They're Watching You...

[deicer]

Say Cheese: Some airliners have cameras on seat back screens

Now there is one more place where cameras could start watching you – from 30,000 feet.

Newer seat-back entertainment systems on some airplanes operated by American Airlines and Singapore Airlines have cameras, and it’s likely they are also on planes used by other carriers.

American and Singapore both said Friday that they have never activated the cameras and have no plans to use them.

However, companies that make the entertainment systems are installing cameras to offer future options such as seat-to-seat video conferencing, according to an American Airlines spokesman.

A passenger on a Singapore flight posted a photo of the seat-back display last week, and the tweet was shared several hundred times and drew media notice. Buzzfeed first reported that the cameras are also on some American planes.

The airlines stressed that they didn’t add the cameras – manufacturers embedded them in the entertainment systems. American’s systems are made by Panasonic, while Singapore uses Panasonic and Thales, according to airline representatives. Neither Panasonic nor Thales responded immediately for comment.

As they shrink, cameras are being built into more devices, including laptops and smartphones. The presence of cameras in aircraft entertainment systems was known in aviation circles at least two years ago, although not among the travelling public.

Seth Miller, a journalist who wrote about the issue in 2017, thinks that equipment makers didn’t consider the privacy implications. There were already cameras on planes – although not so intrusive – and the companies assumed that passengers would trade their images for convenience, as they do with facial-recognition technology at immigration checkpoints, he said.

“Now they’re facing blowback from a small but vocal group questioning the value of the system that isn’t even active,” Miller said.

American Airlines spokesman Ross Feinstein said cameras are in “premium economy” seats on 82 Boeing 777 and Airbus A330-200 jets. American has nearly 1,000 planes.

“Cameras are a standard feature on many in-flight entertainment systems used by multiple airlines,” he said.

Singapore spokesman James Boyd said cameras are on 84 Airbus A350s, Airbus A380s and Boeing 777s and 787s. The carrier has 117 planes.

While the airlines say they have no plans to use the cameras, a Twitter user named Vitaly Kamluk, who snapped the photo of the camera on his Singapore flight, suggested that just to be sure the carriers should slap stickers over the lenses.

“The cameras are probably not used now,” he tweeted. “But if they are wired, operational, bundled with mic, it’s a matter of one smart hack to use them on 84+ aircrafts and spy on passengers".

[conehead]

This could be used to add to the database for facial recognition.

[boestar]

the companies that make these in seat entertainment systems leverage from other systems.  It is cheaper to take a screen that is already in production that may have a camera built in for its originally intended purpose and just keep producing them.  This save re jigging an entire production line just to make the same screen without a camera.  

People read far too much into these things.  This is just like you car already having the wiring for all the options you DIDN'T buy.  It cheaper to manufacture one harness than several.

 

[conehead]

I’d still put some chewing gum over the lens. 

[deicer]

11 hours ago, boestar said:

the companies that make these in seat entertainment systems leverage from other systems.  It is cheaper to take a screen that is already in production that may have a camera built in for its originally intended purpose and just keep producing them.  This save re jigging an entire production line just to make the same screen without a camera.  

People read far too much into these things.  This is just like you car already having the wiring for all the options you DIDN'T buy.  It cheaper to manufacture one harness than several.

 

Good Morning Boestar.

While I agree with your point about making standard items, I think it is done on purpose.  Cheaper to produce, yet they all can do the same things.  If it's there, they will use it.

Here's an article that proves the point using cellphones.  Someone is always listening....

https://www.vice.com/en_ca/article/wjbzzy/your-phone-is-listening-and-its-not-paranoia

A couple years ago, something strange happened. A friend and I were sitting at a bar, iPhones in pockets, discussing our recent trips in Japan and how we’d like to go back. The very next day, we both received pop-up ads on Facebook about cheap return flights to Tokyo. It seemed like just a spooky coincidence, but then everyone seems to have a story about their smartphone listening to them. So is this just paranoia, or are our smartphones actually listening?

According to Dr. Peter Henway—The senior security consultant for cybersecurity firm Asterix, and former lecturer and researcher at Edith Cowan University—the short answer is yes, but perhaps in a way that's not as diabolical as it sounds.

For your smartphone to actually pay attention and record your conversation, there needs to be a trigger, such as when you say “hey Siri” or “okay Google.” In the absence of these triggers, any data you provide is only processed within your own phone. This might not seem a cause for alarm, but any third party applications you have on your phone—like Facebook for example—still have access to this “non-triggered” data. And whether or not they use this data is really up to them.

“From time to time, snippets of audio do go back to [other apps like Facebook’s] servers but there’s no official understanding what the triggers for that are,” explains Peter. “Whether it’s timing or location-based or usage of certain functions, [apps] are certainly pulling those microphone permissions and using those periodically. All the internals of the applications send this data in encrypted form, so it’s very difficult to define the exact trigger.”

He goes on to explain that apps like Facebook or Instagram could have thousands of triggers. An ordinary conversation with a friend about needing a new pair of jeans could be enough to activate it. Although, the key word here is “could,” because although the technology is there, companies like Facebook vehemently deny listening to our conversations.

“Seeing Google are open about it, I would personally assume the other companies are doing the same.” Peter tells me. “Really, there’s no reason they wouldn’t be. It makes good sense from a marketing standpoint, and their end-use agreements and the law both allow it, so I would assume they’re doing it, but there’s no way to be sure.”

With this in mind, I decided to try an experiment. Twice a day for five days, I tried saying a bunch of phrases that could theoretically be used as triggers. Phrases like I’m thinking about going back to uni and I need some cheap shirts for work. Then I carefully monitored the sponsored posts on Facebook for any changes.

The changes came literally overnight. Suddenly I was being told mid-semester courses at various universities, and how certain brands were offering cheap clothing. A private conversation with a friend about how I’d run out of data led to an ad about cheap 20 GB data plans. And although they were all good deals, the whole thing was eye-opening and utterly terrifying.

Peter told me that although no data is guaranteed to be safe for perpetuity, he assured me that in 2018 no company is selling their data directly to advertisers. But as we all know, advertisers don’t need our data for us to see their ads.

“Rather than saying here’s a list of people who followed your demographic, they say Why don’t you give me some money, and I’ll make that demographic or those who are interested in this will see it. If they let that information out into the wild, they’ll lose that exclusive access to it, so they’re going to try to keep it as secret as possible.

Peter went on to say that just because tech companies value our data, it doesn’t keep it safe from governmental agencies. As most tech companies are based in the US, the NSA or perhaps the CIA can potentially have your information disclosed to them, whether it’s legal in your home country or not.

So yes, our phones are listening to us and anything we say around our phones could potentially be used against us. But, according to Peter at least, it’s not something most people should be scared of.

Because unless you’re a journalist, a lawyer, or have some kind of role with sensitive information, the access of your data is only really going to advertisers. If you’re like everyone else, living a really normal life, and talking to your friends about flying to Japan, then it’s really not that different to advertisers looking at your browsing history.

“It’s just an extension from what advertising used to be on television,” says Peter. Only instead of prime time audiences, they’re now tracking web-browsing habits. It’s not ideal, but I don’t think it poses an immediate threat to most people.”

 

[deicer]

It's everywhere, watch the video about phones.....

http://fortune.com/2019/02/20/google-nest-secure-microphone

If you bought into Google’s Nest Secure home security and alarm system, you probably won’t have realized until this month that the system’s devices contain hidden microphones. That’s because Google forgot to tell you.

A couple weeks ago, Google informed Nest Secure customers that they could use the device to access Google Assistant, allowing them to do things like asking about the weather. That means Nest Secure features a microphone, which was not on the device’s published specs.

The surprise did not go un-noted at the time, but it was only on Tuesday that Google said it has messed up, in response to a query from Business Insider.

“The on-device microphone was never intended to be a secret and should have been listed in the tech specs. That was an error on our part,” the Nest team said in a statement.

The statement added that “the microphone has never been on and is only activated when users specifically enable the option.” It was installed in the devices in order to support future features “such as the ability to detect broken glass.”

Google certainly did make an error here, given that the company has a history of privacy violations, and a lot of people are rightly nervous about having Internet-connected microphones around their homes. Amazon’s Alexa has suffered repeated security lapses, with researchers figuring out how to turn it into a spying device and Amazon itself accidentally sending hundreds of voice recordings by one user to another user. Mic-equipped connected toys are so notoriously insecure that governments have ordered their destruction.

[boestar]

Yes your phone is always listening.  Generally it is listening for a key word at least that was the original intent.  for example on an iphone when you say "HEY SIRI" she will respond.  This is the big indicator that your phone is listening.  How did you think that worked?

Now Siri and other app developers (not exclusive to apple by the way but I am an apple guy) while listening for that "Hey Siri" also listen for other things, mainly key words, and store those locally on the device.  When you start Facebook for example it looks at that keyword list that the phone "recorded" and seeks to pull ads based on those keywords.

The non nefarious purpose is to provide a user experience that displays the things that YOU are interested in and sell you stuff.  The nefarious purpose is that I can write an app that would listen for specific keywords that may have a malicious intent.

The whole thing is a case of good intentions (if you call selling me stuff good intentions) turned bad.