Prompted by “Green Light Or No, Nest Cam Never Stops Watching”: http://yro.slashdot.org/story/15/11/24/222253/green-light-or-no-nest-cam-never-stops-watching
The truth is: the Nest Cam is never “off” despite an effort by Nest and its parent Google to make it appear otherwise. That, according to an analysis of the Nest Cam by the firm ABI Research, which found that turning the Nest Cam “off” using the associated mobile application only turns off the LED power indicator light on the front of the device. Under the hood, the camera continues to operate and, according to ABI researcher Jim Mielke, to monitor its surroundings: noting movement, sound and other activity when users are led to believe it has powered down.
This is what anyone embracing basically the cutting edge of technology has seriously invited into their private space.
In our society where reason abuse runs amok, the ability to trust the “good guys” (i.e. “legitimate” businesses) is highly questionable.
When your app wants basic grants to access your microphone and camera (and too many of them do, nonetheless with access to your videos, photos, messages, etc.), you can rest assured there’s a significant risk that your environment is continuously streaming data away from your life and into the questionable void (i.e. huge data marketplace fully disrespecting your desire for privacy) where you have no say anymore — effectively tagged as data cattle.
The common (more like unavoidable) license agreement that usually gets quickly approved by even the most reasonable people is a serious problem. Imagine a license that you must approve to use a product or service (one you need) that says the company can walk into your home whenever they want and steal from you.
You can laugh, if you want, but the licenses that too many of us are approving grant that authority in terms of data acquisition likely undesirable by you and yours (certainly by yours truly).
If you’re doing something embarrassing, for prime example, be careful not to do it in front of your smart television with a camera and microphone that’s always on — even when you turn it off.
I do everything in my power to resist this coercively sanctioned data theft, and that includes avoiding (too often easily hackable) home automation products/services that we’ve lived reasonably comfortable without throughout history.
I rarely use my smart phone aside from the most basic needs, because data security doesn’t exist. Aside from unavoidably granting access to your private life in “legitimate” form, the security of these devices is horrific. Android users, for very solid example, are vulnerable to a text messaging flaw so seriously serious (and unlikely to be fixed soon, memory serving), if you open just one maliciously crafted text message (that perhaps looks perfectly legit), literally your control over your phone is completely gone (perhaps, if not likely, without your knowledge).
When (or if) sanity ever arrives in the form of supremely powerful private data control products and services that promote the veil of privacy (as the prime selling point) with verification methods provided by other solely privacy-dedicated companies to avoid any conflict of interest — which means a supremely dominant data gate in my portable devices that keeps an eye on what apps are doing when I’m not at home (so I can quickly dump any portable app being abusive), and one of those gates at the main data output of my home (so I can dump any app or smart device being abusive) — then I’ll welcome the cutting edge of technological convenience into my life.
Maybe that product/service exists, but I’m guessing it’s still being offered to my geek side, so not conveniently accessible and leveraged by the many non-geeks desiring to protect themselves (and their families) from one of the (if not the) grossest mass invasions against respectable privacy.
Even with my best efforts in this regard, I remain perfectly confident that I would be horrified (but not surprised) by the level of detail forming one or more marketing profiles of yours truly that I have no access to (or control over) — one that describes me (including my patterns) in more detail than I (being the one actually living my life) ever could.
At least for all intents and purposes, we’ve all been idiotically tagged as data cattle. Is that really survival of the fittest, or survival of the stupidest until reality makes it agonizingly clear that humanity has no control against reality’s need for corruption and its balancing correction based upon the best application of mainstream physics (it’s all energy literally without objective distinction, and modulation itself demonstrates both imbalance and balance, and dissonance and harmony)?
In short, how bad are we the masses being played by a sometimes horrifyingly brutal reality as we way too often act like (and support other) childish fools dancing arrogantly confidently about as the energetic ocean of reality in our vicinity necessarily greatly recedes for the stupidly unpredicted tidal wave of correcting intelligence racing towards turning off at least humanity’s camera to pay for the arrogance as per nature’s license agreement?
I am an honest freak (or reasonably responsibly balanced "misfit", if you prefer) of an artist working and resting to best carefully contribute towards helping society. Too many people abuse reasoning (e.g. 'partial truth = whole truth' scam), while I exercise reason to explore and express whole truth without any conflict-of-interest -- all within a sometimes offbeat style of psychedelic artistry.
Spirit Wave Journal 
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