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Comment by jt2190 | Hacker News Reader

Maybe a bit off topic, but for an entertaining and chilling way to understand why Germans are so opposed to listening devices, watch _Das Leben der Anderen_ (The Lives of Others).

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0405094/

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Great suggestion!

Not merely microphones though, but also privacy at a whole.

The other reason is the WWII history.

Das Leben der Anderen is a very good movie with a sublime cast (including Sebastian Koch), but hardly entertaining. A somewhat entertaining movie about the GDR (DDR) is Goodbye Lenin [1], starring Daniel Brühl (Bruehl). Both movies are primary dramatic though.

I can also recommend any movie starring Jürgen Vogel [2] (Juergen). The subjects movies he's in touches upon are often thought-provoking. Although also, usually drama. I can highly recommend German cinema, I hold the authenticity of German cinema in high regard.

[1] http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0301357/

[2] http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0900915/

Das Leben der Anderen isn't "entertaining" per se but I recall being pretty devastating.

> ... but hardly entertaining.

I'm curious about your use of the word "entertaining"...

Do you mean to exclude dramas, tragedies, or things that deal with serious subject matter? Or do you mean to say that Das Leben der Anderen isn't a good movie?

(Language is fun! :-) )

Yeah it is possible I took the term too strict [1] but wouldn't the broad definition of it include every movie ever made?

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entertainment

All movies are entertainment, but only good movies are entertaining

Is entertainment an objective term, and entertaining a subjective term?

Sort of. Entertainment is a classification taking into account purpose (Films are a form of entertaining one's self/time). Entertaining is to do with how one emotionally processes something.

The best distinction is the one represented in Collin's English Dictionary:

  entertainment (ˌɛntəˈteɪnmənt) n.
  1. the act or art of entertaining or state of being entertained
  2. an act, production, etc, that entertains; diversion; amusement

versus

  entertaining (ˌɛntəˈteɪnɪŋ) adj.
  1. serving to entertain or give pleasure; diverting; amusing

That's why Germans should be opposed to listening devices. The fact is, the vast majority is perfectly happy using stuff like android phones or amazon's echo.

Both an amazon echo and an android phone require a key phrase to activate. It’s obviously possible that they could be used by amazon/google to listen in, but neither is a covert device that you can use to listen in on me, something that these smart watches enable.

Until they are hacked and are used by others to listen in

This still is not their primary purpose. And yes, illegal acts could turn them into an illegal covert listening device, but that would be illegal, wouldn’t it?

Same could be said about smartphones and laptops.

Its why I prefer a hardware killswitch on a device.

My ThinkPad T61 got one. My MBPs don't. The T61 is from 2008. The MBPs are from 2010 and 2015.

The MBP at least has the camera light. Not proactive, but if you see the light come one at least you can kill the power

That's little comfort if an attacker can access the camera without the LED turning on. You can never be sure which is why integrated cameras and microphones get ripped out of devices used in sensitive areas.

Camera is hard-wired to the LED. If you don't trust the wiring of the device, kill switch is out too.

Depends on the camera. There have been hacks where a laptop camera is turned on but the LED is not. Hence people covering cameras with tape.

Have you found one for Thinkpads?

Yes, the MBPs got that fancy light. The TP can point the camera to the back tho (which could be worse). I covered all 3 with tape. Both 3 have that option. Only the TP has a killswitch for radios though. And it doesn't seem Apple is very fond of killswitches for radios, given their utter lack of expected functionality in iOS 11.

We can argue about the definition of covert, but Amazon Echo does allow others to somewhat sneakily listen in on you:

>When you drop in on your device or a contact's device, the light ring on your Echo pulses green, you connect automatically and can hear anything within range of the device

https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=...

Drop in is an optional feature that needs to be explicitly enabled for a list of contacts. It’s not covert if you have to turn it on.

Like I said, we can argue over "covert." But once you allow a contact to drop in on you, they can do it at any time, with no prior warning, and you won't know it until they're already listening to you.

Android permissions don't distinguish between foreground and background audio capture, so every messenger app installed could be used to listen in.

"Could be used by a determined person with the necessary skills" and "is intended for and market to consumers as" is not the same thing even though there might not be a technological difference.

"Both an amazon echo and an android phone require a key phrase to activate."

But thanks to the devices closed nature, their manufacturers have the exclusive ability to remotely modify their workings so that the device could listen without the "owner" consent. This assuming it hasn't already been done and a single packet hidden into an update push can trigger undetectable monitoring. Technically it would be trivial to implement and trivial to turn off with another update so that it would remain undetectable in case of device hardware/firmware/software inspection.

SmartTV also should be treated as dangerous. https://bgr.com/2017/02/07/vizio-smart-tv-spying-case/ https://www.rte.ie/news/technology/2017/0308/858060-samsung-...

Bullshit. They're already "activated" if they can hear the key phrase in the first place.

In only the absolute best case, the always-on microphone is backed by a local-only module that picks up the keyphrase, and sends only subsequent communications to the cloud.

That is a great movie to understand what it was like living in communist eastern-Europe.

That's a super good movie, definitely recommended.

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