On Sat, 01 May 2021 09:28:04 +0200 deloptes <delop...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Joe wrote: > > > I know someone who started to be shown online adverts that could > > only have been based on a sound-wave conversation within the > > hearing of his smartphone. I don't know about other similar claims, > > but I trust his. > > > > Are you saying that you don't believe anyone could be that naughty? > > Go look up 'superfish' and 'lenovo' if you're not aware of the > > incident, and that was years ago. I don't believe that advertisers > > consider any kind of non-lethal behaviour to be unethical. > > People can state anything, but it is not necessary true. > > However if you have enabled some kind of assistant like Alexa, Siri or > whatever they are called, it could be that they are indeed spying on > you. Again to make such a statement means you need to provide > evidence. > > Some state their brainwaves are being influenced by whatever (video, > tv, wireless) It could be true, but there is no evidence and the > probability of this being true is very low. At the moment, yes. But there are regular announcements of brain wave measurements being used by e.g. disabled people to allow some control of things. Do you doubt for a moment that researchers around the world are studying brain waves with a view to at least surveillance of thoughts, if not control, of for weaponry? > > I am writing this and asking you to start checking facts and stop > believing. > Facts have become extremely difficult to come by. Almost every potential supplier of 'facts' has his own agenda and cannot be trusted to be honest. Even universities, which used to carry out research just for the sake of it (e.g. Faraday, Davy etc.) are now mostly sponsored by businesses and cannot be trusted to be unbiased. Everything has been made political, and there is nobody who does not have their own political beliefs and agendas. We users and writers of free software certainly do. I work on the basis that if something underhanded and unethical can be done and can provide some political or financial return, it *will* be done until it is discovered and measures are put in place to prevent it happening, if indeed that ever occurs. Manufacturers *have* been caught eavesdropping on people in their homes, and said that these occasions were 'accidental', or for quality control purposes, or some such. Some even admit to targeting advertising: https://www.techwalls.com/samsung-smart-tv-eavesdropping-company-admits/ 'Here’s what Samsung says to warn you, at least: “Please 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.”' Such manufacturers say that voice facilities can be turned off to prevent this, but whose word do we have to take that it is true? Remember when Google StreetView camera vehicles were found to be collecting personal wifi SSDs and anything available that was unencrypted as they drove around? https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2010/may/15/google-admits-storing-private-data Naturally, there were good, honest reasons for doing that, but Google would have looked more ethical if it had announced in advance that it would be doing it, instead of hiding it until it was discovered. Remember when the shiny new Windows 95 was found to be accumulating in a file the names of web sites visited? That was a very crude and unsophisticated way of spying, a quarter of a century ago, but it brought to the public's attention the fact that such spying was now possible. Even Windows 95 was just too large to disassemble and audit, and an installation was by today's standards a drop in the ocean at 25MB. Windows now occupies tens of gigabytes, and even a large Linux installation can be several GB in size. > This is not religion. There is nothing 'religious' about assuming that many private businesses will take every opportunity to make money from you in ways that you would not permit if you were given the choice. What is the purpose of 'free' social media, after all? What about the written guarantee cards provided with products since the early twentieth century, to be returned to obtain some small additional benefit? What were they if not the gathering of low-level purchasing information to assist future marketing? We *know* that's the kind of thing businesses do. We should expect them to use all possibly technological assistance to do it more and better. And we can certainly expect our rulers to spy on us whenever possible. -- Joe
