Are there cameras in TV's & cable boxs?

In this thread ATS memeber Census posted this link covertmatrix.atspace.com...

Basically the site I linked to claims that there is a fisheye camera and mic in all cable ready TVs and cable boxs however they have no pictures or documentation of it that I can find.

Now I dont necessarly believe these claims, but I was thinking we should take a look since the point of this site is to deny ignorance, and you never know. I think that on several specific occasions police or govt agencies may have installed camera or surveillance equipment in their targets TV and then it was blown out of proportion or turned into "there are cameras in all TVs).

I have an old cable box I can disect, and will keep an eye out for an old TV. now im no electronics expert so I dont think I would take a TV apart since the tube stores a charge that can be fatal from what I've heard, but perhaps some other members have the skills and feel comfortable taking apart a TV?




[edit on 17-6-2006 by warpboost]

Of all the pre Y2K TVs and cable boxes that I've taken appart, there have been no cameras. You don't need to be an expert to spot the camera if you know what a light sensor and IR LED look like. If you see a bunch of wires going to the platic case and see no components or boards, then worry. A fish-eye lens is easy to spot if you know where it is. Mics are a bit harder as they can be well hidden and tiny.

Taking appart a TV is not as deadly as many say, unless your very old/young and or have heart problems. If you know the parts that have high voltage exposed, you can avoid it.

If you got shocked by the 120V DC filter capacitors, sure it would hurt, leave a tiny burn and make your arm toss the circuit board but it would not kill you. If you removed the high voltage insulating cap on the tube, you "may" get shocked and jump, but you hardly ever need to remove it.

Unless its ordered by some govt., I don't think they have cameras/mics in tv's and cable boxes. They would come in to your place and install the cameras/mics in stuff if anything.

I thought your 1st link was to a different ATS post, but isn't there a way someone could patch in some piece of equipmet on the coax between the wall and tv box, and see if any signals were being sent 'back' through the line?

all those set top boxes...whether converters or Tee-vohs, et al...
don't need still or motion picture cameras to track your person/image

all the data & information your sending throught that hook-up
is plenty enough to create a dossier on you & the family.

but yes, possibly in the near future, there will be biometric sensors
installed on the set top boxes, so you can vote+buy+sell+trade+pay
from the secure location of your domicile.

but it's not tomorrow, today, yet

Originally posted by mooonhoxe
I thought your 1st link was to a different ATS post, but isn't there a way someone could patch in some piece of equipmet on the coax between the wall and tv box, and see if any signals were being sent 'back' through the line?

I was wondering that too about checking for a signal. I doubt you would find one, but you never know.

My first link was to another ATS thread where Census posted the 2nd link I posted here.

[edit on 17-6-2006 by warpboost]

I had the same question in mind. I'm no expert. Wouldn't it be possible tap the coax cable with a splitter and plug one end into a TV tuner card for PC, with some sort of monitoring software in promiscuous mode to snoop the signals traveling through the wire. If you see weird data going in the opposite direction than regular video & audio streams, you know something suspicious is going on.

Or a more rudimental approach. You strip a tiny piece of shielding plastic off the coax cable, you attach an antenna to the exposed copper wire. You place a radio scanner at proximity and you set it to the right frequency. You turn the light on and off repeatedly in room where your TV is sitting. If you hear a matching white noise pattern coming from your scanner, you know there's a hidden camera in your TV. To double check the result, you place a cardboard in front of your TV. Does that make the noise pattern disappear in your scanner? If the answer is, yes, hidden cam!

Originally posted by XL5
Of all the pre Y2K TVs and cable boxes that I've taken appart, there have been no cameras. You don't need to be an expert to spot the camera if you know what a light sensor and IR LED look like. If you see a bunch of wires going to the platic case and see no components or boards, then worry. A fish-eye lens is easy to spot if you know where it is. Mics are a bit harder as they can be well hidden and tiny.

Taking appart a TV is not as deadly as many say, unless your very old/young and or have heart problems. If you know the parts that have high voltage exposed, you can avoid it.

If you got shocked by the 120V DC filter capacitors, sure it would hurt, leave a tiny burn and make your arm toss the circuit board but it would not kill you. If you removed the high voltage insulating cap on the tube, you "may" get shocked and jump, but you hardly ever need to remove it.

Unless its ordered by some govt., I don't think they have cameras/mics in tv's and cable boxes. They would come in to your place and install the cameras/mics in stuff if anything.

Well, he has done told you the TV part...so I will tell you about the Set-Top terminal part. The answer is no. There are not cameras in Settop boxes. I am about to start working for Cox Communications in August. I have had over two years of training in settop boxes, high definition services set tops, Digital Video Recorders(DVR)'s, and motorola digi-boxes. I have not seen any traces of cameras in there.

I have been amazed at the neat features behind the new Cox Cable technology. They have this new program that enables you to view weather, movies, news, customer support, program guide....stuff like that.

But as far as cameras go, there wouldnt be a way to view that in real time since there is a small amount of data lag between the set top and the head end. Not only that, but there wouldnt be enough room on the frequency spectrum to give EVERYBODY in the United States bandwidth to have their own little frequency,,just so people can see what other people are doing. Not only that, but that would also be against U.S Constitution, It would be a major invasion of privacy.. Not that some presidents have really cared because of the whole phone deal.

It is possible, yes - but not very likely - since you would need an individual carrier frequency for each TV. You're limited to a certain frequency range as the cable provider's repeaters have band-pass filters which do not allow extraneous frequencies. You also have the issue of anyone connected to the same cable bus has the potential to intercept the broadcast.

It's very highly unlikely - if not impossible on the scale we are suggesting.

Plus, I've taken enough things apart to know that there is not anything suspicious in there. There's plenty of stuff worth taking out - such as heatsinks, transistors and regulators, transformers (especially if you can get some of the high-voltage ones that will work correctly in a standard circuit), capacitors, a diode or two.... and then using a high voltage power supply to 'have fun' with some of the rest....... have you ever seen a resistor completely desintigrate in a flash of light and fire? That's great fun!

Technologically, it would be totally possible for this to happen. However, enough people have taken apart TVs to know there isn't anything there. Enough ordinary people work as TV repairmen, designers, and that kind of thing to know that there isn't any kind of visual surveillance going into them. Tens of thousands of people in industry, as well as tons of hobbyists, repairmen, designers, etc, would have to be in on it.

I have an old cable box I can disect, and will keep an eye out for an old TV. now im no electronics expert so I dont think I would take a TV apart since the tube stores a charge that can be fatal from what I've heard, but perhaps some other members have the skills and feel comfortable taking apart a TV?

I think this is only for older TVs. Some parts of the TV could build up charge and retain that charge even when the TV is turned off and unplugged, like a capacitor. People have actually died from the high voltages, but I think this is pretty rare. I'd read up further on the safety of that kind of thing before dissecting a TV, just in case, to find out which components are hazardous and what to do about it.

I have an old cable box I can disect, and will keep an eye out for an old TV. now im no electronics expert so I dont think I would take a TV apart since the tube stores a charge that can be fatal from what I've heard, but perhaps some other members have the skills and feel comfortable taking apart a TV?

I would suggest you be extremely careful with that. The charge can be up to around 10,000 Volts. THe only thing that has the charge that big is the cord connecting from the board to the main tube in the TV.

Well what i think goes on is that it is a newer type of technology that is installed into all tvs ,technology that isnt available to us yet and probly never.Technology meanung some type of camera / maudio recording and it goes into some computer and saved on a huge supercomputer to be studied. This would be a great way to advertise your product and listen to peoples lives in order to maybe use it for some other kind of study ..I really think we are all being studied when we go out to the store or a restaurant , there are always cameras and i feel that even tho the store owns the cameras there is a program that can link all of them amd upload all videos to one location..

I know all stores have cameras linked to a hub within the town/city you're in because of the crime or potential for crime. I know from experience having seen a security guard watch a shoplifter walk out of a store with something, followed him out the store using the cameras until the shoplifter walked into a blind spot then the main set of securitystayed in contact with other store security until they got him halfway down the street.

As for it being in tvs. While it may be possible these days with the technology advances, I can't think of a function in whcih they'd actually do this. We're all on government databases no matter what country we live in anyway with personal details on file, usually in laser disc form, so why they'd wanna actually sit watching you scratch your ass on the couch I don't know.

Not that I know of but if there are I hope they enjoy my bear gluts in the morning and my burping sessions after I eat something. I mean come on what gain would there be on video tapping normal people in their lives....okay Real World etc... But beyond that I highly doubt it.