Well if the CIA hack my TV they'll be treated to an evening of me eating pizza, drinking beer and farting occasionally.

Thommo wrote:Am I the only one not surprised that leaving a microphone plugged in, powered and connected to the internet is a possible means of surveillance? I'd be pretty fucking disappointed if the CIA hadn't worked out that could be used to spy on people, to be honest.

Yes. And back in the 90s, I was told that all phone calls were probably recorded. Didn't people used to share street landlines back in the day making it trivial to eavesdrop? I am pretty sure Echelon is a real thing and not something made up by Eidos.

I have to admit I did enjoy the juxtaposition on the news of this story with the one about how facebook weren't using enough screening processes on words and images users were posting there, and how that was allowing the spread of indecent images of children though. I for one am hopelessly ambivalent on whether we're too 1984 or not 1984 enough, and whether indeed pre-digital age analogies are even appropriate at all.

Let us also remember that Facebook is just as gluttonous for private information and that they explicitly seek to profit from it. And Facebook now follow most people everywhere on the internet. It's a price most people are happy to pay.

And if Facebook go south, that information will be sold to the highest bidder. I trust my government more than those evil fucks.

Thommo wrote:Except probably almost all of them aren't hacked. Reality is just much more mundane.

Terrifying as the prospect that the government have hacked my washing machine is, I just do my spin cycles and turn it off (and yeah, if it ever comes out I mixed my colours with my whites, I'm sure I'll be crushed). I make my secret plans to use gunpowder on the houses of parliament later in rooms which don't contain uncovered microphones.

Let's be honest, real totalitarian regimes don't resort to this bullshit, if you want someone murdered just jab them with some polonium or chuck nerve toxin in their face at an airport while wearing a t-shirt saying lol (or just straight up send your troops to annex part of another country while denying it).

PS: I do genuinely love the idea of a CIA washing machine hacking department located somewhere on sublevel B52 of the pentagon enough to want it to be true. I wonder how much effort would be required to literally hack most washing machines in America. That must be a dull job.

I, too, have nothing to hide. I am not important. So I don't care much about my personal privacy. I also have little to say, so I don't care much for my personal speech.

These protections are for other people, not you or I.

Yeah, I'm ambivalent too. On the one hand, individual, unhackable privacy is very important, on the other hand, I don't like the idea of people who are up to no good having it.

Overall, unaccountable spying, with no checks and balances, is..........worrying.

archibald wrote:Yeah, I'm ambivalent too. On the one hand, individual, unhackable privacy is very important, on the other hand, I don't like the idea of people who are up to no good having it.

Overall, unaccountable spying, with no checks and balances, is..........worrying.

I am wilfully naive here. The dark side of the internet is not something I want to know anything about. But is there not an argument that distributors of child porn, snuff videos and military secrets can be brought down with more policing rather than by breaking the internet? I am thinking about more money for sting operations and going after the creators.

VazScep wrote:

archibald wrote:Yeah, I'm ambivalent too. On the one hand, individual, unhackable privacy is very important, on the other hand, I don't like the idea of people who are up to no good having it.

Overall, unaccountable spying, with no checks and balances, is..........worrying.

I am wilfully naive here. The dark side of the internet is not something I want to know anything about. But is there not an argument that distributors of child porn, snuff videos and military secrets can be brought down with more policing rather than by breaking the internet? I am thinking about more money for sting operations and going after the creators.

Horrible story this is, but interesting from the point of view that one 'dark netizen' was exposed by other dark netizens...

Berlin - German police launched a manhunt on Tuesday for a 19-year-old man suspected of stabbing a 9-year-old boy to death and bragging about the murder in an online video.

Police said they were alerted on Monday by people who had viewed the clip on the encrypted darknet, an online space criminals use to trade weapons, drugs and child pornography.
...

Full text at:
http://www.news24.com/World/News/germany-hunts-man-who-bragged-of-child-murder-in-online-video-20170307

VazScep wrote:

archibald wrote:Yeah, I'm ambivalent too. On the one hand, individual, unhackable privacy is very important, on the other hand, I don't like the idea of people who are up to no good having it.

Overall, unaccountable spying, with no checks and balances, is..........worrying.

I am wilfully naive here. The dark side of the internet is not something I want to know anything about. But is there not an argument that distributors of child porn, snuff videos and military secrets can be brought down with more policing rather than by breaking the internet? I am thinking about more money for sting operations and going after the creators.

There is probably an argument for a large number of approaches in this sort of thing, so it's hard to make anything more than general observations as a bystander, but I reckon......if crime goes online then those paid to police it....are surely going to need to go online too. But that isn't to applaud breaking the internet.*

Online/automated policing is possibly cheaper than more/extra 'standard' policing too. What was that futuristic film where the police on the streets were robots and at the end, just as one of them caught our hero, his (the police robot's) program recalled him because he/it had just exceeded a time/cost benefit limit setting?





*Can that be done? Have you seen this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qdjRwpYM-Kw.

First they came for the washing machine, and I did not speak out—
Because I didn't do the laundry.
Then they came for the dishwasher, and I did not speak out—
Because I didn't do the dishes.
Then they came for television, and I did not speak out—
Because I didn't watch TV.
Then they came for my computer—and my computer spoke/testified against me in secret court.

Why the fuck would I want in internet connected washing machine? What possible use would it be? Same goes for internet connected home thermostats, toasters, refrigerators, etc. I do have a "smart" TV that is actually pretty fucking stupid, a couple of cellphones, laptop, and tablet. So I guess if the want to watch me pick my nose and scratch my balls they can. Imagine having that job.

What are the hours?

Lak some people think it is cool to be able to turn on their washing machine from the other side of the world.

laklak wrote:Why the fuck would I want in internet connected washing machine? What possible use would it be? Same goes for internet connected home thermostats, toasters, refrigerators, etc. I do have a "smart" TV that is actually pretty fucking stupid, a couple of cellphones, laptop, and tablet. So I guess if the want to watch me pick my nose and scratch my balls they can. Imagine having that job.

Give a thought, I am sure you can come up with something. Seriously.

If one moved to a house with an internet connected loo, would that be an example of the bio-lens inherited in the cistern?

I use the Phillips Hue system. Mainly to wake me up.

http://www2.meethue.com/en-ca/

Scot Dutchy wrote:Lak some people think it is cool to be able to turn on their washing machine from the other side of the world.

Itd be cool and convenient to start it 90 mins before you're due to get home but I don't think many people would start it halfway across the world unless they want to come home to creased and smelly damp washing sat in their washer.

Which is my point. Like everything else. Some things go just too far.

How about .. since laklak does not seem to be willing ;) .. machine sends data to the other side of the world about, many things, lets say malfunction. With couple of taps on phone screen repair is taken care of. How about scheduling, possible without internet but no tapping on phone, washing outside of peak (electricity cost) hours? How about machine sending data over home network to software analyzing power consumption of household? How about machine ordering detergent?

Thommo wrote:

crank wrote:What makes you think the washing machine is off just because you turned it off? Read the stuff, that's how some of the hacks work.

No, literally none of them work without a microphone or camera and electricity supply (and internet connection).

crank wrote:Of course, we don't live in a totalitarian regime, at least not yet. They have to resort to such tactics because we're not totalitarian. They control the citizens through information control, they want ALL the information they can get, it's their armor and their weapons.

This is wrong. You only believe this because they want you to.

I'm dead serious. You're worried about them, but you need to be worried about them.

Fiwst off, the washing machine thing was half-joke, it's about the ubiquity of embedded systems, and you're surrounded by them. And, have you inspected your washing machine for a microphone? Do you know how small they can be? And, really, you unplug your washing machine when you turn it off? Have you heard about Vizio is turning microphones on on their TVs and collecting data even though the set appears turned off? If some company is doing this, do you think The Company wouldn't?

But, no, I don't believe they are micing my laundry, but that's not the point. That they are seriously going after embedded devices should tell you something. You may be dead serious, but you seem to have no idea about what the intelligence agencies are already doing, and what they already have the capability for, and also seem gullible enough to believe they won't use it on the population at large. I don't have a clue what the 'them's are in your last statement.

crank wrote:Fiwst off, the washing machine thing was half-joke, it's about the ubiquity of embedded systems, and you're surrounded by them.

Pretty much everything I wrote was a joke too.

However, all my electrical devices are plugged into sockets, which have hard power switches and more importantly none of them have microphones, cameras or internet connections, other than my computer, which I'm pretty sure we all already knew was vulnerable to intrusion - this is why we have security software, firewalls and stuff. It's sad, but it's not exactly news.

And the reason I distinguish between what the government can do and what it is doing has nothing to do with gullibility. It's because they are totally different things. They aren't going to be using an exploit for internet connected Samsung TVs on most people for the simple reasons it's not going to work on most people, it's of no benefit to do it to most people and if they get caught they've lost a means of spying on someone they might actually want to spy on.

All the news reports (because I just cannot be arsed to read 8,000 pages of documents or whatever) have explained these as capabilities. So I'll believe that. None of them have described it as the CIA watching millions or tens of millions of Americans, or indeed any extent of it at all that I've heard. So I don't believe that. Simples.

I just bought a washer and dryer, the main thing they have the internet for is troubleshooting if I remember correctly. Not much value added.