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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.
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!
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
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).