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Amazon's Echo Spot Is a Sneaky Way To Get a Camera Into Your Bedroom (theverge.com)
Yesterday, Amazon announced six new hardware products at a surprise event in Seattle. The one that everyone is talking about though is called the Echo Spot -- a little alarm clock with a camera that will probably be pointing directly at your bed. "While all the focus is on what the Echo Spot looks like, it's important to remember that Amazon is using the Spot as a very clever way of making you comfortable with having a camera in your bedroom," reports The Verge. From the report: Amazon launched its Echo Look camera earlier this year to judge your outfits. It's designed to sit in your wardrobe and offer you style advice, and it was Amazon's first Echo device with a camera. Amazon quickly followed it up with the Echo Show, a touchscreen device that sits in your kitchen and lets you watch tutorials or recipes and participate in video calls. Amazon's Look device is still only available exclusively by invitation, and in hindsight it now looks like experimental hardware to gauge the reaction of a camera in the bedroom. A litmus test, if you will. Echo Spot feels like the real push to get cameras inside your smart home. It's more than just an alarm clock, but Amazon is definitely pushing this as a $130 device that will sit next to your bed. Promotional materials show it sitting on nightstands, providing a selection of clock faces and news / weather information. The privacy concerns are obvious: an always-listening (for a keyword) microphone in your bedroom, and a camera pointing at your bed.
...a little alarm clock with a camera that will probably be pointing directly at your bed.
WOW! Quite the salacious dirty (wink, wink, nod, nod...) thing to suggest, I'm getting hot just thinking about it. I'm not sure why it would "probably" be pointed at my bed. Am I positioning it that way? Can the device re-position its eye as its masters at Amazon direct it? Is the suggestion that Amazon is interested in capturing pictures of me fucking? And why? Are they going to try to monetized fuck videos of me? Are they going to analyze my fucking technique and try to sell me self-help books and videos? Are they going to suggest that I and my mate might look better fucking on a certain bedspreads and zillion-thread-count Egyptian cotton sheets? Because the way the suggestion is presented, clearly the author of the Verge article thinks Amazon has some sort of interest in watching me fuck.
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
child sex offender laws what will amazon do so that any thing near that comes on to there network?
Isn't it the same thing when people have their cell phones on and having it in their bedroom as an alarm clock? This is becoming way out of hand. More devices, always-on microphones and cameras.
Multiple devices = multi-camera angles!! Great.
People already carry devices with video cameras and mics and put them on their bedstands and take them into the bathroom with them.
Most people who get to see the resulting movies aren't, though.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Instead of "Echo", they could have called it "E-Spot".
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
Wow, how stupid have people gotten? You cant even trust companies iwth your SSN, you're going to leave these devices in your homes?
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
or travel slightly forward in time and do it now
how quaint
I'm not sure why it would "probably" be pointed at my bed. Am I positioning it that way?
I don't know, do you purposefully position clocks so you cannot rad them?
I assure you most people who bother to put a clock in the bedroom would rather be able to read it from the bed, than not. To them this is a kind of clock, among many other things.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Camera in your bedroom?
Please, some one hack these and publish it on the internet.
Anyone stupid enough to buy this crap deserves to have the entire world laugh at them.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
Well, let's see. Anyone who has a smartphone, tablet, or computer in their bedroom is already providing surveillance equipment for anyone who can hack their way in. I don't see how the Echo Spot is appreciably different.
To me, the creepy thing about the whole connected house and voice-activated digital assistants is that they're always listening. I don't care so much if someone ogles me in the altogether or watches me having sex (they might learn something!), but I don't like the idea of people listening to my private conversations.
Want to send me money for my GoFundMe where I will probably invent different sizes and colors of electrical tape cut into specific shapes to fit the cameras on any device?
"Jeez you got a big p*ssy" "Jeez you got a big p*ssy" "Why did you say that twice?" "I didn't" Someday, sometime, we're gonna hear that be recorded by this device....
I'm not sure, will this device place a camera in my bedroom? they really should have capitalized every instance of . "CAMERA IN YOUR BEDROOM", "A CAMERA NEXT TO YOUR BED!!!"
by duct tape.
.. will produce fake news of an anaconda on the loose....
Just wonderin'
Can't have a discussion like this without atleast one mention of "Der Fuhrer" or nazis
http://www.cracked.com/blog/6-innocent-sounding-topics-that-are-guaranteed-flame-wars/
So, Orwell was 40 years off on the date I already love Big Brother so I'm safe.
The Smart Shower will detect who enters the shower and adapt the water temperature, jet pattern and force accordingly. Multiple jets will be engaged depending on your facial expression and state of arousal, including a tender after glow down cycle. A couples upgrade is available.
I predict there will be a rash of unplanned pregnancies by device-centric teenagers going "oh, so that's what you meant by 'put a sock on it'".
Boy scout planning way ahead: "Echo, instructions for putting on a sock before sex."
Echo: "On me? Or you?"
Boy scout: "Pretend you've got your own sock already."
Echo: "Okay, stick out your foot."
Boy scout: "What?"
Echo: "Consider your foot a model for your future manhood."
Boy scout: "What's wrong with my present manhood?"
Echo: "Can't tell you, cheap camera, no zoom."
Joke's on them, I sleep on the floor.
#DeleteFacebook
...if your unsuccessfully-suppressed squeak-farts make a sound like Sssssssseeeeeeeeeeeeeery.
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
Many already use their smartphones in the bathroom. Seems that's the next place for Amazon to go.
It was buried in the disclaimer, all ur sex scenes belong 2 us.
Surely the device will have mandatory monthly spyware upgrades which will test if the camera is functional. And if the camera does not provide surveillance data, device will stop working.
Because they'll have photographic evidence of one repeatedly crawling in and out of your back door, right?
--- Dave Eggers, The Circle
-
The new model has an x-ray camera that can see through duct tape.
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Fuck no.
Eat the rich.
Just kidding. Ain't nothing going on in bed 'round these parts.
The Russians have won. They have made the world a cesspool of distrust, greed, fear and hate.
Does everyone who does want to view footage of me as I have nothing to hide, have nothing to hide?
Science advances one funeral at a time- Max Planck
I'm currently living in Berlin.
When people come up with Amazon Echo and its kind, I usually tell them: "You see, some time ago, the state would come into your flat, install some listening devices *at their cost* and even fix whatever damage to the wallpapers they could have made in the process. Nowadays *you* go out and shell out some money to get that."
Those having been in Berlin before 1989 get this strange look on their faces and seem to understand.
Stasi would have *killed* for having a live video stream on top of their listening bugs!
There is a difference between The State and Amazon? Hm. That depends on... circumstances. Very volatile circumstances.
(And no, I'm not particularly picking on Amazon: Google, Facebook, whatever are more of the same).
How stupid would you have to be to buy this? Has nobody read 1984?
That would be so easy to implement... if Amazon weren't interested in spying on you.
Secondly, lots of people on other forums have been saying "but you have a camera spying on you already in your bedroom, it's on your phone", but my phone is always in a neoprene case when I'm not using it - which is 99% of the time, and you can't hear speech clearly when the neoprene cover is on it, covering the microphone, plus I put it in a small cardboard box with my keys and wallet as soon as I get home, so I know where it is.
from here
https://blogs.commons.georgetown.edu/engl-246-fall2011/tag/panopticon/
Donald 'Duck' Dunn: We had a band powerful enough to turn goat piss into gasoline.
I thought these devices were just a way to sneak a microphone in your house.
The Echo G-Spot camera, I mean alarm clock, is a revolutionary idea and will be a really useful addition to my Dot, which wakes me just nicely as it is. We need this new ancient device why again? Oh, yes, so Amazon can give bedroom advice, somewhat like the Echo Look does with wardrobes.
E Proelio Veritas.
"Inside the flat a fruity voice was reading out a list of figures which had something to do with the production of pig-iron. The voice came from an oblong metal plaque like a dulled mirror which formed part of the surface of the right-hand wall. Winston turned a switch and the voice sank somewhat, though the words were still distinguishable. The instrument (the telescreen, it was called) could be dimmed, but there was no way of shutting it off completely.
“He thought of the telescreen with its never-sleeping ear. They could spy upon you night and day, but if you kept your head you could still outwit them. With all their cleverness they had never mastered the secret of finding out what another human being was thinking. . . . Facts, at any rate, could not be kept hidden. They could be tracked down by inquiry, they could be squeezed out of you by torture. But if the object was not to stay alive but to stay human, what difference did it ultimately make? They could not alter your feelings; for that matter you could not alter them yourself, even if you wanted to. They could lay bare in the utmost detail everything that you had done or said or thought; but the inner heart, whose workings were mysterious even to yourself, remained impregnable.”
"It was terribly dangerous to let your thoughts wander when you were in any public place or within range of a telescreen. The smallest thing could give you away. A nervous tic, an unconscious look of anxiety, a habit of muttering to yourself – anything that carried with it the suggestion of abnormality, of having something to hide. In any case, to wear an improper expression on your face (to look incredulous when a victory was announced, for example) was itself a punishable offense. There was even a word for it in Newspeak: facecrime, it was called.
And sure, Amazon is not the NSA, but if you think the NSA is not going to exploit this tech, well then I've got a bridge I can sell you...
... to get a camera in your bedroom.
FTFY.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
People revile at this stuff initially but amazon is just getting people used to it. I have no idea why people would put an always on microphone in their house. Of course why I have back account information on my platform for malware (Windows 10) isn't really very rational either.
And really maybe it's good. Yes people will get hacked and images of them having sex may get on to the internet. But for all but a few celebrities it won't be that big a deal because there is already tons of sex on the internet and it's not like one person will be hacked it will be millions. Yes for the first month it will be novel trying to see your friend having sex, but after a while no one will care.
Am I going to put an always on microphone or camera in my house, not a chance, but that's what I say now.
I can see the purpose of a fashion-camera to judge your outfits. ... but why does an alarm clock need a camera? ... what's their REAL purpose?
I can see the purpose of a video-chat in the kitchen.
To ensure you're awake? There's a snooze button, if you've changed your mind...
So robbers can ensure you're asleep? Do they care?
So others can review your sexual antics? There's already lots of free entertainment there; varying quality.
So you can show off? There's no need for the alarm clock part.
Now I'm curious
Shoot, I already have tape over my laptop camera, have it disabled in the device manager. And now they want to introduce a camera in your bedroom? Oh a hacker FIELD DAY!
No.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
That camera in the bedroom is a good way to pay it forward for all those who consume free online porn. It's about time people start contributing back.
Let's not forget who Amazon's clients are. Murderers, blackmailers, terrorist trainers.
It's not the Stasi, it's their contractor doing the job.
Satire pieces are getting harder to write because reality overtakes them sooner than not. This was written in May 22...
https://medium.com/@gurumurthi/the-techno-socio-economic-ramifications-of-the-camera-option-in-amazon-echo-show-a-holistic-5dce676ec0ba
People who are OK with these sorts of devices in their home probably aren't bothered by the addition of cameras, no matter where they are placed.
I have security cameras in all but the bathrooms in my house along with some hidden cams that are all continuously recording. Nothing is wrong with cameras if only you have administrative control of them.
Amazon G-spot...erm...E-Spot
https://www.amazon.com/Duck-29...
Seriously though people...after the ZOMG YOUR LAPTOP CAMERA IS SPYING ON YOU Apocalypse (ahem) people put tape or got fancy little sliding doors for their cameras. Why amazon isn't building that into something meant for the bedroom with a camera in it is beyond me...but it's not really THAT hard to fix.
Related: I fully expect these will be hacked and some interesting videos posted. But it won't be the first time cameras have gotten into the bedroom and recording things you don't want seen.
You can get rich if you own a politician, but you have to be rich to buy one in the first place.