I am worried that Microsoft may use this to spy on us. Not necesarely immeadiately or constantly, but it may happen. And I read this part of the terms of service of the current kinect that got me a bit worried.

If you accept the agreement, you “expressly authorize and consent to us accessing or disclosing information about you, including the content of your communications, in order to: (a) comply with the law or respond to lawful requests or legal process; (b) protect the rights or property of Microsoft, our partners, or our customers, including the enforcement of our agreements or policies governing your use of the Service; or (c) act on a good faith belief that such access or disclosure is necessary to protect the personal safety of Microsoft employees, customers, or the public.”

“You should not expect any level of privacy concerning your use of the live communication features (for example, voice chat, video and communications in live-hosted gameplay sessions) offered through the Service.” They obviously won’t – and can’t – monitor every single system at the same time, but they say that they have the right to do so “to the maximum extent permitted by law.”

Microsoft also “reserves the right at all times to disclose any information as necessary to satisfy any applicable law, regulation, legal process or governmental request, or to edit, refuse to post or to remove any information or materials, in whole or in part, in Microsoft’s sole discretion.”

Source

Do you think it's possible?

Do you put a piece of tape over your webcam?

Anyways, they'd probably get hit with a lawsuit pretty quickly if they did use it to spy on people.

Flip the camera to point away?

I'm sure it is possible. Microsoft may also be listening to your Xbox party chats and watching your Skype video calls. It's the reality of today's world, for better or for worse (aka for worse). Google can do the same thing with your emails, and facebook with your personal information.

Could you not cover the kinect? Just because it must be plugged in does not mean you need to use it for the interface.

@alekss:

You should be more paranoid about that webcam I'm watching you through.

I mean what.

@skytylz: no, but I don't need it connected when using my PC. Also, I know a thing or two about computers so I have some asurance it's not sending anything. It could be used to spy on me if someone really wanted toe, but it didn't come with a "Yo, we can watch you" terms of use.

ive been posting jokes about this for a while, the ps4 has the same thing going on. its the same thing as the iphone, you cant fully turn it off, and it can always be accessed by another outside entity and the data taken and the voice and video recorded without the persons knowledge. also, please everyone take a moment to google stellar wind.. if you want to have everything you do and say recorded 24/7 please keep supporting this kind of technology, and voting for red team or blue team, and watching your day time television and talk shows and CNN / fox . and staying asleep until you find your freedom taken away completely.

video games

It may seem a bit paranoid, but if you're really apprehensive about it just put a cloth over the camera and muffle the mic when you're not actively using it.

Turn the camera towards a wall. Unplug it when you're not using it.

@alekss: Just do what paranoid or old people do with laptops and put a piece of tape over the camera.

You should probably be more worried about the cell phone in your pocket than you should a Kinect.

of course i am paranoid about this. anyone who has ever read 1984 is paranoid about this.

if the info on tuesday was all the info we got before we had to make a decision between a ps4 and a one, i don't think i would be buying a console. knowing that there will be oodles more info in the future, that will change, but seeing that the kinect always has to be connected means i will not be buying an xbox one.

devices like this are alarming to me. i don't care that if i skype my brother or parents or whatever on the xbone that they are listening because i have nothing to hide. that isn't the point. the point is that it isn't their business to be listening to anything i say to anyone ever. if the only recourse i have is to not purchase their devices, then that is my choice. it would be my choice to stop playing games altogether than have something like that in my home.

If they wanna see me and my fiance "get comfortable" on the couch or me playing a new Dance Central naked, then fine by me.
Your move, Microsoft employee, show me your skills.

Or play all games naked.

@the_laughing_man: That will surely teach those pervs at Micro$oft to never spy on your household again.

Who is going to spy on you and why? seems a crazy thing to get paranoid over. Yes its fucked up but it'll never happen. The amount of manpower and resources to monitor all this spyshit would be crazy, not to mention people would find out and sue the shit out of them.

I wouldnt worry about it too much.

its not really like that. look at how google works and spies on you. there are programs in place to gather information in an automated way. all they need is a massive database, and some way to collect the data from the grid of communication devices , and they have a surveillance system covering everyone. if they need to deem someone a terrorist or a threat to national security or whatever all they need to do is go into the database, and get a program to find keywords in the audio/text logs and bam. youre in a fema camp. this stuff is all done in the name of security. give up your rights as a human being so that we can protect you.

@tarsier: why FEMA camp exactly? isn't that the department which helps people with disasters?

I mean I never got this part of that conspiracy theory, why wouldn't it be run by the FBI or something

@alekss: It was a joke man.

I think it's more about collecting marketing information about who watches what TV, videos, etc, how many people are in the room, what are they doing, are they paying attention or talking through the show? Data they can sell for cash to marketing firms if they are able to collect enough of it to be statistically significant. It's just a bonus that they can also identify individuals and tie that back to demographic information thru the gamer tag registration.

my assumption is that you can still just play games with the kintect unplugged. that may be a bad assumption. we shall see.

Well tracking typed words and searches and web history can be done by programs. Watching people through a kinect camera needs to be done by a person, sure you can have sorta weird programs do a base level scan, but you'd still have to look at everything with a person to determine if its real.

And no, they need alot more than you saying keywords to throw you into a jail. I have a few friends who think like you and i mess with them all the time by sending them texts saying things that would OBVIOUSLY trigger a keyword database search, they freak out, its funny. They're so paranoid, and if that really happened, i woulda been kidnapped by crazy CIA guys months ago.

Duuuuuude i thought it was MY turn to creepily watch him from the shadows. Jeez way to steal my thunder.

HOW DO WE KNOW YOU HAVEN'T AND ARE A PLANT TO GET US KIDNAPPED BY CRAZY CIA GUYS.

Can you imagine the negative publicity if they did this and it was discovered? And it would be discovered. Because people are smart. People can reverse engineer things. It would come out

Microsoft aren't stupid enough to do that. Plus they have little to gain. What do they get from watching me sit in my underwear eating Doritos? Nothing. Heck, if they want to watch me eat Doritos in my underwear, they're more than welcome to.

Dear Bill Gates: please come sit in the corner of the room whilst I eat Doritos in my underwear.

This post comes to you sponsored by Doritos.

People are way too paranoid these days.

"Damn there sure are a lot of Doritos ads on my Xone dashboard...."

-MattyFTM, 2013

You've learned too much, expect a knock at your door later tonight!

Well let me give you a real world example that might not seem so paranoid, an example I'm not proud of but is relevant nonetheless. I used to work at a law firm and one of our specialties was suing people for libel and slander committed anonymously online. Sometimes our clients would be business owners trying to go after someone who said something false about their business on some forum. Sometimes they were just a rich person who got in a flame war and decided they were going to really ruin someone's year by suing them. We were also approached by various anti-piracy outfits to see if we would work with them.

In all these instances, the first step is to file a complaint in court against a Jon Doe or various Does. Once that's done we can then start a series of subpoenas against websites or ISP's to identify the real world identity behind an online identity. In theory, if I found someone's email address and I suspected that they had an xbox live account, I could then subpoena Microsoft for information leading to the account holder's identity. One client we had wasn't even interested in recovering monetary damages for defamation, he just wanted to dig up dirt on a business competitor and then make it public in documents filed with the court.

The point is that digital information can be obtained if someone wants to go after it. Today you may be confident that you have nothing to fear but you can't know what you will be doing in the future. In the meantime, we need to have reassurances from the companies we trust with our personal lives that they do have their consumer's best interests at heart.

I don't know why you'd be paranoid about the new Kinect. It's just a camera and microphone... that can monitor your heartbeat by detecting blood flow under your skin. And it can read your emotions through your facial expressions. And it has night vision. And it's always on and regularly sending data to Microsoft. There's nothing creepy about that.

what I don't get it is if you're really that paranoid about microsoft learning some deep dark secret about you... turn it off? when, you know, you're not playing it or if you're hiding a body in one of your floorboards?

I don't think it's an issue unless it forces you to be in view of the Kinect at all times. Then I know I would be paranoid about Microsoft spying on me.

Just hang a picture of Bobby Kotick in front of it.

I think it's a legitimate concern to not want to be monitored by a corporation. If Microsoft were selling an Xbox without the Kinect and you were scared that they were recording you with a secret camera/mic, that would be paranoia. They are literally intending to collect data on you with an actual camera and microphone. It's not paranoid to be wary of that.

Privacy rights are obviously are complex issue, but Microsoft seems to want to set increasingly invasive standards.

But it only has enough secret storage for 24 hours of recording, that's why you have to go online every 24 hours! :o

@boj4ngles: And did you ever watch people through their webcams or kinect?

Fuck if they wanted to see me play call of duty naked all they had to do was ask

Microsoft hasn't had the greatest record with security either. The last thing I want is some douche hacker getting access to my Kinect to use it to harass me or my family. If the Kinect wasn't such an integral part of the system, I would just disconnect it and not worry. From what I've heard so far though, that's not really an option if you want to use Xbone.

Edit: I have to add that I think the Kinect is super cool and could be amazing for horror games and such. If Microsoft could at least insure that we can play offline and that no Kinect video/audio is recorded, than I really wouldn't mind. But as is, Kinect + Always On + Potential for devs to force Always Online while playing = I'm very worried.

Sure it's possible. Perhaps not probable, and if used would be likely really mundane things like how many people play at once on average.

I don't expect they'd be able use that info much initially though. Either way yet another reason to pass on the X1.

Let them watch as I sit around playing my games and watching blu-rays and sleeping, let them cower before my MIGHTY deeds

please google stellar wind.

praise obama

It doesn't work like that, we couldn't get a subpoena for live feed, at least not that I'm aware of. We could only subpoena information that has already been collected and is the property of a defined entity, in other words their consumer business records. So if for example Microsoft was using Kinect to record information, either video or audio, and then storing that information in their servers for later use, then we could subpoena it. Now I've never done this but in theory it is possible.

Say for example you pirated a music or video file through pay per download site like rapidgator or mega (not saying you ever have, just as a hypothetical). If some law firm subpoena'd the PPD for business records, and if you had a premium account with one of those sites, then it's possible they might come up with an email address you used for making your account but still don't have your name. Well if it's the same email used to create your xbox live account then they could subpoena Microsoft for any business records linked to that email which could identify john does that are defendants in their case. And if they were nasty then they would specifically request video and audio information. I admit it is morally grey but as far as I know it is legal.

Now all that being said, their is a provision in place to protect consumers. If a company is going to provide consumer business records in compliance with a subpoena, they need to notify the consumer in question and that consumer has a time period (I think it is 30 days in CA but I might be wrong), to file an objection. The problem is that many companies I would subpoena were notoriously bad about notifying their consumers. They would often send a single email with no follow up and the consumer would never respond. This is great from the perspective of the plaintiff because they get all the consumer business records but sucks for the consumer.

MS is not spying on you. Skynet is.

You were all warned.

Right now kinect can only detect Heroin usage but they hope to include more drug detection before launch. Xbox one is a narc!

@boj4ngles: Ya, so don't worry about people spying on your through your Kinect.

At the very least, they wouldn't be able to target any clothing company ads at you.

...then again, they may just target ALL clothing ads at you.

To paraphrase Benjamin Franklin:

They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary entertainment, deserve neither liberty nor entertainment.