Showing posts with label be. Show all posts
Showing posts with label be. Show all posts
Friday, July 29, 2016
Careful what you say Your Samsung TV might be listening
Samsung has come under fire from privacy campaigners after it emerged the company’s new smart TVs are capable of listening to your conversations.
Viewers hoping to take advantage of the voice activation feature have been warned by Samsung not to disclose personal information because voice recordings can be captured and transmitted to unidentified third parties.
Samsung insists it takes consumer privacy seriously, but did not name the third party which translates speech to text.
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, 2015The issue was first highlighted by the Daily Beast, which warned readers not to talk about incriminating matters such as “tax evasion” and “drug use” in front their TV sets.
Hidden away in Samsung’s privacy policy is a single sentence which may change the way you behave in front of your TV: “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.”
The privacy policy goes on to warn: “In addition, Samsung may collect and capture voice commands and associated texts so that we can provide you with Voice Recognition features and evaluate and improve the features.”
The technology is designed to enable viewers to control their TV by using only their voice.
Even viewers who do not activate the voice recognition feature are still at risk of being snooped on, as the machine continues to collect data through its microphones. The only way to stop a Samsung smart TV from eavesdropping on your conversation is to disable voice recognition data collection in the settings menu.
Samsung claims it collects transcribed voice data in order to improve the technology’s features.
An investigation last year by consumer magazine Which? found that smart TVs made by LG, Samsung, Sony, Panasonic, and Toshiba track people’s viewing habits – something consumers agree to when they accept the TV’s terms and conditions.
Users who choose not to accept their TV’s terms and conditions may end up reverting to a not-so-smart television. While Toshiba and LG block internet access and apps, Samsung reportedly stops customers from using the TV at all.
Sony is the only manufacturer which blocks the tracking of television usage without restricting other functions.READ MORE: GCHQ mass surveillance ‘unlawful’ & breach of human rights, court rules
Samsung has responded to the public backlash against its privacy policy, claiming it takes such concerns “very seriously.”
“If a consumer consents and uses the voice recognition feature, voice data is provided to a third party during a requested voice command search. At that time, the voice data is sent to a server, which searches for the requested content then returns the desired content to the TV,” the company said.
References:
- Daily Beast: Your Samsung SmartTV Is Spying on You, Basically
- forbes: Is Your TV Spying On You?
Monday, April 4, 2016
Iceland Finally Confirms 9 Top Bankers To Be Jailed For 46 Years
Iceland has just found 9 of its top bankers guilty of crimes associated with the 2008 economic crash, jailing them for a total of 46 years.
Iceland’s Supreme Court has just announced a guilty verdict for 9 bankers involved in the Kaupthing market manipulation case, which was part of the international financial crisis in 2008 that led to the economic crash. The long court trial had has been running since April last year.
YNW reports;
Kaupthing was a big international bank headquartered in Reykjavik, Iceland. It expanded internationally for years, but collapsed in 2008 under huge debts, crippling the small nation’s economy.
By demanding that bankers be subject to the same laws as the rest of society, Iceland opted for a very different strategy in the wake of the financial crisis to rest of Europe and the US, where banks were fined nominal amounts, and directors and chief executives escaped punishment altogether.
While the US and UK governments provided bail outs and government stakes for their big banks with tax-payers’ money – essentially giving bankers the green light to continue behaving in the same way – Iceland adopted a different approach, declaring it would let the banks go bust, weed out and punish the criminal element at the top of the banks, and protect the savings of the people.
Former director of the bank, Hreiðar Már Sigurðsson, who was found guilty and jailed last year, was also given a six-month extension to his sentence on Thursday.
According to Iceland Monitor, the bankers are found guilty of crimes relating to deceitfully financing share purchases – the bank lent money for the purchase of the shares while using its own shares as collateral for the loans.
They are also found guilty of creating a misleading demand for Kaupthing shares by means of deception and pretence.
These guilty verdicts are just the latest in Iceland’s unprecedented clampdown since the economic crash. Authorities have been pursuing bank bosses, chief executives, civil servants and corporate looters for crimes ranging from insider trading to fraud, money laundering, misleading markets, breach of duties and lying to officials.
Meanwhile the economy that collapsed so spectacularly has rebounded after letting its banks go bust, imposing capital controls and protecting its own citizens rather than the elite bank bosses responsible for the mess.
This determination to hold people to account for actions that caused intense financial misery contrasts strongly with the U.K., the rest of Europe and the US. Yes, fines were imposed on the 20 biggest banks for transgressions such as market manipulation, money-laundering and mis-selling mortgages, but these costs fall on shareholders and, by hampering the banks’ ability to lend, they also punish the rest of society.
Meanwhile the guilty senior bankers, thanks to government bail outs, carry on making enormous profits and collecting their obscene bonuses as though nothing happened.
Last year, the International Monetary Fund declared that Iceland had achieved economic recovery “without compromising its welfare model” or unduly punishing its citizens for crimes committed by its bankers.
Iceland is right to jail it’s bankers – and the US and Europe is wrong to merely slap a few wrists and give the green light to future outrages. You can learn about all the details of how exactly the international banksters robbed the global economy in the documentary below;
Thursday, February 25, 2016
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