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Gadgets That Spy On Us: Way More Than TVs
Presto Vivace writes with a reminder that it's not just Samsung TVs — lots of other gadgets are spying on you
"But Samsung's televisions are far from the only seeing-and-listening devices coming into our lives. If we're going to freak out about a Samsung TV that listens in on our living rooms, we should also be panicking about a number of other emergent gadgets that capture voice and visual data in many of the same ways. ....
Samsung's competitor, the LG Smart TV, has basically the same phrase about voice capture in its privacy policy: "Please be aware that if your spoken word includes personal or other sensitive information, such information will be among the Voice Information captured through your use of voice recognition features." It isn't just TVs, Microsoft's xBox Kinect, Amazon Echo, GM's Onstar, Chevrolet's MyLink and PDRs, Google's Waze, and Hello's Sense all have snooping capabilities. Welcome to the world of Stasi Tech.
I think that's a pretty harsh term. When used by a repressive regime this technology could be used for doing bad things but if people want voice commands in their lives they have to realize that some of this "snooping" is necessary. Why? Because voice processing and searching on the scale of some of the applications such as SIRI require centralized processing. Therefore your voice commands have to be sent someplace else and processed. Also this kind of technology isn't exactly new and things like Web Cams on laptops aren't immune from even local school districts snooping on students. The point is that the technology is introducing new possible attack vectors on your privacy and allowing not only corporations but even governments to potentially abuse your trust in the devices you use. I'm sure it's happened but I'll bet Apple has been subpoenaed for the SIRI requests from a suspected murderer or drug kingpin much like they'll ask Google for search queries from a suspect. That's why laws must be updated and the public made aware that there's a price to pay for all this ease of use. Oh in respect to LG, LG also says that any media you connect to their device will be potentially scanned including things like file names so start getting rid of those unused sex vids because the Chinese are watching your porn.
Harrison's Postulate - "For every action there is an equal and opposite criticism"
I have an LG TV and it has a stupid voice recognition feature. You have to press a button on the remote for it to start listening to you. The feature is pretty much completely useless. I tried it a few times when I first got the TV, but quickly found that it's pretty much worthless. The rest of the TV works really well though, and I have no complaints. I don't see the purpose of even building this feature into the TV. Nobody will use it, and nobody is going to make a TV buying decision based on rather or not it has voice recognition. Except maybe some people who will specifically be looking for a TV that doesn't have the feature.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
The first thing I saw when I open the article was "Like us on Facebook" :-)
An article about whats tracking us. But wont you just lets us track you as well before you read it.
Magic is how the average person and media assume anything technical works. Computers, cars, elevators, lighting. Hell, even plumbing.
I feel that most technically literate people at least knew that this kind of "spying" was technically trivial and obviously monetizable. Any device with some kind of a network connection and a microphone / camera can easily record everything you do and say and send it anywhere it wants. This little company called Google figured out that by collecting more and more information about you they can make huge sums of money by mining and selling that data and now everyone wants in on that game.
I feel like most comments here will be along the lines of "yeah duh what did you think they were doing with that data", however on less tech focused sites the comments will have the tone of "OMG evil corporations spying on us how is this even legal, hold on let me ask Siri!"
But that is the problem. The general population has no idea how every time they use a thing like Siri or Kinect, or OnStar they are allowing the respective companies that created those services nearly unlimited access to their microphone or camera. Just like people really don't understand how Facebook monetizes their profile and activities.
I think until there is general knowledge of the fact that we have entered the era of generating revenue from users through mining and analyzing their activities, preferences, and other data, we can't even have a productive discussion about the limits of these new ways to collect information. Right now it is just fear mongering and attention grabbing headlines.
Lets get to the point where we can have a rational discourse about the benefits and potential risks of ever present microphones and cameras and develop both moral and legal guidelines to govern their use.
But other people may not be so vigilant or aware. You go visit someone at there house and talk politics never noticing th IOT devices that are streaming your conversation from the living room.
I don't see too many hipsters driving GM cars.
my last tv purchase 'had' to be smart. why? because I wanted to buy from a trusted store (costco), they have only a limited of in-store brands and since I refused to buy samsung (at any cost), that left vizio. after 39" (or 37) they only sell them in 'smart' versions, sigh. so mine is smart.
but I never accepted the eula, it never init'd the network layer, it sits there with 0.0.0.0 on it (if I ever go to that screen) and the only down side is that I won't get firmware updates. but the good side is: I wont' get firmware updates! LOL
in fact, it is an upside. people are complaining about the latest forced no-choice OTA firmware that people got. they all want to revert. and so, my never-been-on-the-net tv will never have to be reverted. it works as a display device, the colors look ok once I calibrated it with my puck and my htpc system has never been better (intel onboard video, i7 fanless build, 1920 hdmi at 120hz real actual refresh. very nice!)
but to get that, I had to pay for a smart tv. which means I helped support this silliness with my money. for that, I'm sorry, but I didn't have a lot of real choice..
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
I've been saying for years all of these devices which want to be connected to the internet were a privacy and security shitstorm just waiting to happen.
That it's being shown as true is far from gratifying.
Corporations don't give a crap about your security or privacy.
Stop rewarding them with your money for some shiny baubles which are doing nothing but spying on you and monitizing everything you do.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
GM cars seem to be relatively rare in my neck of the woods. For college students, Kias, Hyundas, VWs and Mazdas have that market, with the Toyota models after that.
I really don't like GM's ability to disable any vehicle, anywhere. I'm reminded of an Austin dealer which installed devices to disable vehicles if the buyer didn't pay their loan payment... and a disgruntled ex-employee logged on as a valid employee, disabled all vehicles in the system and set them to honk until the batteries went dead. Wasn't a relatively big thing... but if someone did hack GM, the damage they could do with OnStar could be tremendous... for example, if there is a forest fire, hurricane or a disaster causing an evacuation, killing all GM vehicles in that area can turn the disaster into a catastrophe with extreme loss of life, just because the GM cars stalled would prevent movement of everything else.
Because someone like McCarthy will never, ever EVER exist in the US at some point in the future.
What people like you are missing is that the consequence of private enterprise collecting and selling mass personal data is that the government could either get by coercion or buying; data it could not otherwise acquire without a warrant.
The FBI may need a warrant to wiretap you, but would they need a warrant to 'acquire' the exact same data-set from apple or google?
That doesn't worry you, at all -- really?
I have a hard time thinking of anything stupider then voice control. It's a great niche for the disabled, but I fail to see the need, or "cool factor" in shouting at my electronics.
I blame Gene Rodenberry, what a dick.
Cheap storage VM.
Tug. Tug. All you have to do is unplug the Onstar box. The hardest part is apparently finding where they hid the box.
No magic, not even any tin foil!
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
I've heard some of the stuff in witches cauldrons smells like my plumbing.
Slow down, cowboy! It has been 4 hours since you last posted. You must wait another few hours.