10 ms·

The CIA Spied on People Through Their Smart TVs, Leaked Documents Reveal (2017)

381 points by sky_nox 7y ago

pinewurst 7y ago
(2017)
- sctb 7y ago
  Thanks!
  - blech73 7y ago
    Why is it...I unplug EVERYTHING yet red light on until I hit remote again to be off? Nothing is plugged into electrical. No batteries. Covered tv w blanket.
- derpherpsson 7y ago
  This does not go away. That people treat this as news is for me an indication that people simply don't either read the news, or don't remember them. I hope people maybe remembers now when they read it the 2nd time.. The US surveillance machine needs to stop.
java-man 7y ago
related: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20205131 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20205131
sky_nox 7y ago
'Samsung itself is aware of these risks. In its privacy policy, the company warned customers to 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." The language reminded some of the George Orwell classic dystopian novel 1984.'
- IshKebab 7y ago
  That quote doesn't show Samsung's thoughts on the risk of hacking at all, and it shouldn't remind anyone of 1984. It's just a statement of how all voice recognition currently works.
  - serf 7y ago
    >It's just a statement of how all voice recognition currently works. Amazon has said on numerous occasions that no data transfer occurs without a trigger word hitting the mic -- a feature that was a main point when discussing the safety of having an always-on internet-connected mic in the house. As for whether or not they're telling the truth, I don't know; but trigger-words have always been a feature that Amazon loved mentioning from a security/privacy standpoint.
    - penagwin 7y ago
      > As for whether or not they're telling the truth, I don't know; Luckily it's possible to check [0]! Although it gets a bit more complicated and can change, my understanding is that currently most people observe it increase it's network usage after it's trigger phrase, but not at other times (it uses the network for other stuff too, but audio data is typically rather large in comparison). [0] https://www.iot-tests.org/2017/06/careless-whisper-does-amazon-echo-send-data-in-silent-mode/ https://www.iot-tests.org/2017/06/careless-whisper-does-amaz... [1] 10.1007/s00779-018-1174-x <- Might want to use sci-hub
      - celim307 7y ago
        The pessimist in me think that a determined actor could simply capture non-trigger voice data offline, and bundle it with the rest of the traffic whenever the next trigger word occurs. But I am talking out my ass and have in no way verified any of this
        astazangasta 7y ago
        This was my thought too; there doesn't seem to be a way to verify this isn't happening.
devoply 7y ago
Hey wiretap show me my favorite show. Hey wall with ears tell me the weather.
LinuxBender 7y ago
And people thought I was weird for dancing by myself in front of my TV. The poor folks at the CIA will never un-see that.
- tenpies 7y ago
  I like leaving a device playing a number station[1] in front of devices I know can be accessed by government actors. Then I'll say random gibberish when I'm around so that the audio recording does not perfectly match the Youtube source. --- [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aIH7cG3YmIo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aIH7cG3YmIo is a good start
- mitchty 7y ago
  People think i'm weird for never hooking my smart tv up to the network. It works, why does it need to be online?
  - vernie 7y ago
    I guess your definition of "works" differs from theirs.
  - edejong 7y ago
    You are counting on the WiFi module not to be remote hackable?
    - mulmen 7y ago
      While that is possible I would consider this to be a case of outrunning your friends rather than the bear.
      - edejong 7y ago
        So, a neighbor’s compromised wifi router could remotely exploit your smart tv without even configured settings: https://blog.exodusintel.com/2017/07/26/broadpwn/ https://blog.exodusintel.com/2017/07/26/broadpwn/
stcredzero 7y ago
On the Max Headroom TV show, it became illegal for people to turn off their TVs. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Headroom_(TV_series)#Plot https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Headroom_(TV_series)#Plot Would it be outlandish for the tech industry to lobby that Smart TVs and computers be given a 911 style emergency calling system, then for emergency dispatchers to have access to surveillance information, then for such devices to be required to be turned on all the time?
- jetrink 7y ago
  I think that was borrowed from 1984, which was published way back in 1949! “Winston turned a switch and the voice sank somewhat, though the words were still distinguishable. The instrument (the telescreen, it was called) could be dimmed, but there was no way of shutting it off completely. [...] Any sound that Winston made, above the level of a very low whisper, would be picked up by it.”
- pjc50 7y ago
  Like the European "ecall" mandate for cars to automatically call in their GPS position if involved in an accident?
- xvector 7y ago
  I mean it's not like your TV ever truly turns "off", is it? A lot of them power on at least the red/green LED light showing that it's "off" and who knows what else.
  - chopin 7y ago
    I have a hard switch on the AC outlet for exactly this reason.
  - avionicsguy 7y ago
    A TV set never turns off! It is well known in the industry. Standby usually just turns of the LCD, backlight and changes LED colour. Try this: Switch TV to standby then turn on. Time how long this takes. Unplug TV for 30 seconds plug in and then turn on. It will take a while for the TV to boot from cold start. Manufacturers have been doing this since CRTs.
morpheuskafka 7y ago
The CIA should be completely abolished. Unlike the FBI, it does not seek to enforce any laws whatsoever; instead, they operate with absolutely zero oversight, there only rule being that they're not supposed to be involved in domestic matters. I wouldn't be surprised if they tag-team with other friendly agencies like MI6 to spy on each other's domestic targets so as not to violate that rule.
- myrandomcomment 7y ago
  Yes, because not having an Intelligence agency is a great idea for national security. You know the LAPD beat a man a few times. We should totally get rid of them also. A rational proposal for over-site and control would be a useful comment.
  - ggm 7y ago
    A rational proposal for closure and reinstitution under a different founding principle? "Because everybody does it" isn't actually good enough.
  - dgzl 7y ago
    The US spy and intelligence agencies frequently infringe on domestic and international human rights, and many people would rather they didn't exist. Some people don't even consider the agencies to be constitutional. Your sarcastic comments are certainly not useful.
    - myrandomcomment 7y ago
      The issue is not the CIA. It has been incredibly successfully in its job since it was founded as the OSS in WW2. We do not hear of the successes as most of it is highly classified. There are some great books on older stuff they did in the Cold War out now that are worth reading. The reality is we only hear about the screw ups and the illegal things because that news worthy in the 24/7/365 hype cycle we now live it. The fact is that we as citizens have failed to provide our voices asking for proper guidance of the CIA. We the people think that TV shows like 24 are the reality and torture is okay because it works on TV and only happens to the bad guys. Society as a whole have allowed things to end up this way. Tell me what really happened when we the public found out about the tap rooms at ATT colo or some of the stuff Wikileaks and Snowden showed? Where is the protest? I do not see the streets full of outrage. Where are the brave Americas standing up for their rights. We could learn from the people of Hong Kong at this point. The fact is that as long as we can order from amazon and Facebook works no one cares anymore. We get the government we deserve. Disbanding the CIA just moves the issue to the next agency.
Iv 7y ago
Why wouldn't they? In the current legal environment, that would be unprofessional and even a misconduct for them not to acquire these capabilities.
espeed 7y ago
There's a microphone in the Samsung TV smart remote.
- bilbo0s 7y ago
  In the actual tv's too in some cases.
  - pfundstein 7y ago
    I think you mean telescreen
    - HeavenBanned 7y ago
      Double-plus-good reference.
johnhenry 7y ago
Aside from wanting to protect its citizens from foreign spying; I have to wonder if another reason for the US's curtailing Huawei is to simply eliminate the competition?
- sirmoveon 7y ago
  People with technical knowledge at this point shouldn't doubt this perspective anymore. No evidence of wrong doing was published, and the claim of the possibility of the Chinese government making Huawei do their bidding at some point, is no different from what other governments have been doing, including the U.S. (and getting caught in the wrong doing). There's no shame in the hypocresy. It's a blatant attempt to damage Huawei. I have no sympathy for what the Chinese government does to subdue everyone under their power, but the Americans seem to have been historically better at playing the victim and getting away with it while still managing to curtail on others.
  - w7 7y ago
    That doesn't make sense to me. Especially given the GHCQ's break down of Huawei gear finding that Huawei can't even do version control right (they had revisions of firmware with the same version id for the same hardware with different build characteristics), and magically reintroducing vulnerabilities from 2006. Personally I feel that Huawei gear would be ripe for exploitation and then misdirection. I don't get why people are so hung up on proof though. There doesn't have to be proof. No one who I've talked to in the networking industry cares about proof (this includes myself). Hell China already bans companies at will. The only thing that matters is enough of a non-zero chance of Huawei releasing malicious firmware updates to select targets in the future. Judging by their inability to have firmware revisions that completely match in functionality who knows if they're already doing so at a smaller scale.
    - majia 7y ago
      > I don't get why people are so hung up on proof though. The reason you look for proof is not that it gives you 100% security. It is the process of finding proof that helps us understand how secure a product is and what vulnerabilities need to be addressed. GHCQ's through examination of Huawei devices found problems with version control, and Huawei promised to fix those problems. This is how security could improve. I think you also vastly underestimated how difficult it is to do version control for hardware due to extremely complex supply chain. If you examine products from any other brand, the situation is likely to be worse. I'm not suggesting Huawei's problems are acceptable. However, it is a misguided approach to decide which products are secure purely based on national origin rather technical merits.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
deehouie 7y ago
This piece challenges the current narrative you read in the press. China is an evil surveillance state that spies on its citizens and the rest of the world. Now we know. The greatest democracy of the world also spies on its citizen and the rest of the world.
- dsl 7y ago
  This is just extreme whataboutism. There is a vast difference between China spying on and locking people up for being the wrong religion, and the CIA secretly recording a conversation about the planning of a bombing.
  - pessimizer 7y ago
    That's true, but there's also a vast difference between the CIA spying on and locking people up for being the wrong religion, and China secretly recording a conversation about the planning of a bombing. Similarities between the two governments are that they would both characterize their spying on, imprisoning, and torture of religious minorities as preventing potential bombings, and characterize their counterparts as oppressive police states. China might have the stronger case, as they have about a quarter of the prisoners per-capita that the US does.
    - meruru 7y ago
      I'm glad we can all agree that mass surveillance is bad.
    - pwodhouse 7y ago
      I might prefer 4x detention time if I got to choose a US prison over China. I'd certainly prefer the freedom of thought and speech in the US. https://www.prisonlegalnews.org/news/2014/jun/22/inside-chinese-prison-americans-perspective/ https://www.prisonlegalnews.org/news/2014/jun/22/inside-chin...
  - raxxorrax 7y ago
    > This is just extreme whataboutism. No. > There is a vast difference between China spying No. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_rights_violations_by_the_CIA https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_rights_violations_by_the... careful, long page.
NotAnEconomist 7y ago
Two year old news that they developed the capability to launch targeted attacks, which can use devices with a microphone? Yawn. There isn't any evidence that they used this capability domestically (as other comments allege), or broadly (as other comments allege), or in any way inconsistent with the usage of other bug implants used to spy on legitimate targets. You can make the argument that the CIA shouldn't exist at all, but the frantic, breathless tone that the CIA developed a targeted recording tool is hilarious: that's their job. Come back with evidence of wrong doing. Also, the title should likely include the word "Some", to differentiate it from US government dragnets. Also also, all of the Vault 7 leaks were a big "nothing": just a leak of US capabilities, with nothing that showed wrong-doing in the style of the Snowden or even the Manning leaks. I hope Joshua Schulte spends a long time in prison.
ei8htyfi5e 7y ago
I gave a talk in China 5 years warning about this. http://tech.qq.com/a/20140527/035512.htm http://tech.qq.com/a/20140527/035512.htm I asked vendors to make changes to their products, such as planned obsolescence so if the manufacturer goes out of business and a device doesn't hear from the mother ship for awhile, all internet connections are killed for good. Also, to set smart defaults so that even when not configured, it won't allow this behavior. There should be a list of more in the article but you'll have to translate to see them.
- itake 7y ago
  (Un?)Fortunately, a few countries made planned obsolescence illegal :-/ https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-42615378 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-42615378
- discordance 7y ago
  As long as this sort of planned obsolescence only kills the connectivity feature, and keeps the rest of the device functioning/useable that sounds good
  - ggg2 7y ago
    except they will be (very) easy pickings for malware that do their own thing. e.g. Mirai botnet. it's very backward to suggest planned obsolescence as a security feature instead of open software/standards
    - justinclift 7y ago
      The open software / standards would need to cover every aspect of a given product, such that external people / enthusiasts / (etc) would be able to generate fixed firmware and upload it after the manufacturer ends support. That might work for _some_ devices with extremely large user bases. Devices with specialist properties or a low number of users sound like they'd be very tricky to have that approach work reliably. That being said, if there's wide adoption of "known good" base level firmware (eg powering on, init device capabilities) then maybe the specialist stuff could be add on's or something. eg modularising things might be a way to get closer to the goal
jmalkin 7y ago
I've gotten nothing out of my Smart TV that I couldn't have gotten from a Chromecast, or preferably, a laptop hooked up to a TV. And I've lost a lot. My TV is slow. When I try to control the volume, sometimes I have to wait multiple seconds. And things stop working all the time and require a reboot. I hate the damn thing. It even comes with bloatware for some reason, games I'll never play that it insists on updating forever. And with the privacy concerns on top of all that, I wish I had a dumb TV. My shit cube TV from the 90s was better!
- GuiA 7y ago
  Don't buy it. (Older TVs of excellent quality can be found second hand for very cheap)
  - voltagex_ 7y ago
    Older TVs also use more power (and put out more heat). You'll eventually find your game consoles, Blu ray players etc no longer function with the TV as it doesn't support whatever the latest HDCP standard is.
    - elvecinodeabajo 7y ago
      There are LED 'dumb' TV's.
      - IntelMiner 7y ago
        Where? Are they cost and quality competitive with "Smart" TV's?
        astrange 7y ago
        They won't be quality competitive with newer cheap smart TVs, which are all very good - they support 4K/wide color and have dynamic backlighting good enough for HDR. If you insist on a dumb TV and are in Silicon Valley I'll sell you my Panasonic 1080p TV from ~7 years ago. It's got an IPS panel!
mulmen 7y ago
I have not been excited about the release of a new consumer product in well over 5 years. The last real improvement in a consumer device for me was the iPhone 6s and even then I preferred the older form factor. I no longer look forward to the release of any new device or expect it to make my life better in any way. I just assume it will spy on me and/or exploit some weakness in my subconscious. When my current TV dies I might just go back to having no TV at all.
- mlang23 7y ago
  I terminated all my TV related subscriptions over the past two years and now also finally sold my TV. One of my best moves ever. I am not missing anything, have a lot more useful spare time, and save around 1k a year.
narnianal 7y ago
The question is how much this matters if you already have 2-5 active microphones listening in when there are two normal people in the room. I bet if the CIA wants they can get enough data from the audio alone to even say who looked at whom during a conversation.
stevesimmons 7y ago
I hate my Samsung Smart TV too. It auto-installed a Rakuten TV app that several times a week would switch from the only channel we watch (BBC News) to channel 4000 showing trailers for its video-on-demand pay per view service. Samsung makes it very hard to uninstall this 'feature' and even kills threads about it on its web site support forum. I had to got back to the shop I bought it from and threaten to return the TV as defective unless they sent instructions for permanently removing it. Samsung, you should be ashamed of yourself, taking such an obviously anti-customer stance. My next TV certainly won't be a Samsung. And hopefully several other people reading this won't buy a Samsung either. Vote with your wallet, folks!
- imglorp 7y ago
  So did they finally show you how to remove that app? What did that entail?
9HZZRfNlpR 7y ago
CIA is able to spy but Samsung doesn't even get screen mirroring work on my TV. Thankfully, I disabled the internet connectivity and forget about it, it turned out to be a good thing maybe. Where to get modern TVs screen wise but dumb ones? Monitors go up to only somewhat limited dimension's. Anyone have ideas? Buy the screen from LG and build yourself?
- nfoz 7y ago
  To find modern dumb TVs, you usually need to look at the "commercial" or "business" lines (sometimes called "digital signage). Companies make them hard to find. I have a 55" 4K LG dumb tv and I'm very happy with it: https://www.lg.com/ca_en/commercial-tv/lg-55UX340C-public-display-tvs https://www.lg.com/ca_en/commercial-tv/lg-55UX340C-public-di... It's just a tv. It turns on and off quick. The remote-control is simple. The only downside is it only has 2 HDMI inputs, and it doesn't do HDR.
titzer 7y ago
It is now completely legitimate to be afraid of every single thing connected to the internet. Thanks technology!
- mulmen 7y ago
  I remember a time when typing your credit card number into a webpage was madness.
dschuetz 7y ago
I knew a guy who worked on his paper about smart TVs and their potential exploitation vectors. That was back in 2015. His supervisor wrote that paper off bluntly as "scientifically not relevant". Oh well.
- ovi256 7y ago
  The supervisor can still be right! Scientific relevance and societal relevance are at odds all the time. Just look at cosmology or any other field with very very long term, slim, payoff and huge costs. As much as we curiosity oriented people dislike it, satifsying our curiosity about the origin of the universe has very low impact. The most impact probably comes from the theoretical understanding that results in new engineering capabilities to build new weapons, industrial machines or energy sources. |But then the question can be asked "why not fund that research direction directly ?"
titzer 7y ago
The Internet of Things is a surveillance entity's wet dream. And we are sleep-walking right into it.
- mulmen 7y ago
  Everyone is fully aware of the implications here. Even most consumers know the risks, they just don't care. The sad part isn't that people are stupid, it's that they are smart and just don't care.
bigbluedots 7y ago
I own a Samsung Smart TV, and I'd be interested in removing or disabling the microphone. Any ideas?
- mulmen 7y ago
  Yeah, try a screwdriver. Or a wood chipper. Wear your PPE.
- thesmok 7y ago
  Image search "mems microphone" to get an idea of how it looks. There is a hole in the microphone body – fill it with glue. Or just remove the microphone.
mikorym 7y ago
Is it still possible to buy HD TVs that are not smart? That's a niche that may interest HN readers; I prefer smartness through a peripheral...
- KozmoNau7 7y ago
  You can buy monitors made for commercial usage, such as signage. They'll be simple monitors with no TV tuner or "smart" functionality, and they'll be built to better resist burn-in. They'll also cost you at least 2-3 times as much as an equivalent consumer TV.
- aembleton 7y ago
  There are a few, such as this one https://www.argos.co.uk/product/8159898 https://www.argos.co.uk/product/8159898
hn23 7y ago
Louis: Really? Inspector: Sure! Louis: Ohh! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w4aLThuU008 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w4aLThuU008
sureaboutthis 7y ago
> to secretly spy on targets Apparently everyone here thinks so much of themselves that they think they are important enough to be a target.
heyflyguy 7y ago
The tinfoil hat people get more and more correct, being validated at every turn.
Tistel 7y ago
I bought a Philips 4k tv which works ok. But, when I plug it into my ethernet and hit the software update button it says it can't find the host. So I am guessing they hard coded the wrong IP/URL into the firmware. I am sure are there is some USB firmware patch I can do, but, I don't want to risk turning it into a giant doorstop/brick.
ChicagoBoy11 7y ago
Isn't the most obvious fix for this never connecting the TV to the internet in the first place? If your TV works the day you buy it, why do you need to connect it so it gets "firmware" updates? in some respect, isn't the user still capable of making their SmartTV a "dumb" TV?
musicale 7y ago
Who'd have thought that always-on, internet-connected cameras and microphones could be used for spying on you?
peter_d_sherman 7y ago
"In America, you watch television. In Soviet Russia, television watches you!" <g> -Comedian Yakov Smirnoff (http://wiki.c2.com/?InSovietRussia http://wiki.c2.com/?InSovietRussia)

381 points by sky_nox 7y ago

pinewurst 7y ago

(2017)

sctb 7y ago
Thanks!
- blech73 7y ago
  Why is it...I unplug EVERYTHING yet red light on until I hit remote again to be off? Nothing is plugged into electrical. No batteries. Covered tv w blanket.
derpherpsson 7y ago
This does not go away. That people treat this as news is for me an indication that people simply don't either read the news, or don't remember them. I hope people maybe remembers now when they read it the 2nd time.. The US surveillance machine needs to stop.

java-man 7y ago

related: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20205131 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20205131

sky_nox 7y ago

'Samsung itself is aware of these risks. In its privacy policy, the company warned customers to 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." The language reminded some of the George Orwell classic dystopian novel 1984.'

IshKebab 7y ago
That quote doesn't show Samsung's thoughts on the risk of hacking at all, and it shouldn't remind anyone of 1984. It's just a statement of how all voice recognition currently works.
- serf 7y ago
  >It's just a statement of how all voice recognition currently works. Amazon has said on numerous occasions that no data transfer occurs without a trigger word hitting the mic -- a feature that was a main point when discussing the safety of having an always-on internet-connected mic in the house. As for whether or not they're telling the truth, I don't know; but trigger-words have always been a feature that Amazon loved mentioning from a security/privacy standpoint.
  - penagwin 7y ago
    > As for whether or not they're telling the truth, I don't know; Luckily it's possible to check [0]! Although it gets a bit more complicated and can change, my understanding is that currently most people observe it increase it's network usage after it's trigger phrase, but not at other times (it uses the network for other stuff too, but audio data is typically rather large in comparison). [0] https://www.iot-tests.org/2017/06/careless-whisper-does-amazon-echo-send-data-in-silent-mode/ https://www.iot-tests.org/2017/06/careless-whisper-does-amaz... [1] 10.1007/s00779-018-1174-x <- Might want to use sci-hub
    - celim307 7y ago
      The pessimist in me think that a determined actor could simply capture non-trigger voice data offline, and bundle it with the rest of the traffic whenever the next trigger word occurs. But I am talking out my ass and have in no way verified any of this
      - astazangasta 7y ago
        This was my thought too; there doesn't seem to be a way to verify this isn't happening.

devoply 7y ago

Hey wiretap show me my favorite show. Hey wall with ears tell me the weather.

LinuxBender 7y ago

And people thought I was weird for dancing by myself in front of my TV. The poor folks at the CIA will never un-see that.

tenpies 7y ago
I like leaving a device playing a number station[1] in front of devices I know can be accessed by government actors. Then I'll say random gibberish when I'm around so that the audio recording does not perfectly match the Youtube source. --- [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aIH7cG3YmIo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aIH7cG3YmIo is a good start
mitchty 7y ago
People think i'm weird for never hooking my smart tv up to the network. It works, why does it need to be online?
- vernie 7y ago
  I guess your definition of "works" differs from theirs.
- edejong 7y ago
  You are counting on the WiFi module not to be remote hackable?
  - mulmen 7y ago
    While that is possible I would consider this to be a case of outrunning your friends rather than the bear.
    - edejong 7y ago
      So, a neighbor’s compromised wifi router could remotely exploit your smart tv without even configured settings: https://blog.exodusintel.com/2017/07/26/broadpwn/ https://blog.exodusintel.com/2017/07/26/broadpwn/

stcredzero 7y ago

On the Max Headroom TV show, it became illegal for people to turn off their TVs. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Headroom_(TV_series)#Plot https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Headroom_(TV_series)#Plot Would it be outlandish for the tech industry to lobby that Smart TVs and computers be given a 911 style emergency calling system, then for emergency dispatchers to have access to surveillance information, then for such devices to be required to be turned on all the time?

jetrink 7y ago
I think that was borrowed from 1984, which was published way back in 1949! “Winston turned a switch and the voice sank somewhat, though the words were still distinguishable. The instrument (the telescreen, it was called) could be dimmed, but there was no way of shutting it off completely. [...] Any sound that Winston made, above the level of a very low whisper, would be picked up by it.”
pjc50 7y ago
Like the European "ecall" mandate for cars to automatically call in their GPS position if involved in an accident?
xvector 7y ago
I mean it's not like your TV ever truly turns "off", is it? A lot of them power on at least the red/green LED light showing that it's "off" and who knows what else.
- chopin 7y ago
  I have a hard switch on the AC outlet for exactly this reason.
- avionicsguy 7y ago
  A TV set never turns off! It is well known in the industry. Standby usually just turns of the LCD, backlight and changes LED colour. Try this: Switch TV to standby then turn on. Time how long this takes. Unplug TV for 30 seconds plug in and then turn on. It will take a while for the TV to boot from cold start. Manufacturers have been doing this since CRTs.

morpheuskafka 7y ago

The CIA should be completely abolished. Unlike the FBI, it does not seek to enforce any laws whatsoever; instead, they operate with absolutely zero oversight, there only rule being that they're not supposed to be involved in domestic matters. I wouldn't be surprised if they tag-team with other friendly agencies like MI6 to spy on each other's domestic targets so as not to violate that rule.

myrandomcomment 7y ago
Yes, because not having an Intelligence agency is a great idea for national security. You know the LAPD beat a man a few times. We should totally get rid of them also. A rational proposal for over-site and control would be a useful comment.
- ggm 7y ago
  A rational proposal for closure and reinstitution under a different founding principle? "Because everybody does it" isn't actually good enough.
- dgzl 7y ago
  The US spy and intelligence agencies frequently infringe on domestic and international human rights, and many people would rather they didn't exist. Some people don't even consider the agencies to be constitutional. Your sarcastic comments are certainly not useful.
  - myrandomcomment 7y ago
    The issue is not the CIA. It has been incredibly successfully in its job since it was founded as the OSS in WW2. We do not hear of the successes as most of it is highly classified. There are some great books on older stuff they did in the Cold War out now that are worth reading. The reality is we only hear about the screw ups and the illegal things because that news worthy in the 24/7/365 hype cycle we now live it. The fact is that we as citizens have failed to provide our voices asking for proper guidance of the CIA. We the people think that TV shows like 24 are the reality and torture is okay because it works on TV and only happens to the bad guys. Society as a whole have allowed things to end up this way. Tell me what really happened when we the public found out about the tap rooms at ATT colo or some of the stuff Wikileaks and Snowden showed? Where is the protest? I do not see the streets full of outrage. Where are the brave Americas standing up for their rights. We could learn from the people of Hong Kong at this point. The fact is that as long as we can order from amazon and Facebook works no one cares anymore. We get the government we deserve. Disbanding the CIA just moves the issue to the next agency.

Iv 7y ago

Why wouldn't they? In the current legal environment, that would be unprofessional and even a misconduct for them not to acquire these capabilities.

espeed 7y ago

There's a microphone in the Samsung TV smart remote.

bilbo0s 7y ago
In the actual tv's too in some cases.
- pfundstein 7y ago
  I think you mean telescreen
  - HeavenBanned 7y ago
    Double-plus-good reference.

johnhenry 7y ago

Aside from wanting to protect its citizens from foreign spying; I have to wonder if another reason for the US's curtailing Huawei is to simply eliminate the competition?

sirmoveon 7y ago
People with technical knowledge at this point shouldn't doubt this perspective anymore. No evidence of wrong doing was published, and the claim of the possibility of the Chinese government making Huawei do their bidding at some point, is no different from what other governments have been doing, including the U.S. (and getting caught in the wrong doing). There's no shame in the hypocresy. It's a blatant attempt to damage Huawei. I have no sympathy for what the Chinese government does to subdue everyone under their power, but the Americans seem to have been historically better at playing the victim and getting away with it while still managing to curtail on others.
- w7 7y ago
  That doesn't make sense to me. Especially given the GHCQ's break down of Huawei gear finding that Huawei can't even do version control right (they had revisions of firmware with the same version id for the same hardware with different build characteristics), and magically reintroducing vulnerabilities from 2006. Personally I feel that Huawei gear would be ripe for exploitation and then misdirection. I don't get why people are so hung up on proof though. There doesn't have to be proof. No one who I've talked to in the networking industry cares about proof (this includes myself). Hell China already bans companies at will. The only thing that matters is enough of a non-zero chance of Huawei releasing malicious firmware updates to select targets in the future. Judging by their inability to have firmware revisions that completely match in functionality who knows if they're already doing so at a smaller scale.
  - majia 7y ago
    > I don't get why people are so hung up on proof though. The reason you look for proof is not that it gives you 100% security. It is the process of finding proof that helps us understand how secure a product is and what vulnerabilities need to be addressed. GHCQ's through examination of Huawei devices found problems with version control, and Huawei promised to fix those problems. This is how security could improve. I think you also vastly underestimated how difficult it is to do version control for hardware due to extremely complex supply chain. If you examine products from any other brand, the situation is likely to be worse. I'm not suggesting Huawei's problems are acceptable. However, it is a misguided approach to decide which products are secure purely based on national origin rather technical merits.

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deehouie 7y ago

This piece challenges the current narrative you read in the press. China is an evil surveillance state that spies on its citizens and the rest of the world. Now we know. The greatest democracy of the world also spies on its citizen and the rest of the world.

dsl 7y ago
This is just extreme whataboutism. There is a vast difference between China spying on and locking people up for being the wrong religion, and the CIA secretly recording a conversation about the planning of a bombing.
- pessimizer 7y ago
  That's true, but there's also a vast difference between the CIA spying on and locking people up for being the wrong religion, and China secretly recording a conversation about the planning of a bombing. Similarities between the two governments are that they would both characterize their spying on, imprisoning, and torture of religious minorities as preventing potential bombings, and characterize their counterparts as oppressive police states. China might have the stronger case, as they have about a quarter of the prisoners per-capita that the US does.
  - meruru 7y ago
    I'm glad we can all agree that mass surveillance is bad.
  - pwodhouse 7y ago
    I might prefer 4x detention time if I got to choose a US prison over China. I'd certainly prefer the freedom of thought and speech in the US. https://www.prisonlegalnews.org/news/2014/jun/22/inside-chinese-prison-americans-perspective/ https://www.prisonlegalnews.org/news/2014/jun/22/inside-chin...
- raxxorrax 7y ago
  > This is just extreme whataboutism. No. > There is a vast difference between China spying No. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_rights_violations_by_the_CIA https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_rights_violations_by_the... careful, long page.

NotAnEconomist 7y ago

Two year old news that they developed the capability to launch targeted attacks, which can use devices with a microphone? Yawn. There isn't any evidence that they used this capability domestically (as other comments allege), or broadly (as other comments allege), or in any way inconsistent with the usage of other bug implants used to spy on legitimate targets. You can make the argument that the CIA shouldn't exist at all, but the frantic, breathless tone that the CIA developed a targeted recording tool is hilarious: that's their job. Come back with evidence of wrong doing. Also, the title should likely include the word "Some", to differentiate it from US government dragnets. Also also, all of the Vault 7 leaks were a big "nothing": just a leak of US capabilities, with nothing that showed wrong-doing in the style of the Snowden or even the Manning leaks. I hope Joshua Schulte spends a long time in prison.

ei8htyfi5e 7y ago

I gave a talk in China 5 years warning about this. http://tech.qq.com/a/20140527/035512.htm http://tech.qq.com/a/20140527/035512.htm I asked vendors to make changes to their products, such as planned obsolescence so if the manufacturer goes out of business and a device doesn't hear from the mother ship for awhile, all internet connections are killed for good. Also, to set smart defaults so that even when not configured, it won't allow this behavior. There should be a list of more in the article but you'll have to translate to see them.

itake 7y ago
(Un?)Fortunately, a few countries made planned obsolescence illegal :-/ https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-42615378 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-42615378
discordance 7y ago
As long as this sort of planned obsolescence only kills the connectivity feature, and keeps the rest of the device functioning/useable that sounds good
- ggg2 7y ago
  except they will be (very) easy pickings for malware that do their own thing. e.g. Mirai botnet. it's very backward to suggest planned obsolescence as a security feature instead of open software/standards
  - justinclift 7y ago
    The open software / standards would need to cover every aspect of a given product, such that external people / enthusiasts / (etc) would be able to generate fixed firmware and upload it after the manufacturer ends support. That might work for _some_ devices with extremely large user bases. Devices with specialist properties or a low number of users sound like they'd be very tricky to have that approach work reliably. That being said, if there's wide adoption of "known good" base level firmware (eg powering on, init device capabilities) then maybe the specialist stuff could be add on's or something. eg modularising things might be a way to get closer to the goal

jmalkin 7y ago

I've gotten nothing out of my Smart TV that I couldn't have gotten from a Chromecast, or preferably, a laptop hooked up to a TV. And I've lost a lot. My TV is slow. When I try to control the volume, sometimes I have to wait multiple seconds. And things stop working all the time and require a reboot. I hate the damn thing. It even comes with bloatware for some reason, games I'll never play that it insists on updating forever. And with the privacy concerns on top of all that, I wish I had a dumb TV. My shit cube TV from the 90s was better!

GuiA 7y ago
Don't buy it. (Older TVs of excellent quality can be found second hand for very cheap)
- voltagex_ 7y ago
  Older TVs also use more power (and put out more heat). You'll eventually find your game consoles, Blu ray players etc no longer function with the TV as it doesn't support whatever the latest HDCP standard is.
  - elvecinodeabajo 7y ago
    There are LED 'dumb' TV's.
    - IntelMiner 7y ago
      Where? Are they cost and quality competitive with "Smart" TV's?
      - astrange 7y ago
        They won't be quality competitive with newer cheap smart TVs, which are all very good - they support 4K/wide color and have dynamic backlighting good enough for HDR. If you insist on a dumb TV and are in Silicon Valley I'll sell you my Panasonic 1080p TV from ~7 years ago. It's got an IPS panel!

mulmen 7y ago

I have not been excited about the release of a new consumer product in well over 5 years. The last real improvement in a consumer device for me was the iPhone 6s and even then I preferred the older form factor. I no longer look forward to the release of any new device or expect it to make my life better in any way. I just assume it will spy on me and/or exploit some weakness in my subconscious. When my current TV dies I might just go back to having no TV at all.

mlang23 7y ago
I terminated all my TV related subscriptions over the past two years and now also finally sold my TV. One of my best moves ever. I am not missing anything, have a lot more useful spare time, and save around 1k a year.

narnianal 7y ago

The question is how much this matters if you already have 2-5 active microphones listening in when there are two normal people in the room. I bet if the CIA wants they can get enough data from the audio alone to even say who looked at whom during a conversation.

stevesimmons 7y ago

I hate my Samsung Smart TV too. It auto-installed a Rakuten TV app that several times a week would switch from the only channel we watch (BBC News) to channel 4000 showing trailers for its video-on-demand pay per view service. Samsung makes it very hard to uninstall this 'feature' and even kills threads about it on its web site support forum. I had to got back to the shop I bought it from and threaten to return the TV as defective unless they sent instructions for permanently removing it. Samsung, you should be ashamed of yourself, taking such an obviously anti-customer stance. My next TV certainly won't be a Samsung. And hopefully several other people reading this won't buy a Samsung either. Vote with your wallet, folks!

imglorp 7y ago
So did they finally show you how to remove that app? What did that entail?

9HZZRfNlpR 7y ago

CIA is able to spy but Samsung doesn't even get screen mirroring work on my TV. Thankfully, I disabled the internet connectivity and forget about it, it turned out to be a good thing maybe. Where to get modern TVs screen wise but dumb ones? Monitors go up to only somewhat limited dimension's. Anyone have ideas? Buy the screen from LG and build yourself?

nfoz 7y ago
To find modern dumb TVs, you usually need to look at the "commercial" or "business" lines (sometimes called "digital signage). Companies make them hard to find. I have a 55" 4K LG dumb tv and I'm very happy with it: https://www.lg.com/ca_en/commercial-tv/lg-55UX340C-public-display-tvs https://www.lg.com/ca_en/commercial-tv/lg-55UX340C-public-di... It's just a tv. It turns on and off quick. The remote-control is simple. The only downside is it only has 2 HDMI inputs, and it doesn't do HDR.

titzer 7y ago

It is now completely legitimate to be afraid of every single thing connected to the internet. Thanks technology!

mulmen 7y ago
I remember a time when typing your credit card number into a webpage was madness.

dschuetz 7y ago

I knew a guy who worked on his paper about smart TVs and their potential exploitation vectors. That was back in 2015. His supervisor wrote that paper off bluntly as "scientifically not relevant". Oh well.

ovi256 7y ago
The supervisor can still be right! Scientific relevance and societal relevance are at odds all the time. Just look at cosmology or any other field with very very long term, slim, payoff and huge costs. As much as we curiosity oriented people dislike it, satifsying our curiosity about the origin of the universe has very low impact. The most impact probably comes from the theoretical understanding that results in new engineering capabilities to build new weapons, industrial machines or energy sources. |But then the question can be asked "why not fund that research direction directly ?"

titzer 7y ago

The Internet of Things is a surveillance entity's wet dream. And we are sleep-walking right into it.

mulmen 7y ago
Everyone is fully aware of the implications here. Even most consumers know the risks, they just don't care. The sad part isn't that people are stupid, it's that they are smart and just don't care.

bigbluedots 7y ago

I own a Samsung Smart TV, and I'd be interested in removing or disabling the microphone. Any ideas?

mulmen 7y ago
Yeah, try a screwdriver. Or a wood chipper. Wear your PPE.
thesmok 7y ago
Image search "mems microphone" to get an idea of how it looks. There is a hole in the microphone body – fill it with glue. Or just remove the microphone.

mikorym 7y ago

Is it still possible to buy HD TVs that are not smart? That's a niche that may interest HN readers; I prefer smartness through a peripheral...

KozmoNau7 7y ago
You can buy monitors made for commercial usage, such as signage. They'll be simple monitors with no TV tuner or "smart" functionality, and they'll be built to better resist burn-in. They'll also cost you at least 2-3 times as much as an equivalent consumer TV.
aembleton 7y ago
There are a few, such as this one https://www.argos.co.uk/product/8159898 https://www.argos.co.uk/product/8159898

hn23 7y ago

Louis: Really? Inspector: Sure! Louis: Ohh! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w4aLThuU008 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w4aLThuU008

sureaboutthis 7y ago

> to secretly spy on targets Apparently everyone here thinks so much of themselves that they think they are important enough to be a target.

heyflyguy 7y ago

The tinfoil hat people get more and more correct, being validated at every turn.

Tistel 7y ago

I bought a Philips 4k tv which works ok. But, when I plug it into my ethernet and hit the software update button it says it can't find the host. So I am guessing they hard coded the wrong IP/URL into the firmware. I am sure are there is some USB firmware patch I can do, but, I don't want to risk turning it into a giant doorstop/brick.

ChicagoBoy11 7y ago

Isn't the most obvious fix for this never connecting the TV to the internet in the first place? If your TV works the day you buy it, why do you need to connect it so it gets "firmware" updates? in some respect, isn't the user still capable of making their SmartTV a "dumb" TV?

musicale 7y ago

Who'd have thought that always-on, internet-connected cameras and microphones could be used for spying on you?

peter_d_sherman 7y ago

"In America, you watch television. In Soviet Russia, television watches you!" <g> -Comedian Yakov Smirnoff (http://wiki.c2.com/?InSovietRussia http://wiki.c2.com/?InSovietRussia)