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nekusar | on: Root shell on Samsung TV
So... Wiretapping is pretty clear violation. And it's punished severely in most jurisdictions (eg: OpenAI engineer installing wiretaps).

So, this is wiretapping at a mass scale. Just how many crimes do the executive class occur before they get turned into the past-tense... The executed class?

I am for a corporate death penalty. Companies that engage in such mass criminal activities do not deserve to exist.

cowlevel | parent | next
Since you consented to it, legally it's not wiretapping.
bobbob1921 | parent | next
You really don’t even need corporate death penalty , just actual corporate hard time in jail
noptd | root | parent
¿Por qué no los dos?
ndriscoll | parent
Executive class? I expect there was at least one engineer involved that should be facing millions of counts of wiretapping, so a few million years in prison.
nekusar | root | parent
Found the C level.

There's plenty good reasons to have microphones in products. The simple obvious one is voice control. Legality and illegality all depends how it's used and controlled. And the company is controlling this remotely.

And your rank and file engineer or software dev is going to have low/no understanding of the subterfuge and illegality that the Executive class puts together as a final product. The features are possible, but the labor only knows their pieces. Executives are the ones selling illegally gotten data to "their 500 sponsors".

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3eb7988a1663 | root | parent
Ah yes, those completely blameless engineers who had no idea that the code they were writing to speak to third-party devices to record and upload voice would be used for uncouth purposes.

The rank-and-file do follow marching orders, but let us not pretend they are all innocent sheep who could not envision the true intentions of the design. "I just thought it would be a neat thing if all sounds in a room were recorded and uploaded to Samsung servers without bothering the end user!"