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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.
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.
Won't someone PLEASE think of the NSA agents that have to see and hear all of that?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
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.
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!
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
My room is the eSpot
Call me Mr Flintstone, I can make your bed rock
--- Dave Eggers, The Circle
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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.
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).
A cell phone is not typically put in a place where it can get a good picture of anything. If in a pocket the cell phone won't see much. If on a flat surface, like a bedside table or bathroom vanity, the camera is going to be facing up into the ceiling or down into the surface. I know that there are people that prop up a cell phone so that it can be used as an alarm clock or to stream video but this is not typical behavior.
The Echo Spot will be a target for getting video of bedrooms because it's primary function requires that it be place in a manner to get a good picture of people. A cell phone might be placed in a drawer at night, or left in another room, or whatever. Certainly a cell phone has the possibility for privacy invasions but this is something new.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
"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...
Fucksake learn to spell! It's their network, which is over there in that country.
There are three kinds of falsehood: the first is a 'fib,' the second is a downright lie, and the third is statistics.