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We already knew this was happening at least a decade ago when people realized why Facebook and Instagram needed unrestricted microphone permissions.
Some random company claiming this capability without any further evidence should probably be treated with some level of scrutiny.
Why?
What about modern capitalism makes you optimistic. I know for a fact this is happening. I bought a pair of Bose earbuds—I was pretty excited about them but they were defective. The app they tried to get me to download required me to sign away permission to “map” my head movements, intercept any sound coming through what I actively play through the headphones…AND “passively record any sound around you.”
And when I saw that shit, I got right the fuck out of there—even though seeing that shit required me to click through three sub menus and entirely different legal documents, all of which I would’ve agreed to like every other privacy policy: absentmindedly.
After getting right the fuck out of there, I went on their website to contact customer service about the defect. So I opened an SMS chat with customer service—where I was told “replying to this chat is tacit agreement to our CUSTOMER SERVICE PRIVACY POLICY,” which I opened. And initially I was fine because it seemed like it was a different policy just allowing them to record the conversation “for training purposes.” Until I clicked through one, two, three and now FOUR sub menus to find I WOULD’VE AGREED TO THE SAME FUCKING PRIVACY POLICY.
So I fucking called Bose. I wanted to know if I could use these headphones without ever agreeing to the privacy policy. But of course customer service couldn’t even conceive of my question. I asked to get transferred to the legal dept.
Lol of course not. What the fuck was I thinking.
So fuck them, I returned those fuckers as fast as I could.
How often are you digging into sub pages and cited clauses of the privacy policies you’re agreeing to on a day-to-day basis? Because I will tell you, they were making me sign away the right to ALL a of that information, and their specific info on how they were using it (a different sub-contract) was pretty lax on who they could share it with.
I fully believe this has been happening WAY longer than just recently. Capitalism is trading on our data in the most invasive ways imaginable. The spying and capabilities have reached dystopian levels. How long ago did those CIA leaks come out about smart TVs being used to eavesdrop? That was like 2014. Ten goddamn years ago.
Why?
Hitchens’s razor, for one. Something sounding plausible just because late stage capitalism is an ever-growing cancerous beast doesn’t mean anything for veracity and objective truth.
It’s very much the same as the idea that crystals can heal you and cure you of cancer, psychics exist and exhibit quantum telepathy, and doctors are lying to you to scam you of your hard earned money and you should instead use Vitamin C to cure COVID-19. Does that all sound stupid to you? If it does, just know your same arguments are being used to persuade other less fortunate folks into buying crystals, tarot cards, and Vitamin C pills in the hopes of improving their lives.
All of these things are sold to these people under the pretense that capitalism is lying to you, governments are lying to you, big pharma is lying to you, and they’re all colluding to steal your identity, personal information, and scam you of your money.
The ability to reason using empirical evidence, and not what makes us feel good or bad inside, is what allows our society to even function in the first place.
But isn’t that just some other logical fallacy? I don’t have anything to cite, but a lot of shit is being sold to people under the pretense of religion. It doesn’t discredit the value it brings religious people. Or the people that abuse faith to swindle poor people out of their money—what’s it called? Investment Christianity or some shit? The whole “tithing brings you closer to god” thing where those incredibly wealthy televangelists are seeing the opportunity of “you just have to have faith/not having faith in me is spitting in gods eye” and abusing it. Do televangelists discredit all religion?
I mean, I’m an atheist myself, but I’ve read studies from sociologists saying the population’s increasing loss of faith does have negative effects on overall contentedness and hopefulness and community. Saying, “well televangelists exist, so just know your faith in god is being used to swindle poor people.” You can’t discredit everything having to do with a concept by finding the people taking advantage of it. People find a way to take advantage of every single thing.
I can’t discredit the concept of using phones because the concept of calling someone is being abused to steal old people’s personal info.
And, I mean, what lines are we even drawing here? It’s WELL established that data miners, data trading, invasive permissions signed away in privacy policies for the purpose of packaging and reselling, invasive domestic spying programs…these things all exist and have existed for a long time. My point is…I’m against it? I’m not drawing some insane conclusion about some conspiracy—just because there is a nuanced connection between being wary of our data being stolen and the insane conspiracy theories that the unknown aspects of that problem spawn, doesn’t mean that every person concerned with the loss of privacy is responsible for the extreme end of the spectrum.
That’s the problem I have with what you’re saying—you’re acting like there is no nuance. Because there is well-established reason for concern regarding privacy. And jumping to unfounded conclusions is almost a natural response to any new information in the internet age.
COVID denialism, illuminati, etc. is wariness brought to an illogical extreme. The existence of that phenomenon should NOT discredit any reasonable person concerned about privacy.
Remember brexit? Remember trump? Both of those world events came about from a relatively unknown industry that was exposed after the fact. And those invasive data profiling businesses didn’t go under. They changed their names.
The Edward Snowden revelations were over a decade ago. I’d argue that assuming there is no cause for concern is beyond naive.
And you’re likening crystals and telepathy to “doctors have a profit motive?” Sure, there is an illogical extreme to the information that big pharmaceutical companies have a stranglehold on the medical field and corrupt treatment by prioritizing profits—look at the opioid crisis, look at the entire concept of pharmaceutical reps and commercials for prescription drugs.
These things alone are the concern. Just because they can and do breed extreme ideas with no basis in reality doesn’t justify discrediting the concept itself.
I get it, unfounded conclusions are generally disagreeable. But “our privacy is disappearing” isn’t an unfounded conclusion. I’m saying I’ve read the privacy policy that was getting me to sign away every scrap of privacy the limits of the product could’ve possibly invaded. Conspiracy theorists don’t make that untrue.
“Our privacy is disappearing” is a valid concern.
“Megacorporations are conspiring to harvest advertising data from millions of consumers through the continuous, unadulterated processing of recorded audio, recorded without their consent” is, well, a conspiracy.
There is no physical and empirical evidence that suggests this. I’ve asked multiple times in this post for direct empirical evidence of advertising companies hijacking consumer devices to record you without your consent, explaining why it should be easy and trivial to detect if it were the case. All I’ve gotten so far was moving the goalposts, fear mongering about late-stage capitalism, pre-emptive special pleading, “well the government said it was happening with some other tech (even though we’re not supposed to trust the government)” and anecdotes.
I’ve challenged the objectivity of the anecdotes presented to me, because “my wife and I talked about buying electric blinds in the car and suddenly we got ads for electric blinds” is not scientific. Because I’m interested in the core, objective truth of the situation, not someone’s over-aggrandized and biased interpretation of it.
This is the second time someone has called me “naive.” Critical thinking is not naive: it forms the literal cornerstone of our modern society. To imply otherwise is the same type of dismissive thinking used to perpetuate these conspiracies — from companies listening to your every word, to crystals healing you, to doctors scamming you via cancer treatments.
You are right that there is concern for privacy. When it reaches the point of living in abject anxiety and fear of every electronic device you will ever own in the future because of an irrational and frankly schizotypal belief that they’re all listening to you… that’s simply not healthy for the mind. That is wariness brought to an illogical extreme.
I got over that fear so long ago when I sat down and actually thought about the practicality of the whole thing, and I’m glad that I have a healthier state of mind because of it. Meanwhile, this thinking continues to prevail in the privacy “community” and be parroted by major figureheads and “leaders.”
What this community needs is actual accountability to thoroughly scrutinize and dismantle bullshit beliefs, not fostering even more paranoia. That’s the line I draw.
I mean, I get what you’re saying. I’m not the person that was claiming 100% this without a doubt exists. I was just talking about my experience in nearly signing away the right to allow them to record surreptitiously at any time. I don’t know exactly what they’re looking for. and you’re right, unending recording is absolutely not happening. But signing away the right for them to record however they want in the future is just as bad.
I live alone. If they were recording all the time it’d definitely be one huge, mostly silent file of me sometimes making noises at my cat and then music or tv sounds.it’d be pointless. I’m not claiming they’re recording nonstop. It wasn’t me that said it. But my signing away their right to do so is 100% problematic. They don’t have to be recording all the time FOR it to be problematic. I’m not claiming they’re using unique, multi-word phrases to wake up/initiate recording to sell me blinds.
But how many times have we heard law enforcement has gotten warrantless access to customers’ data brought companies? It doesn’t stop until it’s exposed—and even then I do not doubt that it continues after the public outcry has died with the news cycle. I mean, just this week we heard about pharmacies just handing out medical records whenever asked. The cops have been just acting as private enterprise and are customers in the data-trading market. So they’re warrantlessly accessing all that really weird specific private data. They’re ClearviewAI’s customer for facial recognition data.
It’s not at all illogical to read the privacy policy, see I’m signing away the right to record at any time, look at articles like these, and have cause for concern. I get it, you’re saying we would know immediately if we were being recorded based on empirical evidence in our data usage. But what I’m saying is the stars are aligning in troubling ways. I’m not claiming constant surveillance. I’m saying we are signing away all rights to any privacy, data mining and trading is a massive industry that exists and is abused by law enforcement, law enforcement itself operates in super problematic ways, capitalism has bred vampiric companies hat are extracting as much money as they can from our increasingly free-flowing data.
My concern is broad and overarching. I’m not claiming constant recording. You might be confusing my conversation with another you’ve had ITT. But I’m 100% uncomfortable signing away those rights, and I’m sure we are headed for much worse. I’m inclined to take part in the pearl clutching and fear mongering (yes, I know these two phrases have negative connotations) when articles like this are discussed because we are UNDER-alarmed with the loss of our privacy. So I say we DO get people riled up over this because we’ve let WAY TOO MUCH slide for way too long. We neee to be getting our collective ire up over the loss of privacy, and if we need to use unfounded claims of the POSSIBILITY for them to be doing this AT THE SAME TIME that we’re signing away all rights to privacy, then fine. Set off the fire alarm for the noxious fart that is the unfounded claim in this article.
Because we desperately need to do something.
That’s a fair stance to have. I agree that the general trend of privacy violations across all industries is concerning, and it’s reasonable to extrapolate that it’s going to get worse. At the same time, it’s important to gauge what is presently possible in order for these extrapolations to be reasonable, so we can appropriately prepare for what these advertising corporations would do next.
For example, I think it’s very likely that the government and megacorporations will collude further to harvest as much personal data and metadata in the name of “national security” — see the revelation that the government gag-ordered Google and Apple to keep hush about the harvesting of metadata from push notifications. I don’t think, even with the advancements in AI, that we will have smart speaker and phone companies deploying a dystopian, horrifying solution of mass surveillance to a scale that would make even the CCP blush. Maybe it would be possible within the next 50 years, but not now with how expensive AI software/hardware is right now, and especially not in the past.
In principle, I do agree that riling up people through outrageous claims of privacy violations is a good thing purely to spread the message, but I think the strongest weapon we have for actual change is legal precedent. We need a court to strictly and firmly tell these companies, and companies in the future, and government agencies looking to infringe upon our rights, that harvesting the private, sensitive information of its users without consent is objectively wrong. A court case where the factual basis of the situation is dubious at best (for example, the context of this whole “marketing company is listening to you” claim is confusing and questionable) isn’t going to help us here, because these companies with handsomely-paid lawyers are just going to say “well, that’s not what the situation factually is, it’s <thing that is technically true but we’re saying this to specifically twist things so that the judge/jury believes us instead>.”
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They’ve redirected the page now that it’s getting attention, but here’s the archived version.
I’m very skeptical of their claims, but it’s possible they’ve partnered with some small number of apps so that they can claim that this is technically working.
Fascinated by this. Especially because it seems now (ideally) someone with more time and expertise than me will now have to verify or disprove whether companies really do this.
This is why I generally ensure my phone is configured ahead of time to block ads in most cases. I don’t need this garbage on my device.
As for how they could listen? It’s pretty easy.
By waiting until the phone is completely still and potentially on a charger, it can collect a lot of data. Phones typically live on the nightstand by your bed at night; and could be listening intently when charging.
Similarly it could start listening when it hears extended conversations; simply by listening to the microphone for human speech every x minutes for y minutes. Then it can record snippets; encode them quickly and upload them for processing. This would be thermally undetectable.
Finally it could simply start listening in certain situations; like when it detects other devices (via BT). Then it could simply capture as many small snippets of your conversation as it could.
Aren’t they all already listening always? I mean, how else does it hear you say “Ay yo Siri” otherwise?
the phone’s processor has the wake up word hardcoded, so it’s not like an ad company can add a new one on a whim. and it uses passive listening, so it’s not recording everything you say - I’ve seen it compared to sitting in a class and not paying attention until the teacher says your name.
Have you seen this code though? Every time I hear a statement like that, I have to wonder if you’re all just taking their word for it.
I don’t take their word for it, unless they show me that code and prove that it is the code running on all the devices in use.
Copyright © 2023 Cox Media Group, LLC.
Fucking COX, why am I not surprised a fucking ISP like this garbage is behind it.
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TIL we have too many cox in this world
And people kept telling me I was wrong when I said this.
