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Miscellaneous See other Miscellaneous Articles Title: Is Your Smart TV a Little Too Smart? Is Your Smart TV a Little Too Smart? Posted on August 4, 2015 by Brad Hoppmann The great George Orwell’s dystopian masterpiece “1984” proves prescient far too frequently these days. From Edward Snowden’s NSA spying revelations, to the “Doublespeak” of the “Patriot Act,” to hacks of our personal data from China — it certainly seems as if Big Brother is watching us all. Yet did you ever think your TV would be spying on you? Orwell predicted just that, via a device he called the “telescreen.” Image credit: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios Here’s the chilling, fear-engendering quote directly from the seminal anti-statist novel: 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. The telescreen wasn’t just for you to watch. It was watching you — all the time. And, if you have a smart TV, you’re pretty close to having a real-life telescreen in your home. *** Earlier this year, online news site The Daily Beast broke a story about a clause in South Korean-firm Samsung’s (SSNLF) Internet-connected smart TV privacy policy that we should probably be very afraid of. Here’s how the Samsung policy reads: Please be aware that if your spoken words include personal or other sensitive information, that information will be among the data captured and transmitted to a third party. Hmmm. Basically, Samsung is telling you it can, and will, harvest any of the conversations picked up over the telescreen — oh, I mean, the smart TV — and send them to a third party. The third party here is a company called Nuance Communications (NUAN), the speech-recognition firm that designed the technology in Apple’s (AAPL) Siri function. Now, if all of this comes as a surprise to you, it really shouldn’t. In today’s constantly connected world of Facebook (FB), Twitter (TWTR), smart TVs, smartphones, Internet webcams, etc., just about everyone is under some sort of surveillance nearly all of the time. The Samsung spying is particularly troublesome, however. Not just because it reminds us of the horrors of “1984,” but because most of us want to feel like we are free to speak our minds inside our own homes without prying eyes sending our data out into “the cloud.” The rash of recent high-profile corporate and government hacks, which have stolen personal data from millions of Americans, proves that no data is ever really safe. Knowing how vulnerable we all are to having our private lives revealed, is it any wonder why the Samsung smart TV spying is troubling to so many? *** To combat what could be the misuse of the Samsung smart TV information collection, California Assemblyman Mike Gatto (D-Los Angeles) authored AB1116. The bill would essentially force smart TV makers to give customers the ability to opt out of features that could spy on their private conversations. Here’s the language straight from AB1116: This bill would prohibit the manufacturer of a connected television and specified third parties from using or selling for an advertising purpose sounds that were collected by a connected television for the purpose of improving the function, operation, or features of the television. The bill actually goes even further, and much to my welcomed surprise, it actually addresses prying government eyes, too: This bill would also prohibit a person from compelling another who offers features that allow for the collection and recording of spoken words through a connected television to build in specific features that allow an investigative or law enforcement officer to monitor communications through that feature, and would limit the liability of manufacturers of connected televisions, as specified. The latest on AB1116 is that as of July 16, the bill is currently being reread and amended in the California State Senate. While this bill does have a narrow focus on smart TVs, it’s easy to extrapolate out and speculate about laws governing other Internet-enabled devices with recording and voice-recognition features. The aforementioned smartphones being the most-logical next target; but then there are also devices such as game consoles, smart watches, smart appliances and our “connected cars.” Poster Comment: "1984" in spades. Post Comment Private Reply Ignore Thread Top • Page Up • Full Thread • Page Down • Bottom/Latest
#1. To: BTP Holdings (#0)
I don't know if they are still available, but several months back, I bought a stupid TV from Amazon. At that time, the Smart TVs were clearly labeled as such. I've not checked it lately as to the labeling. “The most dangerous man to any government is the man who is able to think things out... without regard to the prevailing superstitions and taboos. Almost inevitably he comes to the conclusion that the government he lives under is dishonest, insane, intolerable.” ~ H. L. Mencken
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