Samsung’s new line of Smart TVs includes a number of incredible features straight out of 1989’s “Back to the Future II,” including motion control, voice command and web browsing. They also include a 46-page privacy policy explaining how many of those features could be used more like something out of “1984.”
In a recent Salon article, “I’m terrified of my new TV,” contributor Michael Price explains why he’s “scared to turn this thing [his new TV] on,” and why “you’d be, too.”
Price, who serves as a counsel in the Liberty and National Security Program at the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law, explains none of his fears come from speculation or paranoia about some of the TV’s advanced tech (including a voice recognition microphone and facial recognition camera). His causes for concern are spelled out clearly in a 46-page privacy policy that comes with the TV.
“The amount of data this thing collects is staggering,” Price wrote. “It logs where, when, how and for how long you use the TV. It sets tracking cookies and beacons designed to detect ‘when you have viewed particular content or a particular email message.’ It records ‘the apps you use, the websites you visit, and how you interact with content.’ It ignores ‘do-not-track’ requests as a considered matter of policy.”
The voice recognition feature is of particular concern to Price, who quoted the following warning from the policy:
“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.”
“Got that? Don’t say personal or sensitive stuff in front of the TV,” Price said before calling to mind a similar-sounding device from the famous Orwellian dystopia.
“You may not be watching, but the telescreen is listening.”
As Price points out, such “third-party records” like email, phone records, metadata and cloud-stored data have little legal privacy protection. Those categories of data are the most-likely to be swept up by intelligence and law enforcement agencies including the National Security Agency, Central Intelligence Agency and Federal Bureau of Investigation, all of which have revealed means of accessing varying amounts and types of such data in the past.
“Items of interest will be located, identified, monitored, and remotely controlled through technologies such as radio-frequency identification, sensor networks, tiny embedded servers, and energy harvester,” retired general and ex-CIA head David Petraeus said in 2012 about the potential to spy through smart home appliances connected to “the Internet of things,” according to the report.
“I do not doubt that this data is important to providing customized content and convenience,” Price said. “But it is also incredibly personal, constitutionally protected information that should not be for sale to advertisers and should require a warrant for law enforcement to access.”
Though Price declined to name the manufacturer of his new home entertainment/surveillance device, all of the passages he quotes out of his privacy policy match word-for-word selections out of Samsung’s online privacy policy highlights.
Samsung is, of course, far from the only electronics manufacturer, Internet service/content provider or electronic entertainment producer to engage in such bulk user-data gathering practices. Microsoft’s Xbox One video game console and Xbox Live online gaming platform collect troves of user data used in everything from targeted retail advertising to political ads. Google and Facebook are innovating new ways of tracking user data for targeted ads that go from computers and mobiles all the way into the physical realm, and every iteration of Google’s popular Android smartphone OS sweeps up more information than the version before.
Indeed, Samsung may only be playing catch-up compared to the rest of the industry– they’re just the first to put it blatantly in your living room accompanied by a book explaining all the ways it can spy on you, without fear of scaring away the majority of customers only interested in inches.
“In the meantime,” Price wrote, “I’ll be in the market for a new tinfoil hat and cone of silence.”