PRISM and Kinect

So with the recent PRISM scandal, a lot of people have been up in arms about the whole thing, some are indifferent. So here I ask for people to speak up about what they know, information people may have miss about PRISM and why or if you think this is a real problem.

Here is an article on PRISM

For my part, I would like Microsoft to take out kinect as a requirement for the system.

Christ.

If you are that paranoid and crazy, don't buy a Xbox One. Problem solved.

No one is interested in spying on your boring simple little life.

You can spy on me...but I play games naked....your move MS...your move...

As soon as i saw this i smashed my phone since it has GPS and a front facing camera. I am smashing my router, just wanted to comment on this board. GOING DARK

MAKE SURE YOU'RE WEARING A TIN FOIL HAT TO STOP THE SIGNALS FROM YOUR BRAIN CHIP BEING SENT TO THE GOVERNMENT!

The US government is basically storing all internet traffic, collaborates with the biggest IT corporations (one of which sells us gaming devices) and people still have the nerves to call others "paranoid." Love it!

I'm not a conspiracy nut but in this case: guess what? The "paranoid" people were right - 1984 has become reality.

@cptbedlam: nothing you do or say will ever be interesting enough for any government to actually notice or care. You think they have nothing better to do than to fuck with nerds? They are engaging in high level anti criminal and anti terrorism surveillance, while attempting to protect the country from cyber attacks. These are serious people with serious jobs. They have more important things to do than to watch you eat cheetos and watch Archer on Netflix.

@mtcantor:

1. Calling people "paranoid" is just idiotic in the wake of recent reveals.

2. You don't know me.

3. It doesn't matter whether I'm interesting enough for the government or not. The "I have nothing to hide" argument is a complete fallacy. And please inform yourself about what Prism is. Everyone's data gets stored, not just data of individual suspects. I don't want that. There are people less ignorant than you, who care about their privacy and their rights, deal with it.

Right there with you. I'm about as far away from being a conspiracy theorist as it gets, but this stuff is horrible and real.

Okay, this made me laugh. Well played, Sir. Well played.

This whole argument is completely ridiculous. I mean I know the principle is there, but when you really think about how it will affect you, it won't. They will waste resources watching people play games. It's such a dumb theory. People need to loosen to fuck up and think about things before they get all up in arms.

As long as the Kinect 2 is only on when I'm using the system, I don't mind. It's like playing with the current Kinect. Plus, we don't know yet how much data is sent up to Microsoft. And people will be checking that on day one. If it's just there, I don't see how it has much to do with countries spying on communications. I mean, I have a webcam on my laptop, but I'm not stressing that it's there. I know that it'll be on when I want it on and off when I don't. It sounds like the Kinect 2 can be set to act like that, and people can decide for themselves how much they want it to be on.

Also, on a side note, I reject the notion that no one can suggest that anyone is paranoid anymore. That's nuts. Recent news doesn't mean your every fear is real, and it certainly doesn't mean those expressing concerns can't be criticized for latching onto crazy fears. There are a lot of insane and surprising things in this world, but it doesn't mean any insane thing someone fears is off limits from criticism.

For the record, I do not live in the US. I use us ip for work and what not but as far as PRISM and the NSA goes, they do not concern me at all.

With that being said, I wanted to know what people who are actually being effected think and that's why I made this thread. My main reason being, I think Microsoft should remove mandatory Kinect in light of the PRISM scandal and as a result lower the price. Is what I am saying I guess.

But why should they do that? If they were for some reason recording and storing Kinect footage or sound, I could understand them perhaps seeing why it might be an issue, but they've said data is local and the Kinect can be used offline. So... it's not like an always-on webcam required by the system. It's a device with a camera on it. If we're afraid of all devices with cameras, whether they're connected online or off, we should be concerned about a lot more than just the Xbox One.

*looks at my smartphone with a camera on it... which is almost always online...*

Well like I said, while I find PRISM disgusting, it does not concern me because it does not effect me. What I am interested in is owning both console, without having to pay for something I can not use. When I stay in Japan/hongkong/thailand, I can't use the kinect. So I just refuse to pay for it. That is my own personal reasoning, that and my girlfriend refuse to have any type of phone or camera in the bedroom.

It is quite interesting reading the reaction here. I grew up in asia, so this is essentially first world problem for me. When my family talk politics, it is about how many civilians were killed in a protest or something in Thailand/asia. So reading/talking first world problem is kind of refreshing for me. Sorry that was a bit off topic.

Not that I'm agreeing with your concerns over the new Kinect(which should work in any country), but I'd actually say you have -more- to be concerned about when it comes to PRISM. It's a program designed for spying on people -outside- the United States. It's supposed to have restrictions on domestic US spying. And a lot of people have been mad that the spying has been domestic as well as overseas. So, PRISM isn't just a concern of the US; it's almost more of a concern for someone using the Internet outside the US. Though, it also speaks to the reality that many major countries today have foreign and domestic spying programs, and they aren't exactly new by design. The Cold War was rather blatant about that kind of spying, and the Internet has just meant more avenues for that kind of spying. Programs like this are a concern for almost every person who uses modern technology.

As for preferring a cheaper Xbox One, well, just say you wish it was cheaper and Kinect was optional. You don't need to suggest that there's some reason linked to PRISM. You just want a cheaper SKU. That's not crazy, and you're not alone in that. I may not agree with the suggestion that the new Kinect has anything to do with concerns over global spying, but I can relate to a desire for consoles to be cheaper. Though, at the moment, both consoles are cheaper than the PS3 was at launch; so, that's something. I'm sure the Xbox One will go down in price, as well. Maybe you can pick it up then. :)

Wow internet, living up to your reputation. There's absolutely no reason to be so angry at a simple question, and the news of Microsoft not only allowing, but helping NSA retrieve Microsoft service data proposes a warranted concern about privacy. People are not 'paranoid and crazy', it's a fact that the U.S. is spying on it's citizens and citizens abroad, no paranoia there, just real information. To the second 'point', they don't care how interesting your life is, the government has a ton of data hoaders working for them, they'll store data just to store it, they're expanding to Utah for this very reason, to be concerned about being watched in your own home is extremely valid, and the fact that you're not is strange.

Hope they like how my ceiling looks.

Not to mention the inside of the car and sometimes the bathroom. But who knows what all they're hearing... >_>

PRISM might be cause for all kinds of concerns but for technical reasons Kinect 2 or any other camera is not really one of them. Why? Because of technical reasons. Just imagine the bandwidth of having to download and process hours worth of HD video from every Kinect 2 owner every day for it to make sense to analyse - it's not possible. Most of those Kinect 2 owners are not even going to have the bandwidth to upload it in the first place, and you can bet that they would notice several gigabytes worth of data being unloaded to some undisclosed location. As would their ISPs. And they would not like it one bit - bandwidth is expensive.

Then there's the fact that video is a very poor medium for mass surveillance because there's no easy way to process it. When dealing with text, all you need to do is a simple keyword search in the collected data. With audio you can do voice recognition but that will both take longer and require much heavier data sets, largely limiting you to targets that already caught your interest. But with video? You would pretty much have to put a guy there to look through all of the video in real time. It's simply far too complex for us to be anywhere near developing computer programs capable of scanning it quickly and accurately. Really, you might have to use a proper AI to get the type of information an intelligence agency is actually interested in.

If you really want to go the conspiracy route: the routers have specific software build in to them that reroutes the "surveillance data" straight to the NSA servers and ignores any upload limits set by the ISP. The upload speed is only limited by the hardware. Or the ISPs get paid for the bandwidth. From a technical point of view it is possible, of course that is with a lot of 'ifs'.

I seriously doubt most people even have the hardware requirements though. Assuming that the NSA actually wants it in HD - and they probably do, if they intend to be able to see anything on the video and be able to run image recognition - an h.264 compression leaves you with a file-size of 11 GB per hour. Even DVD quality requires about 4,4 GB per hour. That's a lot of data considering most sessions will likely last more than an hour. And that's assuming Microsoft has actually gone as far as to include compression software in the Xbox One capable of compressing it, and doing so without severely impacting console performance - quite a feat considering how CPU-heavy video compression is and how comparatively underpowered the X1 CPU (and the PS4 CPU, for that matter) are by conventional metrics, what with their low clock speeds.

Most people don't have a fiber connection. This means that the bottleneck will be the bandwidth of their DSL connections, even if you take away any "artifical" bottlenecks imposed by the ISP. Now, the ADSL2+ maximum bandwidth for uploads is a measly 2,5 Mbit/s under optimal conditions. That's 1,1 GB per hour. So for every hour of video a DSL connection would need 10 hours to upload, assuming perfect conditions, and while occupying the entire available bandwidth. Then there's obviously the fact that this speed can only be achieved if you basically have the exchange point as your neighbor, it deteriorates with the length of the copper wire. That's all the standard is capable of. Copper wires aren't exactly built for data traffic. That's why we invented fibers in the first place.

Let me put it this way: if you're on a DSL connection and the NSA want that video in HD, it will never get uploaded before your next session if you use your Kinect 2 more than 2,5 hours a day. It will create a backlog growing larger with every day until the NSA is getting video several months old.

The entire premise is simply insane.

I was just playing a pc game called prism ironically.

@nivash: Yeah, all those surveillance cameras that don't record super-smooth HD video are just there for shits and giggles. Can't really use the material...

Jesus

Different purposes. Surveillance cameras are used to show that someone was there at a give time and, if you're lucky, get enough information to determine who that person was. And even then their scare-factor is more useful than anything you can get from the video.The NSA is obviously not interested in knowing that yes, someone was indeed sitting in front of the TV when the Kinect was on and yes, it was probably they guy who lives there. If they are going to do something like this it would be to be able to sneak a glance at stuff like a notebook on the coffee table or that weird package in the back corner. That takes resolution above even DVD.

The answer to 1984 is 1776 !

http://cnnpressroom.blogs.cnn.com/2013/07/12/justin-carter-teen-charged-with-felony-terrorism-for-facebook-comment-speaks/

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2318606/High-School-teen-facing-terror-charges-held-MILLION-dollar-bail-posting-threatening-lyrics-Boston-Marathon.html

"Hey, NSA. What have I got in my pocket?"

Facial recognition - build maps of your relationships. More general image recognition to identify weapons you may own, daily habits and patterns, etc.

It's all about building an all-inclusive map of a person's life, relationships.

Later when they want to target political dissenters try will know where to go.

So you are a well behaved drone and know when to look at the floor when your masters pass by. Good for you. You must be proud.

Why is it that people think that their lives are so important and interesting that any government would waste time and money to have a record on how many times you flap a day?!?!?! there are tons of better ways to spy on someone then hacking an electronic item that said person of interest may have purchased themselves.....

Really think before you jump of the koo-koo-train of "I always feel like somebody's watching me" line of thinking.... I'm pretty sure not to many people who the government really want/need keeps tabs on will have a cell phone thats trackable or uses the same computer for their evil doings or skype naked in the livingroom on a gaming system.....

Photoshoppers I got a request!

Picture of a kinect saying "MicroSoft suggests Kleenex brand tissues for your current activity"

I don't think Prism really even factors into it. Prism can only grab information that's already being sent out over the Internet. All of your Kinect data that's being uploaded is presumably going to Microsoft. Microsoft is pretty well known for collaborating with the US government already. Thus it stands to reason that even if Prism didn't exist, your video data that's being sent to Microsoft is not presumed to be kept completely private (unless they explicitly state that it is.)

Now the question is how much data is the Kinect sending out over the Internet, both when in use and when not being used? I have admittedly not kept up with the latest Xbox One/Kinect news but I would be very surprised if they had the Kinect doing anything at all, especially uploading video when it's not in use. I imagine the only time it would be sending out video over the Internet is when it's being used for video chat. In that case you can expect the same level of privacy that you have with Skype, which is to say none.

LOL after the video Kinect pulls up a related video links, ask you to rate the current one and before you can play the next video you have to sit through a 30sec interactive lotion ad...

In 100 years the world will be a total shitshow though with programs like that.

http://gigaom.com/2008/03/18/comcast-cameras-to-start-watching-you/

http://www.zatznotfunny.com/2005-11/tivos-rfid-remote-control-patent/

My question is to the people who are overly raged/concerned/paranoid/crazy about this, why are you on the internet talking about this and why aren't you in a tent made of grass out in the middle of nowhere....

if you have a mac or windows based pc, use an iphone or droid smartphone, use any type of social media online, buy goods over the net or use a credit/debit card or get books from a library you already are on the grid and have a lot of info out there with far more detail then what a camera can gather of your thrilling couch adventures.....

you're a good sheep, Obama is proud of you.

Does anyone think this will cut down on people smoking weed while playing COD?

In between rounds you will now have to run to the other room so kinect will not see you smoking.

They will see you smoking that green. lol , if you live in the US , then you're fucked hahahaha

Edit : you're not seeing the bigger picture here people. Look at microsoft , if you complain enough about their policies, they will change them.

If you let them fuck you over like Obama did, and no one is demonstrating about, they will fuck you some more.

Nice try Obama, you cant fool me.

lol.

I saw this comic today and immediately thought of this thread.

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Privacy is now just a footnote in history. For little reason you can be throughly investigated, and get all your personal information exposed. These are sad times, when you can't trust anything you do to stay private and personal.

Given some of the information that has come out recently regarding Microsoft cooperating with the NSA, I see some reasonable concerns.