The potential privacy intrusion of voice-activated services by both business and governments is massive. Samsung, which makes a series of Internet connected “Smart” TVs, has issued a supplementary privacy policy which warns users not to disclose sensitive information in front of their “Smart” TVs.

Here’s the relevant section on voice recognition:

You can control your SmartTV, and use many of its features, with voice commands. If you enable Voice Recognition, you can interact with your Smart TV using your voice. To provide you the Voice Recognition feature, some voice commands may be transmitted (along with information about your device, including device identifiers) to a third-party service that converts speech to text or to the extent necessary to provide the Voice Recognition features to you. In addition, Samsung may collect and your device may capture voice commands and associated texts so that we can provide you with Voice Recognition features and evaluate and improve the features. Please be aware that if your spoken words include personal or other sensitive information, that information will be among the data captured and transmitted to a third party through your use of Voice Recognition.

Left: Samsung SmartTV privacy policy, warning users not to discuss personal info in front of their TV

Right: 1984 pic.twitter.com/osywjYKV3W — Parker Higgins (@xor) February 8, 2015

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I would assume that this “bug” is true of any television or device capable of voice recognition.

What do you think about Smart TV’s that capture your conversations and sensitive information? Do you think this technology might be abused by government to establish a “1984” type of random surveillance?





