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Comment by RollAHardSix | Hacker News Reader

You can just imagine how the conversation goes:

"Sir, he burned off half his face to resist identification."

"...Have him drop trough."

Serious note though, it's similar to how the kinect is sitting in households across America, and I think the new one with the XBOX One can't be turned off. A microphone and camera system right into people's living rooms.

And of course, the government now wants a database of consumers credit information.

I try to not be a conspiracy theorist but when you hand them this much information, it's hard to trust people to do the 'right' thing.

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>XBOX One can't be turned off

you are only half a year to the party

http://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2013/08/12/microsoft-re...

Of course it can be unplugged. You can also unplug the whole thing from the wall outlet. That's not the point. The point is it works even when you are not playing games.

Turn off whole console then, with a physical switch.

You shouldn't have to engage in combat against your appliances, even if it's easy to win.

Thinking like this is a problem. The question isn't "is it possible for people to X". It's "will average citizens have the knowledge, time, and energy to X".

99% of XBox owners will not physically unplug the XBox every time they are done using it because of hazy privacy concerns. Suggesting that a few people could is worse than doing nothing. Those with the knowledge and skill to understand the problem will be inclined to solve the problem only for themselves. A bunch of others will use the "they could just unplug it" line to blame the average user for being insufficiently dedicated/savvy. It dissipates the energy for solving the problem properly. And if the NSA is using the Kinect cameras, then they'll be perfectly happy with photos of 99% of users.

As an example, consider the iPhone. Smartphones existed before it. But by packaging the tech in a way that anybody could use it, they made smartphones mainstream. If we want to make privacy mainstream, we need to do something similar, not fall back on blame-y non-solutions like telling people to unplug things.

Or the Nest, which is constantly sending proximity information to Google (and the NSA).

There will be a Nest in every Google self-driving car. I don't have any concrete evidence of this, but it's not that far-fetched.

Why would a car need Nest ? I am curious.

Wait, there's a proximity sensor in the Nest (thermostat, I'm assuming you're talking about)? What function does the sensor serve? And what is its capability exactly - it can detect a person within 10 feet - who happens to be in the same room as the Nest thermostat? Or?

It turns on the display when you approach (normally it's dark), and also tries to detect when no one is home so it can go into "away" mode automatically.

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