This is completely unacceptable. We have reached the point where you can purchase a television for your own home, pay for the television with your own money, put it in your living room, and discover that the damn thing may be capable of collecting information about you, your network, the devices around you, and what you are watching. An investigation by Gamers Nexus, Level1Techs, and independent security researchers found LG televisions scanning local networks for phones, smartwatches, computers, and other devices, collecting information about nearby Wi-Fi networks, location and IP information, and using Automatic Content Recognition to identify what appears on the television, including content coming through HDMI. Researchers also reported finding evidence of microphone audio being captured while a television was in standby and stored locally while offline.

LG acknowledges that its televisions can scan for compatible devices on the same network, describing this as ordinary smart-TV functionality, and says its ACR advertising feature is opt-in. Researchers nevertheless demonstrated just how much information modern televisions are technically capable of seeing around the household. LG Ad Solutions boasts of reaching hundreds of millions of “addressable secondary devices,” and LG advertising executives have used phrases such as “we own the glass” when describing the company’s relationship with the television screen. Excuse me? You sold me the glass. YOU DO NOT OWN IT AFTER I BUY IT. That mentality is precisely the problem with the modern technology industry. You think you are purchasing a product. Increasingly, corporations look at the product as a permanent doorway into your life.

This becomes infinitely more dangerous when government enters the equation. Data collected for advertising today can become enormously valuable to government tomorrow. We have already seen government agencies purchase commercially available information rather than obtain it through the traditional warrant process. We have seen police departments construct enormous searchable networks of license-plate cameras. We have watched the line between corporate data collection and government surveillance become thinner and thinner. The government does not need to install a microphone in every living room if citizens voluntarily purchase internet-connected microphones themselves.

That is why the argument “I have nothing to hide” is so incredibly foolish. Privacy is not about hiding criminal behavior. Privacy means government and corporations have no inherent right to know everything about you. What books you read, where you drive, who visits your home, what you watch, what websites you visit, what political programs you consume, and what you say inside your own living room are nobody’s damn business.

PLEASE see the entire article here (4 minute read)…

“Data collected for advertising today can become enormously valuable to government tomorrow.“

Read that again. As we all know, or at least suspect, the likelihood that President Trump will maintain the majority in the house and senate after this election is exceedingly small because so many people have decided we cannot vote our way out of this mess. That may or may not be true. What IS true is that WHEN the communists finally secure total control of our government, the above statements become etched in stone.

You need to consider what is currently spying on you:

1. Your damned “smart” phone.
2. Your TV.
3. Your security system.
4. Your vehicle, if newer. But hey, it sure is shiny.
5. Facebook (but I just use it to keep in touch with my grandchildren).
6. Twitter. Safer, for now, but not for long.
7. Windows operating system. Oh, Apple too.
8. Flock cameras (yeah, President Trump sure seems to like these… so horribly disappointed).
9. Amazon Echo and Google Home.
10. Baby monitors.

Don’t forget internet-connected appliances such as refrigerators, thermostats, and smart light bulbs collect data on your daily routines, usage patterns, and even room occupancy, while laptops and smartphones possess webcams and sensors that can be remotely accessed by malware or exploited by data-hungry apps to track location and behavior.

But hey, you’ve got nothing to hide, so why should you care?

Hammers Thor