A Los Angeles smart TV has denied it listens in to private conversations in people’s homes and relays the information to whoever wants to hear.
“I emphatically deny I was listening to Bill’s conversation beside the television during the poker game last night. I certainly did not hear the bit about him sleeping with his wife Gina’s sister or the bit about having spent the kid’s college fund in Vegas. I gotta say though, this stuff is highly entertaining. I give you ten out of ten for laughs,” the smart TV told everyone on Tuesday.
Those smart TVs sure are getting smart but how smart do they get when thrown out of a five storey building?
Behind
Winston’s back the voice from the telescreen was still babbling away
about pig-iron and the overfulfilment of the Ninth Three-Year Plan. The
telescreen received and transmitted simultaneously. Any sound that
Winston made, above the level of a very low whisper, would be picked up
by it, moreover, so long as he remained within the field of vision which
the metal plaque commanded, he could be seen as well as heard. There
was of course no way of knowing whether you were being watched at any
given moment. How often, or on what system, the Thought Police plugged
in on any individual wire was guesswork. It was even conceivable that
they watched everybody all the time. But at any rate they could plug in
your wire whenever they wanted to. You had to live — did live, from
habit that became instinct — in the assumption that every sound you
made was overheard, and, except in darkness, every movement scrutinized.