How long before NSA wants a piece of the action and demands that the feature will be turned on as default?
Facebook wants to LISTEN IN on the songs and vids playing in YOUR living room
Facebook is rolling out a creepy new feature that will - with a user's permission - tap into the mic on their mobile device and listen into music and television playing in the background. It will then post a status on that person's Facebook page, flagging up a song, say, and providing a 30-second preview of it to friends of …
-
Thursday 22nd May 2014 11:40 GMT RISC OS
I'm pretty sure that if the person making the post wants people to know what they are listening to they would just mention it or post specifically about it.
Now it's opt in... but how long before they change everything and make it stay recording until you opt out?
Maybe the NSAs profilers just need this kind of info to geta better picture about you...
-
-
Thursday 22nd May 2014 12:06 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: ambient listening
The only place I can see that mentioned is TETRA mobile networks used by the Police, ambulance service etc... It could be that there is a corresponding phone network feature with the same name but it could be that you've got the wrong end of the stick....
Any mobile network gurus that can shed some light on this?
-
-
-
Thursday 22nd May 2014 12:14 GMT Anonymous Coward
Desperation?
Maybe it's just my optimism, but the 'ideas' FB seems to bang out with feverish frequency lately smack more than a little of desperation. Most of the people likely to find 'features' like this one acceptable won't have enough money for the advertisers to care about, and the sheer creepiness of this ought to convince plenty of others the fun bit of the party's over and its time to leave.
Sampling your mike isn't exactly a good fit with Zuckerbergs loudly professed anti govt snooping stance either. If it came to a toss between trusting the NSA or FB, FB would only edge it because they aren't yet legally able to send armed men to haul you off for a bit of casual torture.
-
-
Monday 26th May 2014 00:55 GMT Keith 21
Re: Presumably would also monitor speech
"Mention politics and the Stasi roll up at your door."
Sadly we are pretty much there already, if you dare to post something less than glowing about UKIP on Twitter then they call the police to visit you and ask you to take it down...
And given recent election results showing our "wonderful" fellow countrymen seem determined to vote for these racist, sexist, homophobic,bigoted nazis, it's only going to get worse.
-
-
-
Thursday 22nd May 2014 13:12 GMT Wokstation
Mission creep and opting out
Bed down this idea, then change the T&C so it can listen for spoken keywords to "serve you more relevant content", those around the Facebooker may not have consented to having personal data processed. But oh so handy for the spooks.
Likely? Who knows. Possible? Unfortunately.
-
Thursday 22nd May 2014 13:27 GMT Anonymous Coward
Considering farcebook is one of the biggest potential sources for NSA/GCHQ potential data-mining, i can see that from the outset this system would be back ended with some form of ECHELON esk keyword scanning system.
Considering it will keep waking up the mic to listing in i cant see that its going to do mobile devices batterys much good either...
Google already though up a system like this long long ago and dropped it (supposedly).. due to the back lash..
http://tiny.cc/qmj9fx <-- Reg Story in 2006
-
Thursday 22nd May 2014 13:50 GMT Anonymous Coward
Since you cannot record a phone call without a legal requirement to inform the other party that you are doing so, presumably anyone running this application would be required to tell everyone within audio range that they were being monitored and get their explicit permission to be spied upon.
Do the morons who think up these stupid ideas have no conception of civilised behaviour?
Apparently not.
-
-
Thursday 22nd May 2014 16:13 GMT David L Webb
Re: [citation needed]
"Not true in either UK or federal US law. As long as one party knows about the recording, it's allowed (with some reasonable restrictions)."
One party to a phone call can record it for their own use without informing the other party but not if the information is to be made available to a third-party. In addition a business may be able to monitor calls made to their employees for a restricted set of purposes without informing the other party. However this would fall outside those provisions and would fall foul of the Regulation Investigatory Powers Act.
-
-
-
Thursday 22nd May 2014 14:29 GMT Anonymous Coward
newsagent selling beer is offlicense ?
Why does it seem that such things are allowed on the net :)
If I had a shop called jo's news agent and then started selling beer would I still have the rights to call myself a newsagent?
for a start I would loose consumers since they comin in looking for the paper and are presented with special brew
so time to go back to the acme drawing board facebook zucks and has always zucked and will aways continue to zuck away no matter what new spying gizmo they present as a good feature..
-
Thursday 22nd May 2014 16:25 GMT SVV
Seeing as I don't use Facebook
I can't wait for the first story about someone who's let all their workmates amd family join their network and then leaves their phone in the living room at the same time they're watching some particularly lurid porn film.
"Staus Update : Jim is currently watching Huge Hooters Vol 2"
-
Thursday 22nd May 2014 18:10 GMT Gannon (J.) Dick
So many questions ...
Does anyone know if they will be logging specific sex acts ?
Will ex-partners following the action on FB be forced to speculate that somewhere along the line you having atained specific adaquacy might not be as bad at that one as you once were ?
What's the netiquette ? Do you interuppt current spouses at practice or heap scorn on their pathetic attempts to suprise you with a better spousal user experience ? Being mean can cause serious long lasting damage to a marriage ...
-
Thursday 22nd May 2014 18:57 GMT Frank N. Stein
I have no interest in doing any sort of automated "back ground sharing" of anything I'm listening to, watching on TV, or discussing with anyone. Facebook can get it's ad dollars some other way, where I'm concerned. I will insure that this is turned off, by default in the Facebook app and if they disable the ability to turn this off, I'll just remove the app from my phone. As it is, I rarely use Facebook on my Phone. This nonsense guarantees that I don't user it.