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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 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.
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..
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"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.
The problem is that governments have given themselves permission to go in and get any of this data.
Which means it is pretty much inevitable that these shiny toys really are going to be Stasi Tech .. only people have signed up willingly for it, using terms which can be changed at the whim of the company ... and the governments will just demand the data.
Sorry, but you really can't sound paranoid enough about just how these technologies are likely to be abused.
Either from greedy corporations looking to make a buck off you, or governments who demand that same data to spy on you when it would be illegal for them to do it.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
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?
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!