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Comment by josephcsible | Hacker News Reader

This technology was used for good this time, but there's nothing stopping it from being used for evil next time. The fact that Samsung is even capable of doing this means you don't have control over your Samsung TV even if you do own it legally.

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Samsung’s use of ACR is the other big source of discomfort. That’s some creepy stuff right there. LG has something similar too, but it was off by default in mine.

“Samsung Smart TVs have built-in Automated Content Recognition (ACR) technology that can understand viewing behavior and usage including programs, movies, ads, gaming content and OTT apps in real-time.” https://www.samsung.com/us/business/samsungads/resources/tv-...

For context, see https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2019/09/18/you-wat...

At least they’re not scanning your media library against a list of hashes yet.

Edit: Ahh, I see from the replies I have had my fill of curiosity for the day.

They are, they're just doing it for advertising, not piracy prevention.

https://www.samsung.com/us/business/samsungads/resources/tv-...

That's why you never connect any smart TV to your network and instead use a standalone device combined with a PiHole.

This only works until every "smart" device has a cellular modem built in.

Who pays for the cellular plans?

Amazon put a cellular chip in a Kindle over a decade ago. And that was for a device that cost less than $100. One year of advertising and analytics would easily cover the cost in a larger purchase like a TV.

We do as part of the device cost. 5G makes it pretty cheap so a manufacturer adding in a radio ups their cost by a dollar or two. The revenue from surveillance is marginally profitable including data costs.

You can come up with other fun conspiracies by realizing that the HDMI spec can share internet connections. Plugging in your "fire cast", or whatever external television device you use, could provide your TV an internet connection, but it doesn't seem to be widely used yet.

This is, it seems, just untrue. It was posted before (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24668736) and I was curious about this attack vector so looked it up [0]

Simply put, it seems that this never took off and would require the entire hdmi chain to support it (tv, cable, and device) - none of which do currently, so for the medium future it doesn't seem to be a concern.

Plenty of concern elsewhere, just not necessarily here.

[0] https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/325215/appletv-eth...

It's definitely real. A/V receivers are the typical devices to support HEC, so you can run one Ethernet cable to the receiver and use a smart TV with the HDMI audio return channel, with one HDMI cable.

Interesting! You're suggesting that the A/V would bridge the ethernet connection over the HDMI cable audio signal?

That's the intent, and it's still in the latest HDMI spec, so I think those threads about HEC being dead were premature. I haven't used it myself.

> A/V receivers are the typical devices to support HEC

Then you surely can name a few models that support Ethernet over HDMI? (Somehow people keep claiming that this is totally a thing, but nobody ever can confirm a single device)

Not one of these says anything about HEC being discontinued: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=hdmi+with+ethernet

Can you name a manufacturer of devices or chips that has committed to never implementing Ethernet over HDMI? The same wires are used for the audio return channel, so they have to be present in cables. The HDMI consortium website still refers to cables as "HDMI with Ethernet".

If you claim that receivers are "the typical devices" to implement something, you should really be able to at least show one or two models that support it. No, it's never been formally declared dead, but it de-facto is by virtue of not existing in practice.

Which is where things like Amazon Sidewalk or even just a 3g/4g sim come in... I'm glad the current state of TVs isn't using this (that I know up) but I fear it's right around the corner. I just want a dumb TV that I hook my Xbox and Apple TV up to.

> Amazon Sidewalk or even just a 3g/4g sim

The fix for these is in this video: https://youtu.be/urglg3WimHA

> piracy prevention.

privacy prevention.

Actually it’s kind of odd to me that Samsung isn’t doing this to block child porn.

Since they are already scanning content to sell to marketers it’s odd that they aren’t also scanning it for CP or anything else with a defined set of hashes.

I’d prefer Samsung not do this at all, but if they are scanning for making money, they should scan for public good.

About that: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automatic_content_recognition

Many (most?) smart TVs scan what you watch and send it to the manufacturer or one of their partners. Streaming, blu ray, home movies, and all of it.

Samsung does shit much worse than that, like TVs listening in on everything:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21657930

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21899491

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baseband_processor#Security_...

https://www.fsf.org/blogs/community/replicant-developers-fin...

I've recently purchased the Frame and if you don't connect it to the network, you'll get a pesky warning message every time. Fortunately I'm using ASUS-Merlin and that firmware has intricate controls to control access to the internet.

This is generally the purpose of the law. It's not like this is some life-or-death thing that can't be rectified. Samsung has no legal authority to disable a legally-purchased TV, and they would be sued to death if they used if for evil.

I feel like the law needs to take a greater role in this stuff. If you looted a TV you have no rights at all over it but if you purchased it legally it should be your device, and it should continue working like the day you got it outside of hardware failure which can be covered by repair and warranty.

Technical solutions will never work because the exact same feature can be used for good and bad.

until samsung gets hacked and has every TV globally disabled.

What happens when they get hacked and the hackers disable all of their TVs?

What good was served here? The products are still stolen and are still going on the books as a loss. Since they can't be used, they're likely going in a dumpster. And none of this apparently led the arrest of any perpetrators.

Hard to imagine what purpose was served here, other than Samsung broadcasting what kind of power they have over devices you own.

It reduced the criminals' ability to profit from their crimes.

Game theory. This is not an isolated interaction; actors who might repeat it hear these news and take notes.

I think it's more about prevention going forward, and devaluing its worth in secondary market. Sure, it might still be worth something, but only in parts. Given how rapidly TV models change, parts = basically worthless.

Look at the various online stores selling parts, and the poorer regions of the world (this includes South Africa), and you'll see that is not true.

Especially if they are only killing the "smart" part, the panel is still worth quite a bit. You can get a "universal scaler" board to turn them into dumb but working TVs.

Same good as phone kill switches -- they reduce the incentive for future thefts.

https://techcrunch.com/2015/02/11/apples-activation-lock-lea...

Apple has done this fairly successfully for years. The simple answer is, they'd rather deprive someone else of a good than have it themselves. Same goes for Samsung, and pretty much any other company that weighs their bottom line over general benevolence.

A similar situation I heard about; a local pizza shop used to have a policy that if an order is messed up, the staff would be allowed to eat it for free. They then changed it so that all messed up orders would have to be thrown directly in to the trash.

A waste of that pizza, but they found that order messups reduced dramatically when the staff were not allowed to eat the "mistake".

It's the same situation here. You brick a few stolen items and it prevents future theft since there is no longer a reward for it.

> Since they can't be used, they're likely going in a dumpster.

And thus can't be sold by the looters for a profit.

For a long time Subaru held the unenviable position of being the most stolen car in the country that I live in. They started spraying microdots in the undercoat of their cars, which meant that every single part of the car was traceable.

Models from that point on were almost never stolen; earlier ones stayed at the top of the charts. Wrecker's yards were no longer prepared to take the risk of parting out stolen vehicles, and garages weren't prepared to use second-hand parts from stolen vehicles, when it could be traced easily, so criminals stopped stealing those model years.

I struggle to believe you don’t understand how “stolen goods don’t work” affects society.

> The fact that Samsung is even capable of doing this means you don't have control over your Samsung TV even if you do own it legally.

It actually true for any smart device now a days. Apple can do same for an iPhone.

Wait till your TV license expires

Cars and phones both can be remotely disabled. This will reduce help crime in the long run.

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