Why worry about Big Brother?
It's your big Samsung TV that's watching you. Oh, and listening to you.
That seems to be the conclusion from reading the privacy small print offered by the company. (Samsung's motto: TV has never been this smart.)
It concerns the voice-recognition feature, vital for everyone who finds pressing a few ******* on their remote far too tiresome.
The wording, first spotted by the Daily Beast,
first informs you that the company may "capture voice commands and
********** texts so that we can provide you with Voice Recognition
features and evaluate and improve the features."
This is almost
understandable. It's a little like every single customer service call,
supposedly recorded to make your next customer service call far, far
more enjoyable.
However, the following words border on the
numbing: "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."
We are NOT having your mother here this weekend, next weekend or ANY weekend!
I'm pregnant and it's not yours.
The
possibilities curdle in the mind. So much so that I have contacted
Samsung to ask how broad this policy might be and what third parties
might be informed of your personal conversations. (I would have just
shouted at my SmartTV to get comment, but it isn't a Samsung.)
A
Samsung spokeswoman told me: "Samsung takes consumer privacy very
seriously. In all of our Smart TVs we employ industry-standard security
safeguards and practices, including data encryption, to secure
consumers' personal information and prevent unauthorized collection or
use."
But what might be authorized and by whom?
Samsung's
spokeswoman continued: " Should consumers enable the voice recognition
capability, the voice data consists of TV commands, or search sentences,
only. Users can easily recognize if the voice recognition feature is
activated because a microphone icon appears on the screen."
Yes, we must now look for little microphone icons to check whether we're being listened to.
As
for the third parties mentioned in the privacy policy, Samsung
explained it to me like this: "Samsung does not retain voice data or
sell it to third parties. If a consumer consents and uses the voice
recognition feature, voice data is provided to a third party during a
requested voice command search. At that time, the voice data is sent to a
server, which searches for the requested content then returns the
desired content to the TV."
One imagines this is simply one more
small step for mankind toward ultimate electronic envelopment, which
some see as a very good thing.
Your Nest and other devices will,
of course, capture so many of your domestic predilections too. This is
about making the Internet of Things merely one more thing in making your
life easier, lazier and seemingly less private.
Clearly, this
isn't the only option for those intent on a SmartTV. You can disable the
full panoply and stick to a series of already-defined voice commands.
However, this still brings with it stipulations such as "While Samsung
will not collect your spoken word, Samsung may still collect **********
texts and other usage data so that we can evaluate the performance of
the feature and improve it."
Alright, you cry, I'll switch
voice-recognition data off altogether. This will result in "You may
disable Voice Recognition data collection at any time by visiting the
'settings' menu. However, this may prevent you from using all of the
Voice Recognition features."
As Samsung's spokesperson explained
to me: "Voice recognition, which allows the user to control the TV
using voice commands, is a Samsung Smart TV feature, which can be
activated or deactivated by the user. The TV owner can also disconnect
the TV from the Wi-Fi network."
You might imagine that other
SmartTV manufacturers would have similar controls and stipulations. If a
product can listen and record something, it's likely it will.
So I went to Philips SmartTVs and could only find a general privacy notice, with no specific information relating to SmartTVs. LG's privacy policy again is general, with no apparent specific information relating to SmartTVs and their potential.
I have contacted both companies to ask whether there is a more detailed supplement that makes their TVs capabilities clear.
LG was, however, embroiled in a privacy controversy in 2013, when its SmartTVs were accused of knowing too much. The company promised to change its policies.
At the heart of all
this is, of course, trust. The best and only defense against intrusion
from the likes of Google to Samsung is this: "We don't really care about
your private life. We just want your data, so that we can make money
from it."
It's inevitable that the more data that we put out, the
more will be recorded and the more will be known about us by machines
which are in the charge of people.
We have all agreed to this. We click on "I agree" with no thought of consequences, only of our convenience.
It isn't just your TV that will listen and record. Soon, it'll be everything that has a digital connection.
This is our digital bed. We lie in it willingly.