Snooping: It's not a crime, it's a feature | Hacker News Reader

Snooping: It's not a crime, it's a feature

computerworld.com

14 pointsasymptotic15 comments

This was disturbing. I'm fairly sure that there must be tacit agreement for a party to "snoop" in certain states. Could this lead to law suits?

I'm already creeped out with GPS. Sound analysis is just going too far. Cool or not, I really don't want to share that much. And even for the most open of us, can you imagine the information gathered? i.e. seems like you are having sex. want to know which of your friends is having sex right now too? creepy.

Considering that I work at one of the world's largest independent creative / marketing firms, I know this will be abused. It always is. We push. You push back.

People recording their own conversations is fine with me, but people being tricked into sending recordings of their conversations to random untrustworthy corporations is emphatically not okay. Those may also be my conversations, which I may not want to be shared.

In my home state of Massachusetts, all parties in a conversation must consent to recording, which makes this illegal.

The audio data's almost certainly being processed by the application itself and only a tiny bit of information sent back to the company's servers - both due to the privacy issues and the implications of having an internet connection open continuously (battery drain, high data usage bills, etc.)

This wouldn't be the first time fear and partial information damaged adoption of a promising technology.

FTA:

"Of course, the use of your microphone with these apps is well understood by users, because that's the main purpose of the app.

The new apps are often sneakier about it. The vast majority of people who use the Color app, for example, have no idea that their microphones are being activated to gather sounds.

Welcome to the future."

With all due respect those users are morons. Color is, rightly, proud of their "snooping" technology. People who use Color will probably know it records audio through the microphone.

The proper question is: to what extent may people be permitted to degrade their privacy? For example, if both parties in a two-way call agreed to have the call recorded for advertising purposes, and to have ads interjected once every two minutes into the media stream, in exchange for the call being free, should that be allowed?

The Libertarian in me says yes. But sometimes people need to be protected from their own stupidity. Or do they? Hmm.

I doubt most people are aware of that. I stopped paying attention to news about color after I tried the app. I only learned this "feature" of color because I was reading news about snooping.

With all due respect those users are morons. Color is, rightly, proud of their "snooping" technology. People who use Color will probably know it records audio through the microphone.

I guess that makes me a moron, because I had no clue it was doing this.

It also makes me glad I uninstalled it. Not that it actually worked anyways.

But your arrogance isn't unique I guess. I just hope you know pretending to be better than others doesn't actually make it true.

I think you are taking his comment to personally. I don't think anyone thinks you are a moron for not knowing, but because of the sensitive nature of the data on any of my computing devices, I'm extremely paranoid. I certainly don't install anything the day it is announced.

I read the launch coverage (several different blogs, actually), and this information was available in those posts. It's easy to get caught up in the hype, but it only takes one time getting "burned" to learn from that.

I take my comment back, I apologise. I've just realised that the Apple App Store does not clearly tell users what permissions a given application requires.

Go to any application on the Android Market, e.g.

https://market.android.com/details?id=com.groceryking&fe...

and then click on "Permissions". Before installing anything on an Android you can immediately and clearly tell what it's going to do. Do I want my shopping list application to be able to directly make phone calls? I don't think so, hence I won't install this app.

Does this exist on the Apple App Store? Honest question, I've never used it.

I don't own an iPhone or an Android (yet), so I was wondering: is there any way for the user to control permissions the app will have to access the hardware?

Say, for example, that I like an app because it does several cool things and only one not-so-cool thing that involves using the mic to "snoop" on me. Would I be able to download the app and then set up the permissions so it doesn't have access to the mic?

I can only speak for Android, but no you cannot deny the application access to certain aspects of the hardware. You must instead refuse to use the application as a whole.

On the plus side, Android is very clear about what parts of your phone the application is requesting access to when you install it.

On the iPhone side of things, you need to provide permission for an app to use GPS data. Mic, camera, compass, gps, and gyro are all fair game. No implementable restrictions either.

I cant wait to see that 'feature' on WP7 too. Just imagine good old paperclip poping up on your phone:

"It looks like you are arguing with your spouse. Would you like me to put you in relation with a counselor?"

With that technology, no wonder Color got so much funding. The list of stuff that they can find out about you is amazing. That would produce some very targeted ads.

It would be nice if there was some kind of hardware or OS-level indicator to let you know when certain components are active (mic, camera, GPS).

Do firmwares like cyanogenmod offer the ability to revoke privileges to certain apps by just providing them with garbage data? If they don't already, I think it would be an interesting area to explore.

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