some.
People have been concerned about Xbox One and it's always on sensor arrays designed for spying. There was a recent report in the Guardian telling us that GCHQ used it to spy on people in Xbox360. There is no reason to believe that the latest will be used any differently, and no reason to believe that what GCHQ does also happens at the NSA, CIA, FBI, DHS, etc...
My family is smart enough to have boycotted all versions of the MS consoles. Yeah, we have owned PS2 through PS4 and some people have concerns with those. Most Sony PS concerns relate to the old Sony root kit issues however, and not some always on spytech filming and recording your every move.
If people want a fix to the solution, start boycotting. Remember that a boycott is not just not purchasing something, but actively persuading others to not purchase that same thing. It will take a lot to force change, because there are all these nice back door payments to companies so that they do the wrong thing (yet another Snowden/Guardian piece you should read).
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
I love this, from TFA:
that's equivocation....very harmful equivocation
Kinect's design is *evil* and to require critics to meet such a large burden of proof is inconsistent, illogical, and harmful to our industry
let me be clear...the 'fear' of Capitalist Big Brother is not "partially justified" it is absolutely a full realized FACT
to analyze the issue, claim expertise, then to equivocate in such a manner is **wrong**
it hurts our industry in untold ways, giving non-tech's a skewed idea of how tech works
Thank you Dave Raggett
And that's just too bad as I'd love to bash MS and their Xbox. -PS4 future owner.
I just purchased a SAMSUNG UN32F6300AFXZA is it 120Hz or not being a running question? I use it as a 32" monitor, and it has one hell of a display http://www.newegg.com/Product/...
This HDTV is decked out, WiFi and hardwired, lots of things to keep one occupied, even has it's own web browser, Voice commands, Turn on , Turn off (I guess), and, "Gestures" it reads your body language or maybe just your hand, and face recognition. What you might not see, is my reluctance to set it up to just a SamSung account.
As usual I read the ToS's and the privacy policy of the system when I set it up;( It's required reading or else you just click on ok and continue) It mentions the privacy policy in passing (a link) in the ToS's, When you enter the "Smart Hub" area your shown another privacy policy (previous link) that shows this HDTV is one hell of a data miner, what's collected is placed in a data base, kept and based as per South Korea laws (jurisdiction).
Why would it do this? It's for the "S Recommendation", "Find something good to watch. Simply click the recommend button on the remote to get instant recommended shows that are on now". (from link above)
Cause it should know who you are and what you like; if you've had this HDTV 6 months or more it should know you and your sister apart, or a request to "show me something dirty" could go horribly wrong.
A person with this set up in their place would most likely have it linked to the Lan, A Web cam setup to read gestures and face recognition, a microphone turned on for the voice commands. All the requirements of an Xbox plus more (the constant Internet connection) while not required to be connected all the time, most likely once it's set-up it will stay in that configuration.
I've looked and can't find a ToS or Privacy policy easily. I just know what I read and have sansung.com blocked at the router level for two reasons. I use it as a monitor and don't need it as an 240Hz LCD HDTV, my Panasonic 600Hz Plasma HDTV takes care of that feature poking fun at refresh rates and the big lie) - The second reason is Samsung tries to access and work with your FaceBook account and if you don't have one, highly suggest you get one. Facebook being a third party would have access to all of SamSung's data on you (no basis for that, would seem a given so to me).
I really would like to read the ToS again I positive it's against Samsung's ToS to watch pornography on this HDTV. :}
To opt out:
opt-out-shine-the-light-law@sisa.samsung.com
(Samsung may need to ask you to provide follow-up information in the order to duly process an E-mail request).
I guarantee you that the Kinect does not transfer that kind of information to Microsoft since it will be caught and there will be outrage.
Obviously, if they were planning on using the device to spy on people, it'd be for extremely targeted operations, activating monitoring mode only for certain people, and therefore not likely to be discovered.
Why not send the previously collected bursts while you're playing games? Remember the big stink about the last generation of games needing to be online originally? well, we're already all doing online games and services (netflix, Facebook, twitter) on the TV anyway. The XBOX data can go wherever it is the online data servers are, and distributed man-in-the-middle-style from there to MS, and thus, the NSA. Just sneak a bit at a time into the game / video / DLC bursts and encryption will hide the rest.
Until the capacity expands so that they can be watching you all the time. The problem is that while they may not catch crimes, they can certainly use it to shut you up if you have a valid complaint. The UK government and police have a strategy to defame and destroy your reputation if you have any sort of complaint. The UK government has a track record of this, whenever somebody is arrested and subsequently released, y'know because they were innocent they get defamed. Hostile 'leaks' are released to defame this person and blacken their reputation. For instance two men who were subject to a police raid, one of them was even shot, they took their house apart and found no evidence of wrong doing. Instead of an apology they were then arrested on child porn possession charges. This made the front pages of the dead tree press. The charges were then dropped for 'insufficient evidence'. Again with the Brazilian electrician shot in London, press releases made out he was a rapist, again no evidence. Pam Warren survivor of a train crash was subject to a mud slinging campaign. So if threatened to have the stuff which goes on in your private bedroom exposed to the public would you back off? especially as they would undoubtedly edit it to show your worst side. Normal sex for instance..... edit it to put the words stop you're hurting me.... oops you're now a rapist.
thats a fun Document, my fav part is:
Do Not Track Signals and Similar Mechanisms
Some web browsers may transmit "do-not-track" signals to the websites with which the user communicates, although web browsers incorporate and activate this functionality in different ways, and it is not always clear whether users intend for these signals to be transmitted. There currently is disagreement, including among participants in the leading Internet standards-setting organization, concerning what, if anything, websites should do when they receive such signals. Samsung currently does not take action in response to these signals, but, if and when a standard is established and accepted, we may reassess how to respond to these signals.
If you send a DO NOT TRACK, they ignore it, because its a mistake you didn't mean for them not to track you even after you have to select the do not track manually its off by default.
I'm glad you're blocking Samsung's corporate website at your router. There's no possible way that they could ever have servers under unrelated IP addresses or hostnames -- we all know that would be breaking Internet Laws.
- Note that your ACME gesture controlled toilet must be connected to internet at all times, and the camera must not be covered up.
The best part about all this is how the public voluntarily funds their own surveillance. We happily buy smart phones that can track our movements and purchasing habits. Xbox is just another way we pay to be spied on.
Don't worry, we have the device stripped down the firmware dumped, we have all outside TCP/IP references blocked at the firewall.
They can locate me IN MY OWN HOME! They know when I'm GOING TO THE BATHROOM! They can listen to me EAT PIZZA!
1984 all over again. Er, well, you know what I mean. The horror!
Go to Heaven for the climate, Hell for the company -- Mark Twain
I'm glad you're blocking Samsung's corporate website at your router. There's no possible way that they could ever have servers under unrelated IP addresses or hostnames -- we all know that would be breaking Internet Laws.
I'd used to be able to say not a problem, but https://www.robtex.com/ isn't showing what it used to, if fact nothing more than if a site is safe or not.
Not saying Samsung is blocked as one can't, but I do what I can, and https://www.robtex.com/ used to tell me all of the ip addresses of a company. :}
and that all paths lead to Google
It's more than blocking them at the router level, I don't use the WiFI and haven't or plan on getting a Sumsung account so no place to pigion hole any thing they may get.
Bottom line is it's very intrusive, required to providing you with a fairly decent service. And a question I've been asked on /. a few times, am I willing to give up my freedoms just to watch TV. - Which I don't use the Samsung for it's, my PC monitor