Support NeoGAF

[Gestault]

They wanted to do it
Microsoft are the most eager to help them to do it
they have the ability, desire and support to do it

and you guys think it's a leap?

What do you think is Microsoft's motivation to justify the "desire" in your rationale?

What you wrote just repeated the same idea; that they "wanted" to do it, that they were "eager" to do it, and with the "desire" to do it, and everything else was just that they have the ability to transmit their data elsewhere (which you also redundantly described as "ability" and "support to do it"). I can think of several reasons it would be undesirable, in terms of their business operations. The capacity to do something isn't the same thing as having done it, and the source in this OP doesn't make the claim that it happened. So yes, it is a leap.

 

[IISANDERII]

1984

Every time an article like this appears, I can't help but think how brilliant Orwell was, predicting this in the 1940's. In the book it's never detailed how the telescreens came to be in each person's home but I'd always assumed that they forced it on you. But truth out flanks fiction and the reality is that we not only took it in willingly, but we paid $500 for it ourselves too.

 

[stonesak]

I pity the poor spies who had to work out that stat.

And I don't know why they think it's surprising. Poor, naive GCHQ.

They're probably part of the 7.1%.

 

[Arkage]

I can't help but think of the frog in warming water analogy when reading all these comments claiming sensationalism. These tiny multitude of steps towards the vision of 1984 are consistently rebuffed with claims that complainers are wearing tinfoilhat. Every few years the government can take a progressive step towards a police state and there will always be a crowd claiming it's either a necessary step or not worth worrying about, so long as the step is small enough. Considering all that's been revealed about the multitude that's spied upon we can safely assume that all governments are in the business of spying first and asking questions about legitimacy later. They don't give a shit whether terrorists use Kinect or make bombs over Skype, they will spy on it regardless because their mentality is that more data is always better.

 

[Phades]

The "theory" is that anything that can be used for communication could be used by terrorists if it's not monitored. That they would use something "innocent" like a children's toy (game console) because they are nefarious and evil... But as far as I know, no terrorist organization has been tied to using such methods.

So, they are intercepting all carrier pigeon messages too then right? ><;

But really it does come down to due process. If they have reason to investigate and obtain a court order against a specific individual or location, ok fine. Wide sample sweeps? Not fine. Not just in the invasion of privacy aspect, but the waste of resources and time it represents going through all the crap to maybe find something that could raise a flag, but only to realize it is out of context and not terrorist activity.

Can local governments arrest NSA agents for owning child porn? If they are blanket survelling everyone then surely the NSA has the biggest cache of child porn in the world.

This would be funny.

I pity the poor spies who had to work out that stat.

And I don't know why they think it's surprising. Poor, naive GCHQ.

Welcome to the job meyers. Before we trust you with something more important, I need to have you work out the numbers on something for verification purposes. You see, some politician on the hill wants to know what we are capturing on our video files...

 

[jimi_dini]

I pity the poor spies who had to work out that stat.

And I don't know why they think it's surprising. Poor, naive GCHQ.

Don't worry, GCHQ was really worried about that:

The documents also chronicle GCHQ's sustained struggle to keep the large store of sexually explicit imagery collected by Optic Nerve away from the eyes of its staff

Poor poor asshole spies.

GCHQ did not make any specific attempts to prevent the collection or storage of explicit images, the documents suggest, but did eventually compromise by excluding images in which software had not detected any faces from search results &#8211; a bid to prevent many of the lewd shots being seen by analysts.

Hey terrorists - talk about your terrorist plots while showing 2 people fucking on the cam w/o showing faces. It will get through. Win-Win.

 

[Deleted member 1235]

That's a bit of a leap, don't you think?

what? I'm pretty sure Snowden said something along the lines of the US government took the view early on that with regards to surveilence they'd just take 'one of everything on the menu' with regards to data.

I mean, they'd probably have to to actual work to NOT capture kinect data

 

[ringlord]

Protip: if you're sending unencrypted data over the internet (ala Yahoo video chat) then someone might intercept it and look at it.

Is Skype encrypted? I would hope so, but don't know. Honestly surprised that Yahoo Messenger was not encrypted.

 

[Graphics Horse]

Don't worry, GCHQ was really worried about that:


Poor poor asshole spies.

Hey terrorists - talk about your terrorist plots while showing 2 people fucking on the cam w/o showing faces. It will get through. Win-Win.

:lol only if you use sign language, I assume they still kept the audio (of people fucking)

 

[gamechanger87]

So anything that is transmitted over the internet may be monitored, backdoor or not because they can just tap into the trunk line.

Why don't people understand this?

Another question or two:

1. How many people have tape over their webcams to prevent potential spying?
2. How many people use cell phones, land lines, email or traditional mail for communication ? Do you think anything is safe?

Someone is trying to bring this back to Kinect, when in reality they can all just tap into any voice communications on any system. This stuff is getting fairly tiring.

 

[RotBot]

What do you think is Microsoft's motivation to justify the "desire" in your rationale?

What you wrote just repeated the same idea; that they "wanted" to do it, that they were "eager" to do it, and with the "desire" to do it, and everything else was just that they have the ability to transmit their data elsewhere (which you also redundantly described as "ability" and "support to do it"). I can think of several reasons it would be undesirable, in terms of their business operations. The capacity to do something isn't the same thing as having done it, and the source in this OP doesn't make the claim that it happened. So yes, it is a leap.

Exactly. Business aren't usually eager to spend money and resources to handle government requests that do not benefit their business interests, especially when even the possibility of such requests already spreads fear to potential customers who now don't want your product.

 

[Elfforkusu]

MS works way too closely with the three letter orgs for kinect to not be used for this sort of thing.

But your Xbone in the basement.

 

[Ethranes]

Guys you're all just being paranoid, the government would never tap into a video device on our homes and take images from it.

 

[Goddard]

If anyone is honestly surprised by this news you must be living under a rock (although under a rock is probably the only place they won't find you.) Not that I'm implying that people should just let this slide, mass government surveillance is among the worst crimes a government is capable of commiting towards its own citizens in my opinion, but this news doesn't surprise me in the slightest.

 

[ShapeGSX]

The only time that Kinect on the 360 generates "fairly normal webcam traffic" is when you are using "Video Kinect," the video chat app on the 360. I've never actually used it.

I don't get the feeling that it's exactly popular. Has anyone here used it?

The 360 doesn't really have the reserve power to constantly send video over the internet all the time, if that is what you are actually worried about. Besides, people would notice the data transfer. And if you aren't worried about Kinect constantly sending out video to the feds (since we know it isn't), what is your concern?

 

[gamechanger87]

So it isn't just tin foil hats, huh. They were actually thinking of spying through Kinect.

If its over the internet they can capture it in a data center, encrypted or not. If they need to they may dig it up and try and unencrypt.

Vita has a camera, they can easily monitor and communication on that. They can also monitor any voice chat.

Enough with the console specific tinfoil hats.

 

[klaus]

Protip: if you're sending unencrypted data over the internet (ala Yahoo video chat) then someone might intercept it and look at it.

Is Skype encrypted? I would hope so, but don't know. Honestly surprised that Yahoo Messenger was not encrypted.

Protip2: When the company that created the software resides in the US, it is bound by law to hand out (and decrypt if necessary) data transmitted through its software upon request by the authority.

 

[gamechanger87]

Protip2: When the company that created the software resides in the US, it is bound by law to hand out (and decrypt if necessary) data transmitted through its software upon request by the authority.

My understanding is if an international company wants to do business in the U.S. it must abide by any federal requests in that jurisdiction.

Think of it this way, the FBI investigated the PSN breach because it involved U.S. customers and the same happened in each of the other countries where information was stolen from. Sony complied with this matter and proactively reached out.

 

[Oersted]

Protip: if you're sending unencrypted data over the internet (ala Yahoo video chat) then someone might intercept it and look at it.

Is Skype encrypted? I would hope so, but don't know. Honestly surprised that Yahoo Messenger was not encrypted.

Encryptions don't help much if companies work together with NSA

http://mobile.reuters.com/article/idUSBRE9BJ1C220131220?irpc=932

 

[klaus]

My understanding is if an international company wants to do business in the U.S. it must abide by any federal requests in that jurisdiction.

Yeah, as far as I know it's even enough when data packets are crossing U.S. territory on their way to their destination. The point merely was to illustrate that encrypting traffic with software from an U.S. company (or international company doing business in the U.S. if you will) doesn't guarantee jackshit of security due to federal law (of course the same will hold true for other countries with similar legislation / authorization by athorities).

Edit: Post above nailed it - good luck using RSA encryption

 

[IISANDERII]

Exactly. Business aren't usually eager to spend money and resources to handle government requests that do not benefit their business interests, especially when even the possibility of such requests already spreads fear to potential customers who now don't want your product.

We would be foolish and naive to play innocent until proven guilty; the NSA sure isn't.

 

[Domdev]

Two things are very surprising about this thread:

1. The amount of denial is surprising. Do people seriously still think the NSA is on "our side"? Why do you trust them?

2. The amount of people who are ok with this or just don't care is surprising. Apparently civil liberties and privacy are not important anymore.

Edit:

Here is some interesting discussion https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7312212

 

[spekkeh]

The only time that Kinect on the 360 generates "fairly normal webcam traffic" is when you are using "Video Kinect," the video chat app on the 360. I've never actually used it.

I don't get the feeling that it's exactly popular. Has anyone here used it?

The 360 doesn't really have the reserve power to constantly send video over the internet all the time, if that is what you are actually worried about. Besides, people would notice the data transfer. And if you aren't worried about Kinect constantly sending out video to the feds (since we know it isn't), what is your concern?

Did you actually read the OP? It sent stills of the camera. Heck if they sourced the videos of millions of people they'd crash their own servers. But 30K Jpegs every five minutes, it would get lost in the handshaking of your router.

 

[gamechanger87]

Yeah, as far as I know it's even enough when data packets are crossing U.S. territory on their way to their destination. The point merely was to illustrate that encrypting traffic with software from an U.S. company (or international company doing business in the U.S. if you will) doesn't guarantee jackshit of security due to federal law (of course the same will hold true for other countries with similar legislation / authorization by athorities).

Edit: Post above nailed it - good luck using RSA encryption

Glad you agree

I just get tired of the console war crap about this. Its a much larger issue, but its the world we live in. Nothing has every been safe.

Lots of times threads like these try and interject MS is bad into the argument, when in reality the NSA or GCHQ don't really need their help to get the info.

Regarding encryption, you damn well know that if the NSA/FBI requests something Sony encrypted be unencrypted, they won't hesitate to comply. The amount of heat that could be brought on them far outweighs the benefits.

 

[ironcreed]

I'm sure they love seeing guys sitting in their underwear, farting, eating Doritos and playing games for 10 hour stretches. Must be a wonderful job.

 

[jimi_dini]

Exactly. Business aren't usually eager to spend money and resources to handle government requests that do not benefit their business interests, especially when even the possibility of such requests already spreads fear to potential customers who now don't want your product.

Ah, so NSA + secret court "requests" were public the whole time? And there is a way to not follow secret court "requests" and stay in business? And they knew that they would get caught years later because someone leaked documents?

:lol only if you use sign language, I assume they still kept the audio (of people fucking)

Now I got it - write terrorist plot on paper and hold it up on webcam, while people are fucking. THAT will get through

That's a bit of a leap, don't you think?

Yep. I'm totally sure that end of 2010 NSA noticed that they went way too far and stopped it immediately. Anyone considering that they continued with all of that or even expanded on it after 2010 is a conspiracy terrorist theorist.

btw. doesn't this mean that NSA is a pedophile's dream?

 

[GobFather]

What do you think is Microsoft's motivation to justify the "desire" in your rationale?

What you wrote just repeated the same idea; that they "wanted" to do it, that they were "eager" to do it, and with the "desire" to do it, and everything else was just that they have the ability to transmit their data elsewhere (which you also redundantly described as "ability" and "support to do it"). I can think of several reasons it would be undesirable, in terms of their business operations. The capacity to do something isn't the same thing as having done it, and the source in this OP doesn't make the claim that it happened. So yes, it is a leap.

NO, it is NOT a leap.

1. Yes, there is no evidence that kinect specifically has been used for spying (yet)
2. Yes, the kinect has a potential to be used.
3. Yes, Microsoft along with other companies have given information to the NSA in the past.

Before the "evidence" came out that these companies gave these information to the NSA, they were already doing it. YES? yes. So it's not a LEAP, to consider that it has or may be done in the future.... considering the history. Is it "undesirable" from a business operation? YES, why else were these information kept "secret" until it was leaked? They know it's undesirable, and will keep it hidden as long as possible.

The "desire" has to do with business. Obviously no business, plans on giving information to NSA as their goal for doing business. These companies do it because they 'desire' to collect data for themselves (for various reasons). NSA just comes along and request what these companies were collecting in the first place.

 

[ShapeGSX]

Did you actually read the OP? It sent stills of the camera. Heck if they sourced the videos of millions of people they'd crash their own servers. But 30K Jpegs every five minutes, it would get lost in the handshaking of your router.

So you believe that Kinect is capturing a still image and sending it to Microsoft every five minutes, and the feds are intercepting it?

It is one thing to intercept data that is already being generated and sent over the internet as communication.

That is not what Kinect does.

 

[klaus]

Did you actually read the OP? It sent stills of the camera. Heck if they sourced the videos of millions of people they'd crash their own servers. But 30K Jpegs every five minutes, it would get lost in the handshaking of your router.

Let's assume for a moment that this is feasible and happens / happened already. In that case it surely also happens with the hundreds of millions of smart phones that people carry with them all the time, right?

I just ask because, for some strange reason, whenever this topic surfaces many posters focus solely on the Kinect and conveniently ignore the PSEye, the WiiU Pad, the PS Vita, their laptop cams, their webcams and of course the cameras in their mobile phones. It can't be because this is a gaming site, since every single device mentioned plays games. So is it a) because the Kinect has some eerie similarities to the setup in 1984 or is it b) because M$ surely is evil (edit) or is it even c) people don't want to accept the reality and blame a certain device they don't own in order to feel more comfortable?

 

[MDX]

Bit of a sensationalist thread title considering the content.

So basically GCHQ captured webcam images. To turn that into a ZOMG THE KINECT IS SPYING ON YOU ALL thread seems a little extreme.

No, governments capturing any webcam images is extreme already.

 

[Rogue_Ledr]

I keep hearing about this stuff and wonder WHAT THE HELL is wrong with these guys! Do they have too much time on their hands? What valuable intel do they think they will glean from watching 20-something hipsters scream profanity at their TV screens playing CoD?

 

[Guy.brush]

Still remember the days when the Clinton administration wanted to split Microsoft up into smaller chunks cause they were a monopoly.
In came the Bush administration and suddenly the case was closed, Bush made a speech of how patriotic those corporations are etc...
I wonder...

 

[Domdev]

Let's assume for a moment that this is feasible and happens / happened already. In that case it surely also happens with the hundreds of millions of smart phones that people carry with them all the time, right?

I just ask because, for some strange reason, whenever this topic surfaces many posters focus solely on the Kinect and conveniently ignore the PSEye, the WiiU Pad, the PS Vita, their laptop cams, their webcams and of course the cameras in their mobile phones. It can't be because this is a gaming site, since every single device mentioned plays games. So is it a) because the Kinect has some eerie similarities to the setup in 1984 or is it b) because M$ surely is evil (edit) or is it even c) people don't want to accept the reality and blame a certain device they don't own in order to feel more comfortable?

It's a mix between B and C. Also, the Kinect is amateur compared to cell phones. People like to throw Kinect under the bus and conveniently forgot they are carrying a audio recorder, GPS tracker, and image/video recorder in their pocket.

"The NSA has the ability to know exactly what I say and the exact location I am at while I say it but who cares, the Kinect took pictures of muh junk...Microsoft is evil!"

 

[GobFather]

I keep hearing about this stuff and wonder WHAT THE HELL is wrong with these guys! Do they have too much time on their hands? What valuable intel do they think they will glean from watching 20-something hipsters scream profanity at their TV screens playing CoD?

It's like a surveillance camera, 99.9% of the time, it is recording useless things that happens day to day. But for that 0.1%, it becomes a valuable tool for them.

 

[Oersted]

It's a mix between B and C. Also, the Kinect is amateur compared to cell phones. People like to throw Kinect under the bus and conveniently forgot they are carrying a audio recorder, GPS tracker, and image/video recorder in their pocket.

"The NSA has the ability to know exactly what I say and the exact location I am at while I say it but who cares, the Kinect took pictures of muh junk...Microsoft is evil!"

Deflecting doesn't help us with the issue. If you want to talk about the bigger picture, make a thread.

 

[Ivan A Nguyen]

From what I've seen, the NSA has never seen an opportunity for data collection and responded "That's too far." Does this mean that I will put my shirt back on when I workout infront of my Kinect? Nope, but at some point I wish they'd stop charging us for internet that is never private.

 

[Domdev]

Deflecting doesn't help us with the issue. If you want to talk about the bigger picture, make a thread.

Yes, you are correct. If there is a possibility of the Kinect being used for nefarious purposes, it should be discussed. It doesn't matter if other devices are used as well, the topic is about Kinect and so should the discussion be.

 

[klaus]

Deflecting doesn't help us with the issue.

On the contrary, people need to be aware that they are carrying surveillance cameras (and mics and GPS locators) that can easily be tapped with them all the time.

Or are you seriously implying that avoiding the Kinect (or Microsoft products) will fight the extensive surveillance and data collection in any way?

Edit: Just saw your edit - fair enough, a separate thread would be more appropriate.

 

[Oersted]

It's like a surveillance camera, 99.9% of the time, it is recording useless things that happens day to day. But for that 0.1%, it becomes a valuable tool for them.

Collecting more and more data helps securing their jobs. Keeps the money floating towards them. Helps expanding the surveillance industry. There are no hints that the mass surveillance stopped any terrorist attacks.

 

[GobFather]

It's a mix between B and C. Also, the Kinect is amateur compared to cell phones. People like to throw Kinect under the bus and conveniently forgot they are carrying a audio recorder, GPS tracker, and image/video recorder in their pocket.

"The NSA has the ability to know exactly what I say and the exact location I am at while I say it but who cares, the Kinect took pictures of muh junk...Microsoft is evil!"

Don't downplay Kinect just because there are other devices that can do it 'better' in other aspects. Phones may have many functions that kinect may not have but that's not the point. Kinect doesn't have many roles, but it is GOOD at what it does.

 

[Gangxxter]

It is pretty normal that governments intercept webcam data, including Kinect.

In America maybe, but not here where I live.

 

[Shambles]

You'd have to be pretty naive at this point to not believe that there's a fairly good chance that the kinects et. all are being used to record and store images, video, and audio of you and your home.

 

[klaus]

Don't downplay Kinect just because there are other devices that can do it 'better' in other aspects. Phones may have many functions that kinect may not have but that's not the point. Kinect doesn't have many roles, but it is GOOD at what it does.

It would be interesting to know if somebody has recorded the traffic from Kinect / XBox while not streaming video and compared it to the traffic without Kinect. A widespread gathering of image data through it should be detectable if it exists (of course the XBox will send all kinds of personal usage data (apart from Kinect) back to Microsoft, as most software does - not necessarily for evil purposes, but in most cases for improving the product / identify bugs etc.).

But then again, they might be clever and only use it on certain machines with flagged accounts, making it much harder to spot..

You'd have to be pretty naive at this point to not believe that there's a fairly good chance that the kinects et. all are being used to record and store images, video, and audio of you and your home.

I'm not ruling that possibility out, but the thing is such records have to be stored locally or transmitted. I think it would be really hard to hide that from tech savvy folks if it happened on a global level - remember most of the known spying happens by intercepting data that is sent to the internet anyways (like video streams, skype calls, emails etc.). Actively recording stuff when the user isn't broadcasting is on a different level.

 

[GobFather]

Collecting more and more data helps securing their jobs. Keeps the money floating towards them. Helps expanding the surveillance industry. There are no hints that the mass surveillance stopped any terrorist attacks.

If you are thinking Minority Report style of preventing attacks...No, but it helps understand what happened during the event. This is the current state of surveillance industry: watching things unfold... still valuable.

 

[ironcreed]

You'd have to be pretty naive at this point to not believe that there's a fairly good chance that the kinects et. all are being used to record and store images, video, and audio of you and your home.

Same goes for the PS Eye, your webcam or your smartphone. If they want to watch you, they have plenty of options.

 

[Little Green Yoda]

Jschreier aka Prism. Coincidence?

underappreciated post on GAF

In America maybe, but not here where I live.

I think the big news here is that if your government has the capability to do something like this, they probably are. I'm sure most Brits didn't expect their intelligence division to be spying on ordinary citizens either.

 

[GobFather]

It would be interesting to know if somebody has recorded the traffic from Kinect / XBox while not streaming video and compared it to the traffic without Kinect. A widespread gathering of image data through it should be detectable if it exists (of course the XBox will send all kinds of personal usage data (apart from Kinect) back to Microsoft, as most software does - not necessarily for evil purposes, but in most cases for improving the product / identify bugs etc.).

But then again, they might be clever and only use it on certain machines with flagged accounts, making it much harder to spot..

exactly, people can't grasp the fact that Microsoft goal may not be for evil purposes BUT the informations collected can still be used by government agency(or whoever gets it) to fit their own agendas. So its not necessarily about Microsoft being 'evil' but that this machine can potentially be used for other purposes.

 

[GobFather]

Same goes for the PS Eye, your webcam or your smartphone. If they want to watch you, they have plenty of options.

and kinect is a great option.

 

[Deleted member 13876]

underappreciated post on GAF

1% of people here will get it, but that's okay.

 

[Guy.brush]

and kinect is a great option.

It is about closing in on all the little corners that are left for free living untouched by surveillance.
You can already see the law initiatives to install intelligent GPS tracker/blackboxes into the next generation of cars. In the EU that will probably be mandatory in the next 3 years.
Of course they will sell it as a safety device against accidents to the conservative public.
Cars must have made the spooks nervous. No smartphone used, ability to quickly travel vast distances without proper tracking, CAN'T have that.