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American Airlines Has Cameras in Their Screens Too

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Re: American Airlines Has Cameras in Their Screens Too

#71

Post by astockwell »

netsharc wrote: post #60

To me this is just a distraction. Yes there's a hardware camera. I will bet some money that they have not been used nefariously by AA or SQ. Some are raging about the non-existant theoretical privacy violation (again, not 100% non-existant, but I will bet money there's no surveillance through this camera), meanwhile we are ignoring actual privacy violations being done by e.g. Facebook or Twitter, or the millions of a…

> Yes there's a hardware camera. I will bet some money that they have not been used nefariously

Talk about the tag line for the past decade.

Re: American Airlines Has Cameras in Their Screens Too

#73

Post by berbec »

jpollock wrote: post #67
post_break wrote: post #57

If you're in a taxi cab the driver will have a camera pointed at them and you, the passenger. You're paying to get transported from A to B. If you're on an airplane you're doing the same thing only paying more and going up in the air. I guess I don't see the issue? Maybe, and I mean maybe if you paid for a plane ticket that had a "private" seat with a door, could this be a gray area.

Taxis have cameras because passengers have a terrible habit of beating up and robbing drivers.

Such history exists in air travel as well.

Re: American Airlines Has Cameras in Their Screens Too

#74

Post by freeflight »

objclxt wrote: post #58
cbhl wrote: post #8

Most of these are just COTS Android tablets. When they reboot the IFE, you sometimes see the Android soft home/menu button on the bottom. It's easy enough to repair, too -- just apply some opaque tape to the camera.

> Most of these are just COTS Android tablets This isn't quite true. They're not off-the-shelf (COTS) Android tablets - the hardware is custom, especially in terms of industrial design (although the chipset is pretty standard). IFE manufacturers aren't going to OEMs and re-purposing commercial tablet designs. You couldn't use off-the-shelf tablets anyway, because they have lithium batteries in them - and whilst the f…

Thank you for the more detailed explanation!

But if this is custom hardware then somebody must have wanted these cameras on there? To what end?

Re: American Airlines Has Cameras in Their Screens Too

#76

Post by imgabe »

everly wrote: post #35
imgabe wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's when you bring your own tablet with some downloaded movies. I mean, yeah, it's conceivable that someone could try that. It is also conceivable that it would fail miserably.

It is also conceivable that it becomes the new normal and we slide further into our dystopian capitalist future.

Sure we can conceive of nearly anything, but it's not like airlines can realistically stop people from bringing their own devices on planes and watching what they want. That's always going to be the alternative if the in-seat entertainment gets too shitty.

Re: American Airlines Has Cameras in Their Screens Too

#77

Post by BoorishBears »

objclxt wrote: post #58
cbhl wrote: post #8

Most of these are just COTS Android tablets. When they reboot the IFE, you sometimes see the Android soft home/menu button on the bottom. It's easy enough to repair, too -- just apply some opaque tape to the camera.

> Most of these are just COTS Android tablets This isn't quite true. They're not off-the-shelf (COTS) Android tablets - the hardware is custom, especially in terms of industrial design (although the chipset is pretty standard). IFE manufacturers aren't going to OEMs and re-purposing commercial tablet designs. You couldn't use off-the-shelf tablets anyway, because they have lithium batteries in them - and whilst the f…

I worked with commercial embedded Android devices and they were literally internal circuit boards for Chinese off-the-shelf consumer Android tablets with the battery ripped out and a metal frame.

The boards still had markings for the tablet parts and even reported themselves as some random consumer tablet you can find on Alibaba over ADB.

Not much of a difference from an end-user perspective

And for those wondering, we also got cameras for "free" depending on the model. It's not that we needed a camera, but some screen sizes already came with a camera embedded in the screen and their pricing was not out of line with the ones that didn't have cameras so we'd get them for other reasons.

Re: American Airlines Has Cameras in Their Screens Too

#78

Post by freeflight »

bearcobra wrote: post #28

Given the state of surveillance at airports already, I'm honestly kind of surprised the cameras aren't active & recording the whole time to try to "detect threats"

No worries, I'm sure we will still be alive to see that happen. Ain't living in the future just wonderful?

Re: American Airlines Has Cameras in Their Screens Too

#79

Post by derekdahmer »

Most airplanes have built-in CCTV cameras whose explicit purpose is to record everyone in the cabin for the entire flight. So do MUNI buses.

Instead people are raising the issue of a stock camera that's obviously not being used to record. There would be no way to keep that a secret, everything in an airplane has to be FAA approved.

Re: American Airlines Has Cameras in Their Screens Too

#80

Post by jackhack »

netsharc wrote: post #60

To me this is just a distraction. Yes there's a hardware camera. I will bet some money that they have not been used nefariously by AA or SQ. Some are raging about the non-existant theoretical privacy violation (again, not 100% non-existant, but I will bet money there's no surveillance through this camera), meanwhile we are ignoring actual privacy violations being done by e.g. Facebook or Twitter, or the millions of a…

>>I will bet some money that they have not been used nefariously by AA or SQ.

not yet

Given the last 20 years of bad behavior from tech companies overall, and the steady erosion of privacy in nearly all quarters, I question your confidence and must ask "based on what?"

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