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

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

#81

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.

I have been reading Tim Weiner's excellent "Legacy of Ashes", a history of the CIA. Everyone should read it; it won a national book award and is generally well-researched and sourced. What it indicates is that the CIA is essentially a long-running unconstitutional operation, and that every president since WWII has made use of the CIA to conduct covert actions in foreign countries that are entirely illegal, including…

This is exactly what I'm saying. The CIA is not the only secretive and corrupt organization. But the CIA is the only one that has no role--by design--in either law enforcement or legitimate military action. The Army might be secretive, but if you're in the Army, you wear a dog tag and an American flag on your shoulder. If you're in the FBI, you wear a badge and give testimony in court. If you're in the CIA, you illegally enter a foreign country, commit crimes there, and are not bound by laws of war or rule of law.

The CIA essentially operates outside the framework of all laws and doesn't have any sort of international standards. Even war--legalized killing--has the Geneva Conventions, laws of war, etc. The CIA just does whatever it wants, almost always violating the laws and sovereignty of a foreign country while doing so, with no public, legislative approval. What the military is doing in the middle east is secretive and abusive but there is, however broad, an AUMF on the public record saying why we're there. If a solider gets captured in a foreign country, we don't just pretend we didn't send them there. The CIA can just deny that it even operates there forever. That's what I mean by no oversight.

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

#82
post #77
post #73

I've gotten nothing out of my Smart TV that I couldn't have gotten from a Chromecast, or preferably, a laptop hooked up to a TV. And I've lost a lot. My TV is slow. When I try to control the volume, sometimes I have to wait multiple seconds. And things stop working all the time and require a reboot. I hate the damn thing. It even comes with bloatware for some reason, games I'll never play that it insists on updating…

Don't buy it. (Older TVs of excellent quality can be found second hand for very cheap)

Older TVs also use more power (and put out more heat).

You'll eventually find your game consoles, Blu ray players etc no longer function with the TV as it doesn't support whatever the latest HDCP standard is.

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

#83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Torture was the official policy of the government. Oversight wasn't the problem, it wasn't rogue CIA black ops. Don't confuse lack of oversight with policies you don't like.

Torture is illegal under international law, and it is unconstitutional. It cannot be the official policy of the government, which is why they tried so hard to pretend they weren't doing it.

[deleted]

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

#84
post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you know what those other agencies do, and how they're staffed, and which functions they serve, as compared to the CIA? For that matter, how well do you feel you understand the high-level functions of the CIA?

Seeing that your posts throughout this thread whole heartedly defend their practices and ignore mentioning them taking any amount of accountability for their actions, would you care to provide your insights as a means of sharing knowledge with those of us you imply are ignorant regarding the matters of this topic?

This made me go back and re-read, and I could find no place where your parent made even a half-hearted defense of the CIA, never mind a full-throated one. I believe your passion for this topic might be leading you to misinterpret people. That's to your detriment, the comments are insightful.

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

#85
post #73

I've gotten nothing out of my Smart TV that I couldn't have gotten from a Chromecast, or preferably, a laptop hooked up to a TV. And I've lost a lot. My TV is slow. When I try to control the volume, sometimes I have to wait multiple seconds. And things stop working all the time and require a reboot. I hate the damn thing. It even comes with bloatware for some reason, games I'll never play that it insists on updating…

I also hate my Samsung smart tv. On a fresh “turn on”, before I can load any app I have to wait for the tv to “sign in”. This can take up to 20 seconds.

I have a Samsung smart TV and the best thing I ever did was not accept the EULA and never plugged it into the network

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

#86

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.

> they operate with absolutely zero oversight There is extensive oversight of the CIA. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Intelligence_Com... > there[sic] only rule being that they're not supposed to be involved in domestic matters There are extensive rules, law, regulations, and executive orders governing the CIA. Many are listed or referenced in this document. https://www.cia.gov/about-cia/privacy-and-civi…

That "extensive oversight" apparently involves the CIA spying on a Senate committee investigating CIA torture, and the CIA deleting documents in order to hide them from the Senate:

https://thehill.com/policy/technology/213933-cia-admits-to-w...

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

#87
post #73

I've gotten nothing out of my Smart TV that I couldn't have gotten from a Chromecast, or preferably, a laptop hooked up to a TV. And I've lost a lot. My TV is slow. When I try to control the volume, sometimes I have to wait multiple seconds. And things stop working all the time and require a reboot. I hate the damn thing. It even comes with bloatware for some reason, games I'll never play that it insists on updating…

I have resisted the urge to buy a new tv for 11 years. I own the same 48" non-smart Sony I've always had. I have always felt like the grass would be greener if I were to buy one of those 65" LG OLED tvs, but thank you for setting me straight.

This old TV is 5 inches thick, but it turns on in 2 seconds. I hooked an amazon fire tv into one HDMI port. I also have a sonos "connect" hooked up to the audio-out so that I can play my TV audio through my ceiling speakers when I want.

But it's just a display, so I can plug and play the capabilities I want. I can even tell alexa to open up plex while the TV is off and the fire TV must send a signal through the hdmi port because the tv turns on and it loads plex.

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

#88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Torture was the official policy of the government. Oversight wasn't the problem, it wasn't rogue CIA black ops. Don't confuse lack of oversight with policies you don't like.

Torture is illegal under international law, and it is unconstitutional. It cannot be the official policy of the government, which is why they tried so hard to pretend they weren't doing it.

You are talking about how things should have been, not the reality. Reality was that it was explicitly policy, they weren't hiding it, they were rationalizing it. You can read much of it yourself:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torture_Memos

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

#89

I gave a talk in China 5 years warning about this. http://tech.qq.com/a/20140527/035512.htm I asked vendors to make changes to their products, such as planned obsolescence so if the manufacturer goes out of business and a device doesn't hear from the mother ship for awhile, all internet connections are killed for good. Also, to set smart defaults so that even when not configured, it won't allow this behavior. There s…

Funny story on the talk title. I called it Evil Toasters are Coming: The coming IoT Security Apocalypse. But nobody in China owns a toaster, so the metaphor was lost on them. #LocalizeForYourAudienceFolks

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

#90
post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The last big CIA scandal was the Bush torture program, and nobody was indicted over that. They even burned tapes of the interrogations as part of a coverup and saw no consequences for it.

You could see "abolishing" the CIA by name and replacing it with a new agency over the Bush torture program, and the failure to cut through the legal morass erected to protect the authors of the torture program --- a lasting shame for the CIA and the nation --- would certainly justify that. But there's no possibility of abolishing the function of intelligence analysis and clandestine service, nor should you want ther…

> But there's no possibility of abolishing the function of intelligence analysis and clandestine service, nor should you want there to be: net-net, the CIA might in fact prevent more armed conflicts than it contributes to, and in any case no major power will ever unilaterally disarm.

This is a very interesting perspective. Using this kind of perspective, you can argue for any bad thing, can't you? How can you possibly measure the effectiveness of the CIA?

The alternate perspective is that the CIA are meant to be a tool for the protection of American interests around the world. To create and maintain an international order that is conducive to American interests, and to quash any possibility of Another power rising. Those goals are measurable, and the people working at the CIA probably have figured this out a long time ago and are optimizing for it too.

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