Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The CIA Spied on People Through Their Smart TVs, Leaked Documents Reveal (2017)

vice.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 191 posts

Re: The CIA Spied on People Through Their Smart TVs, Leaked Documents Reveal (2017)

#21

Post by serf »

IshKebab wrote: post #13
sky_nox wrote: post #3

'Samsung itself is aware of these risks. In its privacy policy, the company warned customers to 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 through your use of Voice Recognition." The language reminded some of the George Orwell classic dystopian novel 1984.'

That quote doesn't show Samsung's thoughts on the risk of hacking at all, and it shouldn't remind anyone of 1984. It's just a statement of how all voice recognition currently works.

>It's just a statement of how all voice recognition currently works.

Amazon has said on numerous occasions that no data transfer occurs without a trigger word hitting the mic -- a feature that was a main point when discussing the safety of having an always-on internet-connected mic in the house.

As for whether or not they're telling the truth, I don't know; but trigger-words have always been a feature that Amazon loved mentioning from a security/privacy standpoint.

Re: The CIA Spied on People Through Their Smart TVs, Leaked Documents Reveal (2017)

#22

Post by derpherpsson »

pinewurst wrote: post #2

(2017)

This does not go away.

That people treat this as news is for me an indication that people simply don't either read the news, or don't remember them.

I hope people maybe remembers now when they read it the 2nd time.. The US surveillance machine needs to stop.

Re: The CIA Spied on People Through Their Smart TVs, Leaked Documents Reveal (2017)

#23

Post by mitchty »

LinuxBender wrote: post #7

And people thought I was weird for dancing by myself in front of my TV. The poor folks at the CIA will never un-see that.

People think i'm weird for never hooking my smart tv up to the network. It works, why does it need to be online?

Re: The CIA Spied on People Through Their Smart TVs, Leaked Documents Reveal (2017)

#24

Post by ohithereyou »

myrandomcomment wrote: post #14
morpheuskafka wrote: post #11

The CIA should be completely abolished. Unlike the FBI, it does not seek to enforce any laws whatsoever; instead, they operate with absolutely zero oversight, there only rule being that they're not supposed to be involved in domestic matters. I wouldn't be surprised if they tag-team with other friendly agencies like MI6 to spy on each other's domestic targets so as not to violate that rule.

Yes, because not having an Intelligence agency is a great idea for national security. You know the LAPD beat a man a few times. We should totally get rid of them also. A rational proposal for over-site and control would be a useful comment.

The CIA is not the only intelligence agency that the US has. Furthermore, most of what the CIA does should be the duty of the State Department.

On a more pedantic point, shutting down the CIA is the ultimate in oversight - you don't have to watch for crimes from an organization that does not exist.

Re: The CIA Spied on People Through Their Smart TVs, Leaked Documents Reveal (2017)

#25

Post by freeflight »

myrandomcomment wrote: post #14
morpheuskafka wrote: post #11

The CIA should be completely abolished. Unlike the FBI, it does not seek to enforce any laws whatsoever; instead, they operate with absolutely zero oversight, there only rule being that they're not supposed to be involved in domestic matters. I wouldn't be surprised if they tag-team with other friendly agencies like MI6 to spy on each other's domestic targets so as not to violate that rule.

Yes, because not having an Intelligence agency is a great idea for national security. You know the LAPD beat a man a few times. We should totally get rid of them also. A rational proposal for over-site and control would be a useful comment.

> Yes, because not having an Intelligence agency is a great idea for national security.

It's not like the CIA is the only intelligence agency the USG has. Without the CIA there'd still be 16 other intelligence agencies left [0].

[0] https://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-17-intelligence-agencie...

Re: The CIA Spied on People Through Their Smart TVs, Leaked Documents Reveal (2017)

#26

Post by penagwin »

serf wrote: post #21
IshKebab wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That quote doesn't show Samsung's thoughts on the risk of hacking at all, and it shouldn't remind anyone of 1984. It's just a statement of how all voice recognition currently works.

>It's just a statement of how all voice recognition currently works. Amazon has said on numerous occasions that no data transfer occurs without a trigger word hitting the mic -- a feature that was a main point when discussing the safety of having an always-on internet-connected mic in the house. As for whether or not they're telling the truth, I don't know; but trigger-words have always been a feature that Amazon lov…

> As for whether or not they're telling the truth, I don't know;

Luckily it's possible to check [0]! Although it gets a bit more complicated and can change, my understanding is that currently most people observe it increase it's network usage after it's trigger phrase, but not at other times (it uses the network for other stuff too, but audio data is typically rather large in comparison).

[0] https://www.iot-tests.org/2017/06/careless-whisper-does-amaz...

[1] 10.1007/s00779-018-1174-x <- Might want to use sci-hub

Re: The CIA Spied on People Through Their Smart TVs, Leaked Documents Reveal (2017)

#27

Post by vernie »

mitchty wrote: post #23
LinuxBender wrote: post #7

And people thought I was weird for dancing by myself in front of my TV. The poor folks at the CIA will never un-see that.

People think i'm weird for never hooking my smart tv up to the network. It works, why does it need to be online?

I guess your definition of "works" differs from theirs.

Re: The CIA Spied on People Through Their Smart TVs, Leaked Documents Reveal (2017)

#28

Post by edejong »

mitchty wrote: post #23
LinuxBender wrote: post #7

And people thought I was weird for dancing by myself in front of my TV. The poor folks at the CIA will never un-see that.

People think i'm weird for never hooking my smart tv up to the network. It works, why does it need to be online?

You are counting on the WiFi module not to be remote hackable?

Re: The CIA Spied on People Through Their Smart TVs, Leaked Documents Reveal (2017)

#30

Post by mulmen »

edejong wrote: post #28
mitchty wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People think i'm weird for never hooking my smart tv up to the network. It works, why does it need to be online?

You are counting on the WiFi module not to be remote hackable?

While that is possible I would consider this to be a case of outrunning your friends rather than the bear.
Post reply on HN