Samsung has issued a warning about discussing personal information in front of their new Smart TV. With the TV's voice activation feature, the TV "listens" to what is said, and sends this information to Samsung or a separate third-party.
Samsung's policy explains that the TV is listening for voice commands, but goes on to say 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". In an effort to be transparent, Samsung said in a statement they take their customers' privacy very seriously, and that the TV is only listening when the voice command feature is manually chosen.
The article compared this new Smart TV to the telescreens described in George Orwell's dystopian novel 1984. This is such an accurate analogy. The connotation behind the idea of "privacy" has been completely skewered with the advent of new technology. Surely this, and other examples of corporations/the federal government listening in on our private conversations, is a violation of our Constitutional Rights as Americans? Throughout history, our freedoms have been restricted or altered due to the events of that time period: for example, after the Red Scare free speech was severely restricted in fear of Communism. And today, we are wary of terrorist attacks, so our liberties are altered to provide for our safety and protection. But there HAS to be a limit, or else one day we'll all wake up and be living in a society where no one is allowed to say anything negative about our country in fear of being heard. Golly, I hope my TV didn't hear me say this.
Source: http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-31296188
With modern technology personal privacy is harder and harder to achieve. There needs to be limits to how much personal information a company can take from consumers and what they use that information for.
ReplyDeleteHonestly with all the social media we have today nothing is kept a secret. It is so easy to get private information these days.
ReplyDeleteIt seems as if the government is increasingly suspicious of citizens, I wouldn't be surprised if they took advantage of this new television feature.
ReplyDeleteLauren Kuehmeier, period 2