Big Brother, 1984 is here.

In all honestly, if you voluntarily put a device that to function must listen to you at all times in your home you have just not at all been paying attention.

Yes, phones are bad enough because you are essentially carrying a listening and tracking device on you at all times.  But for most people that is a requirement.  The Alexa thing is a whole other level of risk.

Something people do not tend to understand (that I am intimately familiar with)  is that at this point, EVERY cloud or internet connected device in your home is sending back telemetry and analytics.  And they do it almost constantly.  So yes, everything is watching you.  That is NOT hyperbole.  It is fact.  Your TVs, Rokus, Phones, printers and even audio receivers are  sending back data.  That is just hardware.  Add in an OS like Windows, all the tracking happening through a web browser, and the DNS traffic your ISP is watching and there is little not known about us.

Now that is bad enough.  But on this level all you have are individual silos of data. When it gets nightmarish (and authoritarian) is when the goverment gets that data, combines the silos and now have a massive digital profile on just about everyone.  And I believe that is currently actually legal. The goverment cannot watch you (We know they do anyway).  But when you click “I Agree” on those user agreements that say they can data mine your activity and resell it to 3rd parties.  Well now the goverment is a 3rd party.

This again, is NOT hyperbole.

https://www.wired.com/story/odni-commercially-available-information-report/

• This reply was modified 1 year ago by Vknid.

A smart person does not need a smart home. If you’re too dense to see how having control over your own lights is worth occasionally walking “all the way” across the room, you kind of deserve what you get.

To be honest, if they push this through as mandatory some day, at least you’ll be able to tell who is worth being friends with based on what houses frequently have their power off.

And this “smart home” does not even go into the subject of security cameras, where you can see on your “smart phone” what is happening at home (and anyone else you got access to the feed).

Baby monitors have been hacked.

Security cameras have been hacked.

Smart door bells/cameras have been hacked.

Smart homes getting hacked?  You bet they will be.

Buys the data? or giving an excuse – asks the various corporation to have over records for so-n-so on national security concerns, etc.