Microsoft Kinect Almost a Spy Tool for British Intelligence - Update

[Kargathia]

Ah man, I don't have the words to express my disdain and amusement. Still, while I am here, I suppose I could add webcams built into laptops to the conspiracy theory here (but those aren't always-on).

Just throwing this out there, but there have already been demonstrations on how to turn on your laptop's webcam remotely - without any red warning lights.

That said: I can't help but be curious as to how they'd go about analysing the vast amounts of data. Of course they'd mostly go for automated facial recognition, but at what point do they switch to human analysts? And would they try and automatically filter all those hours fuck-all is happening?

While there's pretty good cause for paranoia, I just can't help but be fascinated by the sheer logistic challenge of sifting through the gigantic reams of data they're collecting.

 

[MrFalconfly]

I can see them having to go through hours and hours of footage of hundreds of thousands of people masturbating... lovely!

For me alone, that's a good 6 weeks worth of non-stop jerking off. Poor guys. Next time, I'll try and entertain them whilst I masturbate. Perhaps I'll wear a funny costume.

That's the thing.

I love how many people think that they're so interesting as to be a target of directed spying. Most of this "data" is just gonna be filed under "Nerd having a wank" anyway.

 

[Scow2]

hell, imagine what could happen if any hacking group had a webcam with a microphone hooked up in your living room, at just how much information they could get from you. That's what GCHQ was going to use it for, and despite what you would like to know, most white hats were black hats at one point, so if a government agent can plug into your kinect, you could expect xXxJT4GxBL4Z3411D4YxOpticz can as well.

xXxJT4GxBL4Z3411D4YxOpticz having access to my personal life scares me a lot less than the Sovereign Imperial Government having access. If xXxJT4GxBL4Z3411D4YxOpticz uses any of the information gained from my life for ill, I can empower myself to take action against him. If it's the government, it's time to bend over and take it because nothing can be done about it.

Weird, pretty sure I was predicting this last year, back when the console was first announced and the scandals started coming to light.

It's funny how the Xbox fanbase repeatedly assured us all that it simply wasn't possible for Microsoft to use their Kinect to spy on people....and yet revelations continue to emerge suggesting that Microsoft was planning on doing exactly that, and was cooperating with the Americans (and now the British) to hand over private video footage of people's houses and daily lives. Heck, those same people are still trying to defend the Xbone's overtly open policy towards helping world governments spy on their citizens, even now, in this very thread! It's hysterical. But I guess that with enough denial, even facts can be disproven, right?

That's why I always respond to people who dismiss the notion of Big Brother by reminding them: "It's not actually paranoia if they really are trying to spy on you. And make no mistake, they are."

Microsoft is NOT cooperating with the governments to enable spying on them/us. The governments are merely going through with it against Microsoft's desires.

 

[Zombie_Moogle]

You mean those pervasive spy agencies considered utilizing the popular new Eye of Sauron everyone wants in their living room?

http://i1.ytimg.com/vi/g33PYjkPy0s/maxresdefault.jpg

Seriously though, this is an incredible violation of liberty & a big reason I decided against an XBone (aside from all the other reasons)

 

[Elementary - Dear Watson]

What I love is the 'special little snowflake' mentality you get from people over this issue... Wikipedia has a figure of just over 6000 people working for GCHQ. How many of those 6000 do you think would be actually assigned to working with that data? I would say 10 max. 10 people looking at a still image (1 image every 5 minutes from the webcams according to the reports) of all the users using that service. Why the hell would they be wasting time looking for average joe sitting in his pants in his living room playing games? No... they want unaverage joe, sitting in his pants in his living room with a meth lab bubbling away in the background, and several kids, including Madeline McCann chained up working at it...

In reality it is a lot more likely that there will be specific indicated targets being monitored, that have been previously identified for criminal activity, and the images would probably be used to see who is linked to known criminals to find criminal networks. That's what would make sense to me... not just writing a profile on all boring people across the country...

 

[FalloutJack]

It's actually surveilance for Sherlock that he took off of Mycroft before MI6 could make use of it.