Here are LG's contract terms for appliances.[1] They are awful.
Not only can they listen in. You have a contractual requirement to tell everyone in range of an appliance that they may be eavesdropped upon.
CONSENT REQUIREMENT: You acknowledge and agree that it is your sole responsibility to obtain all necessary consents from any third parties whose voices may be captured by the Product and to notify household members and guests that their voices may be captured and processed, in compliance with applicable wiretapping, eavesdropping, and privacy laws. If anyone does not consent, you should disable the microphone or voice features in the settings. LGE disclaims any liability for your failure to obtain such consent or provide such notification.
IANAL but without concent I think LG is comitting a crime here. The owner who ostensibly agreed to obtain concent through the ToS might be breaking their agreement, but wouldn't that be a separate issue?
ToS and other click licenses have been making shit up for way too long.
A strong implication of this consent implicitly involves the device recording me when I tell the device to record me.
If the device is recording me all the time and silently uploading it, and I'm not aware, I can't give my consent. That's wiretapping, zero-person-consent.
Ask how you (or for that matter, a jury) would feel about your phone doing the same.
IANAL, but I believe the argument is that agreeing to the TOS constitutes consent. Even though no reasonable person would believe such a thing would be in the TOS and no reasonable person reads the full TOS (no person actually could...).
Perhaps we start suing one another for not disclosing the wire tapping, forcing the lawsuit upwards towards LG. It'd be more efficient to sue LG, but lawyers don't seem to be done those things. At least not that I'm aware of
IANAL, but only the owner can consent through the TOS. The owner does not collect or process the data, so it's entirely on LG to ensure proper consent, not the owner. Breaking a TOS is not a crime, and can only be punished by restricting or disallowing access to a service, but collecting personal data without consent is a huge problem in the EU.
It’s clearly unreasonable to assume that LG can know and procure consent from everyone you choose to allow into your living room.
It’s reasonable to push the burden of procuring that consent onto whoever controls entry to the space, with terms like this.
As a thought experiment, let’s take a service like Zoom where you can record video of participants. It’s reasonable to say “you’re operating the camera, if someone appears in the background, it’s your responsibility to make sure they’re informed and consent to the recording”. In fact, trying to establish the identity of the person in the background for the purposes of procuring consent is probably a greater intrusion on privacy than not.
The problem here is different. The problem is that the volume of data being collected is clearly unnecessary for achieving the purposes it’s intended for.
> It’s reasonable to push the burden of procuring that consent onto whoever controls entry to the space, with terms like this.
I don’t agree. I think if consent can’t be obtained, the only reasonable action here is to not collect the information.
The comparison to a zoom meeting is not 100% because if you’re walking past such a camera, you’re pretty likely to notice it and have the option to not step into view or obscure your face.
I think the legal argument would be that the owner of the recording device (in this case the TV) was informed and therefore responsible for informing others.
The question I think would centre on two things: is burying the information in a ToS acceptable for “informing” and is the amount of data collection proportionate for providing the service. I think the answers to both those is no.
I agree with your framing of the two problems, but I’d add a third: It is a large mistake to assume that the person installing the TV (thus agreeing to the ToS) is going to be present whenever it is being used around new people. It just assumes too much about the way people organize their lives, homes, purchases.
> It’s clearly unreasonable to assume that LG can know and procure consent from everyone you choose to allow into your living room.
If only they had a big interface to ask the user to push [AGREE] to consent to be spied upon. I would call it a RemoteVision and put the button in a wireless TeleControl so the user can easily agree every time they turn on the device.
We might not have the technological capabilities for this, but one can dream.
I<3ANAL but even if the owner agrees to the TOS, there’s no way other users or guests are verifiably consenting or any way for LG to verify before collecting data.
I could hit someone and say it was someone else’s fault, but delusion isn’t a legal defense.
Various courts have already invalidated clauses of click-through agreements that no reasonable person would expect to find in such an agreement.
Terms of service are not an absolute "I'm rubber you're glue" type shield against all possible accusations of wrongdoing, however much companies would love us to believe they are.
> Even though no reasonable person would believe such a thing would be in the TOS
Even if they did, it's a bad to let clickthrough TOS subvert laws and privacy. This idea that contracts can dismiss all other considerations needs to die.
Maybe? If they aren't we should change our laws so that they would be. We don't have to normalize or accept companies wiretapping and spying on people just because spying makes those companies more profit.
Is a tesla spying on you by default and uploading onboard audio and video? If so, yes definitely that is a crime.
If the Tesla is monitoring for whether you are awake behind the wheel and sounds the alarm without that information ever leaving the car, that is another thing entirely.
What's absurd is that this doesn't void the terms by default. There should be limits to what companies can put in their ToS beyond which those terms aren't enforceable.
The problem is the ToS can be overruled by the law. But you can still put wild stuff in there without consequence, it just won't hold up in court of course. However this makes it so that companies use the ToS as a scare tactic to deter people going to court in the first place, "look you agreed to us being able to do something illegal, you will lose court against our expensive lawyers".
ToS from a lot of tech companies say the wildest shit that doesn't hold up in court and they should get a penalty for putting that into these documents, as it is misleading and misrepresenting the agreement that the customer has with them.
Until some responsibility for illegal statements in the ToS happens I will read most comments from a ToS with a grain of salt and a lot of skepticism.
What's even crazier is that companies doing this have a full team of lawyers, they know it won't hold up in court, but they also know there are no consequences for deliberately put things there that won't hold up in court.
A bit more crazy that they are gambling on the likelihood of winning in case they are actually challenged, cementing a twisted precedent just to keep the next quarter on trend.
Losing in court also represents such a ridiculously small portion of the profits they amassed because of such practices that it's actually illogical not to break the law.
Because LG is a large corporation and if there is something we have learned (or had proven) in 2026 is that laws don't apply if you oligarch hard enough.
Actually LG is not just a large corporation or even a oligarch, it is one of the major south korean chaebol groups and therefore has way more power in the legal and political space.
Unfortunately, no. Common law requires famously very little consideration for a contract to be valid [1]. I can sign a contract where I give $100 and am given a penny back and that'd be valid consideration.
tempted to go into my nearest big box electronics store and then sue them when they don't tell me the LG tv's they have on display are eavesdropping on me.
They have video surveillance signs. Audio is a different category in a lot of states. In California, it's illegal to record audio without consent of all of the parties, and I believe you can get a civil remedy of $5000 for this.
IANAL. In states with multi or all-party consent, there is usually some wording like "reasonable expectation" of privacy, which you don't have in public by default. The store could argue you have no expectation of privacy there, so they can record audio. There might be other legal codes, but I think this is how smart doorbell manufacturers are allowed to operate in those states.
> (c) For the purposes of this section, “confidential communication” means any communication carried on in circumstances as may reasonably indicate that any party to the communication desires it to be confined to the parties thereto, but excludes a communication made in a public gathering or in any legislative, judicial, executive, or administrative proceeding open to the public, or in any other circumstance in which the parties to the communication may reasonably expect that the communication may be overheard or recorded.
Is that actually for smart tvs? The first paragraph includes "the products you may access or otherwise connect to via the ThinQ mobile application (not including Smart TVs)" and "These Terms of Use do not apply to any other LG products or services, including Smart Media Products."
[EDIT] Smart Media products terms appear to be at https://us.lgappstv.com/main/terms (for comparison here's UK: https://gb.lgappstv.com/main/terms, there are some other EU versions available for e.g. Germany but I imagine UK terms should be quite close and more accessible for most of readers)
> 8. I understand that LGE will retain the collected Voice Information for 6 months to fulfil the purposes for which we collected it, and after this period, it will be deleted or anonymized, depending on the case.
> 9. I understand that this Smart Media Product is a household device. If this Smart Media Product will be used by more than one person, I represent that, in addition to agreeing to this Agreement, that I have obtained consent from all other members of my household whose information may be collected through this Smart Media Product and am providing consent on their behalf.
These (and other TOS agreements) fall under the category of "adhesion contracts".
Because the buyer has no real ability to negotiate, any ambiguity is resolved in their favor. A judge can also strike provisions that a reasonable buyer would not expect, or that are unconscionable. So it's up to the judge's judgment.
The cooler thing is that if a substantial amount of the 216M TV owners tried to arbitrate across the country/world, they'd cave so fast. Arbitration is cheaper than an individual law suit, but much much more expensive than a class-action.
I have an LG TV. It has been pestering me with those licensing agreements from time to time, but interestingly enough, I was only required to agree to fairly reasonable basics, everything else I just ignored and left for later.
I'm guessing this is an oversight and the TV does record, but then this is criminal. But, nobody will bother to prosecute them I guess...
Can you actually even turn and keep the microphone off or does it toggle itself back on like Apple's Wifi and Bluetooth one-touch toggle off for now buttons?
Good design communicates even without language. It is reasonable to see a toggle switch and think it... you know... toggles. The same reason you see a handle on a door a pill before you read the sign that says push. The sign is literally there because the physical design is telling you something different. It is literally mixed signals.
Apple could have done many different things to make the design clearer. Hell, if they really wanted to keep the toggle like design, make it look like a spring.
But no matter what, the current design is abhorrent because they use the same design language for a temporary toggle and a real toggle. It doesn't take a genius to figure out why people get confused. It is also crazy considering how much Apple prides themselves on design. If it was good design, you wouldn't need the sign...
Marvin was able to touch the surface of the ship and open up an entry hatchway, and the interior of the ship was completely black. There were black controls labelled in black, on a black background, with a little light that lit up black, which made it difficult to control the ship. The ceiling and walls of the swaying cabin were also black, as well as the seats, control panel, the instruments and the little screws that held them in place. The thin tufted nylon floor covering was black, and when a corner of the foam underlay was lifted up that was also discovered to be was black.
Notice the bluetooth toggle only says it disconnects bluetooth devices until tomorrow. It doesnt turn off bluetooth because there is a profit incentive to keep all devices meshing for use in FindMy and AirTags and all that.
Same with WiFi. It doesnt even turn WiFi off, it just "disconnects" but keeps WiFi searching and whatever else. Why not have the option to make the toggle actually do the same thing as having to go all the way to Settings to do when the intention is clear and obvious?
Why does it take 2 presses and going a level deep to turn off something when the easy toggle makes it so smooth and easy to turn on which is conveniently the behavior they want
I'd claim it is a bit worse. They use dark patterns here. You can see in another sibling's comment that we disagree on this but I think Apple is teaching the user the wrong thing. And I agree with you that actually disabling is confusing and difficult unless you've already learned their pattern. But at that point it is still needlessly cumbersome, which I'd still call a dark pattern
Could you sketch a spring-loaded button? I just have a hard time imagining how could this time dimension be added properly to a button - not that I would disagree with you in general.
Also, is this really different from a button that reflects state? E.g. you have a battery saver button that automatically turns on at <20%, is that fundamentally different than a button that resets to a given value at 0:00? I genuinely don't know, just asking questions here.
For the sideways toggle switches, the usual single line.
For the buttons when you pull down the menu, literally any physical change would help, not just color and a message. Highlight the circular edge and make it work like a count down. Make it a polygon instead of a circle. Rotate the symbol in that count down. There's a million ways to do it differently
> Good design communicates even without language. It is reasonable to see a toggle switch and think it... you know... toggles.
Yes, good design needs no language. However, it's not reasonable to see a toggle and think it's a permanent toggle. Esp, when it's a button. There are many buttons in the world which doesn't toggle. In iOS, a toggle is also different from a button.
> Apple could have done many different things to make the design clearer.
They did, actually. They added clear messaging, think about a LCD screen on top of a button, and have iconography communicating the status clearly.
> But no matter what, the current design is abhorrent...
I'll respectfully disagree here with you.
> ...because they use the same design language for a temporary toggle and a real toggle.
Sorry to disagree, but this is not true:
- Enabled: Blue background
- Temporary disconnect: White background
- Disable: Line through icon.
Also, again, a real toggle has a different design in iOS, you know, which looks like a Braun inspired sliding switch.
> In iOS, a toggle is also different from a button.
Yet they're all circles
> They added clear messaging
And it's common to put pull/push signs on doors. That doesn't fix design.
> Sorry to disagree, but this is not true:
If that was enough we wouldn't be having this conversation. It's not a few people being annoyed/confused either. I'd wager if you asked professional designers outside Apple that they'd agree that they don't communicate well.
They're inconsistent:
- Radio buttons are blue when on but white when temporary disabled
- all other buttons are white while enabled
- cellular is green when enabled
- battery saver is yellow when enabled
- airplane mode is orange when enabled
- the icon is red for rotate lock and silent
- white background means both enabled and temporary disabled
- on most of the radio buttons they're blue when enabled and white when temporary, no off
- on others (vpn, rotate, silent, battery, etc) white background while enabled
- personal hotspot, satellite, silent, and automotive cues have a cross out when disabled
- nothing else does
- that includes radio things like VPN and airplane
Do I really need to continue? I trust you can find more on your own.
I also want to remind you that some people are colorblind.
Additionally that there are shapes other than circles and ellipses
> If that was enough we wouldn't be having this conversation. It's not a few people being annoyed/confused either. I'd wager if you asked professional designers outside Apple that they'd agree that they don't communicate well.
Maybe we can try, why not?
> Do I really need to continue? I trust you can find more on your own.
I mean, I'm a bit tired right now, but will try tomorrow.
> They're inconsistent:
I don't think so: Anything broadcasts signal is blue, anything cellular is green, and since Airplane mode disables every radio transmission, it's orange. It makes sense for me.
> white background means both enabled and temporary disabled.
If something is enabled with a white background, it's icon has color. If something is temporarily disabled, its icon becomes transparent.
> personal hotspot, satellite, silent, and automotive cues have a cross out when disabled
Is it only my stupid brain thinks that a cross out means "unavailable", independent of the reason? It may have been turned off, can't be turned on.
Also, many of the radio-related settings has text next to it. Not available, turned off, disabled, etc.
> I also want to remind you that some people are colorblind.
Thanks for reminding me the following:
- Settings -> Accessibility -> Display & Text Size -> Differentiate without color.
- Settings -> Accessibility -> Display & Text Size -> Color filters.
I have seen device used by a completely blind person who only communicated with the device via touch and voice. It was slow (phone has to talk a lot), but he was not incapable. He used it way better than me.
So, I'll be dead honest: I'm happy with the design language of current iPhone. Is it perfect? No, but its use of color and clustering things make me way faster on using it. A regular grid with thin icons as used in Android is way more slower for my tiny brain, I'm not intelligent, sorry.
We might not agree, and we don't have to. This is what propels world forward, but we don't have to be this angry while disagreeing. We talked about cardiac arrest with a friend today. It's painful for everyone involved.
VPN is blue in the radio box but not if you put it in the main menu. I'd also claim that a VPN doesn't broadcast
OTOH personal hotspot, which does broadcast, is white.
I think the display pattern is at least partially location dependent.
> Thanks for reminding me the following
Thanks, I didn't know about these. I've only been on an iPhone for 2 years but really missing Android (but not Google).
Though the first one doesn't seem to do anything for me. What's it supposed to do?
> A regular grid with thin icons as used in Android is way more slower for my tiny brain
Android has its own problems lol. I'm not going to say they're perfect. I'll complain about them too.[0]
> We might not agree, and we don't have to. This is what propels world forward, but we don't have to be this angry while disagreeing.
You're right, I got too heated, and I'll apologize for that. Thanks for keeping your cool and calling me out. I really respect that and it's something I think we need to do more frequently.
Because to your bigger point, you're right. No single one of us knows the "perfect solution" (not just one exists). And I'm sorry to hear about your friend.
[0] I think engineers should always be a little grumpy, because it's how we improve things. We fix our frustrations. But I'm not trying to say angry or hateful. There's productive arguing and fighting.
> we know better for you so we’ll adjust the behavior accordingly
9/10 times I've used this setting, what I've actually wanted was to temporarily change the behavior. This just saves me from the need to remember to undo it (which I won't remember in a timely manner).
This isn't "we know better than you" paternalistic control - the default/easy behavior should cater to the actions and situation we do regularly. I'm sure they do, in fact, know that for most of their customers, when they disable wifi it's because that user wants to temporarily disconnect from the current wifi, but will want to use wifi shortly after, but won't necessarily remember to go into settings and re-enable.
It should be symmetrically facile to do both behaviors, assuming there's not an invisible thumb on the scale that wants to procedurally force you to make the choice most in the company's interest. But its not.
It is more effortful, more complex, and requires greater care to actually get Wifi and Bluetooth to the OFF state than ON, or ON+CONNECTED. Respectfully, that is backwards, it should be the easiest thing to turn something off.
Yet, here there is needless nuance added because there is a benefit to the company that the device is either chronically or as much as possible connected to the internet, connected to bluetooth, low battery mode is off, and if they cant have it connected to the internet and bluetooth, well, at least keep the beaconing on and sending out signals and at least meshing so advertisers and stores and their own Find/lost services are still able to benefit.
Thats not even getting into passive Fingerprinting and secondary furtive location tracking. I was surprised to learn that having bluetooth on identifies your device to stores and anyone else who can track bluetooth devices in range. Even when you toggled off bluetooth, you're still being profiled. I wonder if actually going into settings and turning off bluetooth or wifi even totally stops the device from continuing to signal in all ways, it would be unsurprising if thats another UI nicety that doesnt actually mean what it says or implies
> It is more effortful, more complex, and requires greater care to actually get Wifi and Bluetooth to the OFF state than ON, or ON+CONNECTED. Respectfully, that is backwards, it should be the easiest thing to turn something off.
Why?
I get you have some principled opinions or deep belief about tracking or betrayal from corporations or something. That’s nice.
But why should it be easier to do the things that people don’t want to do often instead of the things that people do want to do often?
Good UI makes repeated actions easier than rare actions. That is good UI because it makes the common action easier, conspiracy theory about tracking and fingerprinting be damned.
Iwhy is it harder to turn off something than to turn it on + connect it + handle all the complexities involved with that?
Why is OFF so complicated and nuanced, why would they put out something where even toggling something doesnt turn off the beaconing function where its not OFF and even tho its DISCONNECTED, its not OFF?
Why does it need to stay ON (albeit DISCONNECTED, altho theres no evidence thats even true) if theres no benefit to it being ON as you've said?
A bunch of the morons out there who turn off wifi out in public because they read some random NYPost article about it "tracking" you, would then be bitching to Apple and/or their cell carriers about why their performance is so bad at home when it doesn't auto-join wifi overnight.
I would agree with you that it should operate like a dumb toggle if they didn't have the notification saying that it would auto re-enable again.
So do you agree with it pestering you to enable iCloud if you dont want to and the fact that one of the options "allows" you to delay being asked again to accept something you never want is ok since it has the notification that it will try again later as implied by Not Now (but we'll try it again ad finitum later and circle back until you consent to Yes)?
The user expects it to turn off bluetooth or turn off wifi, the backwards way is saying the user presses the toggle and the disclaimer sets not only their expectation but in what I think you're saying, the "reasonable" or logical expectation, which thats not how it works, and its not even logical.
There is a toggle showing the Wifi symbol and the bluetooth symbol, you toggle it means you want to turn it on or off, it doesnt show wifi connections glyph or bluetooth connections glyph, it shows the symbolic representation of that underlying larger function/mode of your phone. You expect when you turn it off it disconnects and stops trying to send that particular signal since you made a concrete choice (you thought) to turn it off. Same with Low Energy mode, if I toggle that it means I want it on until I toggle it off, not when battery is 80% or when phone is turned off and on again. You expect state persistance until you change it.
Its like saying when you try to unsubscribe from a service, ok you've disconnected from your subscription (but in fine print) it will be back next month or some other arbitrary merchant prescribed date. No, it will be back when I say I want it back and make the necessary active effort to reestablish or change that.
I want you to try this experiment:
1. Toggle WiFi and BlueTooth from your command centre thing
2. Go to > Settings
3. What information is shown for Wifi and for Blutooth?
It will likely say something "No connection". Phew, I guess it worked. Alright, lets call it a day.
But wait?
4. Tap each one and voila, both should show the green On toggle status. You have not turned off Wifi or Bluetooth, it has merely "disconnected" them, depending on your Wifi settings it will likely try to autojoin your known hotspot and they're back in business likely well before the automatic "tomorrow reconnect" comes that the toggle ostensibly sets in motion
Its not technically lying but the expectation when you turn off a toggle is it turns off that which you physically and intended to toggle. This abdicates that reasonable expectation and twists it ridiculously.
Its bad enough that theres no easy optionto actually turn it off short of automating it, its just sneaky and a clear conflict of interest
Same deal with Low Battery Mode or whatever, it always tries to get you off it, back to the Green battery icon at the top bar of your screen. Battery is 80% charged, thats enough for you, back to waste energy doing more of the stuff thats good for us and bad for your battery, Mac at least has always but its always trying to assert what is sufficent or enough for you even when there is a clear preference of the user, if it mattered to them that they were aligning with your preference and not working against you they could easily evaluate that but thats contrary to their interest
TL;DR: I understand you and your frustrations, but I use Apple devices exactly because of the opinions of it. Not everyone hates these behaviors with a passion of a thousand suns.
Long version:
We have different expectations from our systems. I personally use Mac laptops as well, and Apple devices use P2P wireless and Bluetooth for so many little things you use everyday, so when I click it and it explicitly prints "Disconnecting from Bluetooth devices until tomorrow" prominently, I'm happy with the functionality. If I want to turn it off, I can go to settings from control center in three taps at most.
About your experiment:
- When I disconnect Bluetooth for a day, it shows Bluetooth as on and adds a note: "New Bluetooth connections have been turned off from Control Center." It has a big button above it: "Allow New Connections".
- When I disconnect Wi-Fi for a day, it shows Wireless as on and adds a note: "New Wi-Fi network connections have been turned off from Control Center". Clicking a network to join makes it connect again.
If I open an app using Bluetooth while it's disconnected, it shows a dialogue saying that new connections are disabled, but app needs new connections. You can enable it on the spot.
Unless you give explicit permission, it never connects to a wireless network or Bluetooth device. A couple of times I forgot that I disabled the connections and wondered why it didn't connect to wireless network at home. Same for Bluetooth. I wondered why it asked me to enable it, then remembered that I turned off connections.
When you're running on low power mode, half of the features of the iPhone shuts down from 5G to mail fetch and beyond. HDR display is disabled, system FPS is halved, etc. etc. It's of course natural something wanting to run at normal speed. However, on busy days, I click it once in the morning and never think about it.
I never understand the general anger about something not working as expected. I understand where you are coming from, but the primary reason I'm using Apple hardware is "I already manage a thousand servers, I don't want another one to manage in my pocket".
That thing takes care of itself, let it be backups, updates and whatnot. Yes, Apple devices has their opinions and some users might not agree with that, but another thing I don't understand is, how it's good when some free software has its opinions and how it's bad when the source is closed? I mean, everything has opinions and a set modus operandi, and Apple devices work that way.
For once, I like how that thing works and I can just depend on it.
For the battery life thing, my old iPhone X lasted 4+ years per battery, and I used that one for 10 years until its battery gave up, and I didn't aggressively manage that one. My current one lasts two days despite me capping its charge at 80%, and not using power save mode aggressively.
I mean, being this judgemental and angry about a computer is bad for your health. Nobody forces anyone to buy these things, and there are choices. At the end of the day, it's a computer, but its form factor and hardware quality is top notch, I'll give them that. If you really want to use an Apple device, being open minded and giving the default settings a go is always a good idea. I like to have an open mind about things. I mean, things evolve and new things sounding stupid sometimes works so well that leaves the user baffled. I'd rather try and don't like a setting or let my habits change than being an old man yelling proverbial cloud.
Also how do you explain the constant nags to Enable iCloud with the only options being eithet Yes, or Not Now (but we'll bring it up regularly until you say yes)?
Isnt that sort of disrespectful or comtemptuous of the concept of consent? If i dont want something, its a bit weird to force me to keep saying no not now...but yes is forever. Little rapey isnt it? If i want it i will seek it out, its just cynical to not offer a more redpectful permanent no option. Love to hear your thoughts about how im wrong about what i want and bring treated like i only have two contrived choices rather than a true third no option that takes me out of the sales pipeline forseeably
> Also how do you explain the constant nags to Enable iCloud with the only options being eithet Yes, or Not Now (but we'll bring it up regularly until you say yes)?
While I find iCloud useful and use it regularly, I don't think nagging people until they break is a good thing to do. I didn't setup a new Apple account or a new Apple device from scratch since forever (I migrate forward so I don't setup anything), so I didn't know that Apple resorted doing that. Sad.
> Love to hear your thoughts about how im wrong about what i want and bring treated like i only have two contrived choices rather than a true third no option that takes me out of the sales pipeline forseeably
Thanks for your prejudice, but I'm not that person you're thinking I am. No offense taken though, but I feel obliged to remind you this: https://xkcd.com/438/
The issue is its training people to be ok with basically being lied to about what their device does and doesnt do, and hiding things from them that can hurt their own personal interest in favor of the company. Thats backwards but I guess thats the price of convenience people are willing to pay so it all works out I suppose
The thing is, there's no lie, but if you want to frame it like that, I won't argue further. A different icon, a clear message on top, more notes in respective settings pages doesn't fit into my framing of lying, to be honest.
You may not like the behavior or design choices of a certain piece of hardware, that's also OK, but labeling behavior as something which is not is wrong IMHO.
There is a reason why Snowden cuts the internal microphones and cameras out of his mobile phones. I suppose you can permanently turn off the TV's microphone(or microphones) in the same fashion.
there is a tiny physical switch right next to the power button on my lg tv that supposedly turns off the tv microphone. the remote mic has no such switch though
But isn't it the same as Facebook letting you consent (without actually reading the ToS) that your friends on that freshly-uploaded photo agreed to appear online and have their face scanned?
Clearly not. A person posting a picture is performing an explicit act of sharing a specific piece of content. Even in the case where the person doesn't know what that entails, they have made a choice to share specific content. With smart TVs it will be unclear to the person that recording is even happening, much less how that data is used and for what purpose - so the likelihood of them realizing that data is being shared or that they need to show consideration for how data about others in presence of the TV is shared will be close to nil.
> The law has been unable to keep up with tech changes.
Nah, for the most part the law has been unable to keep up with (or choose to oppose) corporate power, and new ways it's being used. Usually there's no magic quantum doohickey which demands fundamentally new legal theory.
For example, take this TV spyware thing, and rewind to the year 1986, and imagine RCA started selling televisions with microphones in them that recorded what was in your room and radioed it back to headquarters for some reason.
Obviously the costs wouldn't have worked at the time, but is there anything that was missing in our ability to describe the risks and wrongness? The concepts of privacy and consent, contracts and monopolies, ownership and licensing... They were all there 40 years ago.
In other words, the bee in my bonnet involves how the phrase "keeping up with the technology" sometimes becomes way to shift blame and a false target. It distracts us from the immediate political alignment problem towards a nebulous future technological one, which is so ill-defined it can never arrive. ("Once technology finally stops changing, then we'll legislate for our individual constituents' rights.")
> imagine RCA started selling televisions with microphones in them that recorded what was in your room and radioed it back to headquarters for some reason
The problem is that there are real use cases (whether you want them yourself or not) for having an always-on microphone that phones home. The discussion for regulators and lawmakers then becomes about how the data is handled, and that is where they get left in the dust.
Keep all the processing on device? Do so in a way that is legal in the jurisdiction you are selling the devices in without claiming it's the owner's responsibility to get consent from all individuals (even if they cannot legally consent because they are, say, a child!?) to comply with wiretapping laws in their own home? Choose not to sell an object that comes with software made to spy on you and sell all it learns to advertisers?
That fact that you read something like this as acceptable "legal boilerplate" just shows how, very sadly in my opinion, invasions of privacy have been normalized by these corporations.
In a place where recording audio requires consent from all parties, I don't think it matters whether "all the processing is on-device" given that the law was probably written with tape recorders in mind. If I buy a device that can record audio, and place it in my home where unsuspecting guests are recorded by it, whether that recording is transmitted to the manufacturer or stays within my home seems irrelevant.
> 8. I understand that LGE will retain the collected Voice Information for 6 months to fulfil the purposes for which we collected it, and after this period, it will be deleted or anonymized, depending on the case.
Somehow feels like it might be used for more than just wake word detection.
Apple (and Google, and most others) process wake words on device. Imagine the technical complexity and expense of a billion devices streaming audio that is like 0.01% wake words.
Not only can they listen in. You have a contractual requirement to tell everyone in range of an appliance that they may be eavesdropped upon.
CONSENT REQUIREMENT: You acknowledge and agree that it is your sole responsibility to obtain all necessary consents from any third parties whose voices may be captured by the Product and to notify household members and guests that their voices may be captured and processed, in compliance with applicable wiretapping, eavesdropping, and privacy laws. If anyone does not consent, you should disable the microphone or voice features in the settings. LGE disclaims any liability for your failure to obtain such consent or provide such notification.
[1] https://www.lg.com/us/terms