Trepanated
Supreme Member
- Sep 18, 2010
- 1,390
- 5,442
Smart TVs are getting smarter - and Samsung's Smart TVs are now coming with voice control. Which is brilliant. Technology is brilliant.
But they've got themselves in a bit of hot water with their Privacy Policy.
Basically, it says that when the TV is listening to you, it sends the data to a third party for speech-to-text translation. And it also warns 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.
"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."
Now compare that with this extract from George Orwell's 1984 (the book that gave birth to the term 'Big Brother', for the non-readers amongst you):
"Behind Winston's back the voice from the telescreen was still babbling away about pig-iron and the overfulfilment of the Ninth Three-Year Plan. The telescreen received and transmitted simultaneously. Any sound that Winston made, above the level of a very low whisper, would be picked up by it, moreover, so long as he remained within the field of vision which the metal plaque commanded, he could be seen as well as heard. There was of course no way of knowing whether you were being watched at any given moment. How often, or on what system, the Thought Police plugged in on any individual wire was guesswork. It was even conceivable that they watched everybody all the time. But at any rate they could plug in your wire whenever they wanted to. You had to live -- did live, from habit that became instinct -- in the assumption that every sound you made was overheard, and, except in darkness, every movement scrutinized."
Eerily similar?
Here's a link to the news article:
http://gizmodo.com/samsungs-smart-tv-privacy-policy-raises-accusations-of-1684534051
NOTE: No, I don't think Samsung is Big Brother
But they've got themselves in a bit of hot water with their Privacy Policy.
Basically, it says that when the TV is listening to you, it sends the data to a third party for speech-to-text translation. And it also warns 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.
"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."
Now compare that with this extract from George Orwell's 1984 (the book that gave birth to the term 'Big Brother', for the non-readers amongst you):
"Behind Winston's back the voice from the telescreen was still babbling away about pig-iron and the overfulfilment of the Ninth Three-Year Plan. The telescreen received and transmitted simultaneously. Any sound that Winston made, above the level of a very low whisper, would be picked up by it, moreover, so long as he remained within the field of vision which the metal plaque commanded, he could be seen as well as heard. There was of course no way of knowing whether you were being watched at any given moment. How often, or on what system, the Thought Police plugged in on any individual wire was guesswork. It was even conceivable that they watched everybody all the time. But at any rate they could plug in your wire whenever they wanted to. You had to live -- did live, from habit that became instinct -- in the assumption that every sound you made was overheard, and, except in darkness, every movement scrutinized."
Eerily similar?
Here's a link to the news article:
http://gizmodo.com/samsungs-smart-tv-privacy-policy-raises-accusations-of-1684534051
NOTE: No, I don't think Samsung is Big Brother