Smart Phone apps gather information from built in camera and mic.

reply to post by alphabetaone


I'm not quick to do that. That opinion has come from much thought on my part. I used to be one who would in fact trade safety for my liberties. But I've come to the conclusion that no amount of law can make a people just. No amount of 'free information' can make a people informed. No amount of public works can make a people equal. The systems don't make the people, the people make the system. And the people don't need much of a system if they all want it to work. So you've got to start by making people want to be honest. Who want to be lawful. Who want to be free and safe at the same time. They draw their safety from freedom, not the other way around. No system built around corrupt parts can ever be incorruptible.

So no, I don't make my exclamation lightly.

reply to post by Vaykun


Oh, I'm sure you have given it much thought.

What I meant was, don't be so quick to rule out the possibility that giving the appearance to be acquiescing has a lot more value, than actually doing so

I just did an Android Market search and found Shopkick. It tells you in its permissions before you even download that it asks for Hardware controls to access your audio recorder and camera. Not that shocking, really.

reply to post by Vaykun


Nor I.

I and others are certain, for now, this is a ridiculous notion. However, it is, as you noted. intriguing as well.

Huge oceans of data, to people like us, are so exciting. But, by the time they load this, write for this and program the spiders, most of the people will be dead or dying. Me included.

So, here is what I think. Most people who see conspiracies are mathematical patterners, me included, and I think, you and most of the people on this site.

What do we need? We need data, massive amounts that reveal patterns. In those patterns are the proof of conspiracies. This data takes the conspiracy from the world of conspiracy into the world of truth..unmitigated truth...unquestioned truth. With yottabytes of lemons, one can make yottabytes of lemonade.

reply to post by angelchanneller


Sure, as long as the yottabytes of lemons are in YOUR refrigerator.

When those lemons are in NSA's fridge, then it is meaningless to you, or me, or the OP or anyone here.

ive worked for a big cell phone company before. and I was a bit of phone nerd.

I HAD a smartphone. one of the androids. it was ok at first. then one night. after getting off the phone, 20 mins go by. I get a call from the person I was talking to, asking me why I called them and didnt say anything.

i never called them. my phone was 10 feet away from me. didnt light up or do anything. I found it odd. but shrugged it off. my phone started getting hot and the battery was wearing down. even when I wasnt using it for long periods.

started researching it. apparently Verizon says if you buy a charger not from them, it will cause your phone to call people (not possible, that is a ploy to get your money)

some applications will call your contacts, for why I dont know. but I hadnt downloading any apps in months.

last reason, a tap on your phone (highly unlikely because um im just a regular girl)

funny tho that that evening while talking to that same person I mentioned a story my father had told me about how someone he worked with made a bomb with a 2 liter bottle of soda, some tinfoil and something else.

after a week or so, the battery went back to normal, and it stopped being hot for no reason, no more random calls.


I ditched that phone. got a regular phone, that i dont use much. still no phone is safe anymore.

corporations want to provide you perfect content. bring you want your into, so they can sell it to you.

screw that.

reply to post by ladymerelda


In the smartphone world, you can have your cake and eat it too. As long as you know how to protect yourself you don't need to worry.

Like in your case, with an android, and an unlocked bootloader you could have just put the core android experience on it, or a cyanogen mod which completely rips apart the google experience, backdoor and all. But there are downsides too, like not easily being able to get to the marketplace and all that....but it can be done.

Just that for most people that care to a high degree about this level of security would rather not be bothered by going to all that effort, of which I cant blame them honestly.

In your case it PROBABLY was coincidence, but even if it was, the fact that we have to pause to think what if it WASN'T, is the most disconcerting part about it.

This thread made me think about the similarities we have to the book 1984 by George Orwell. In the book its large TVs with cameras on them.

In reality its more subtle, we have small cameras on tiny phones and webcams built into our computers. And I don't believe for one second that the government can't active them if they chose to.

We even have the perpetual war where we are never sure who the enemy is.

The only thing that's missing is the thought police and the rationing. Well, at this rate it'll only take a few years for those to be here too. The way the world economy looks - rationing can't be that far off.

Originally posted by fedeykin
This thread made me think about the similarities we have to the book 1984 by George Orwell. In the book its large TVs with cameras on them.

In reality its more subtle, we have small cameras on tiny phones and webcams built into our computers. And I don't believe for one second that the government can't active them if they chose to.

Well, maybe I can quell some of your fears (if they are fears) by saying a couple of things.

First, as one poster aptly noted, you remove the battery from a cell phone, and they lose any advantage they had...there is no miracle capacitor in the phones to be able to activate them without a battery.

Secondly, in the venue of PC's with built in webcams, you can throw that right out the window. They do not have the ability to remotely turn them on, and the only way it would be feasible would be if you have a virus where someone can remote your machine. The sheer number of hardware vendors, updates to drivers implementation on the motherboards, alone would disallow this nevermind the fact that the hardware layer to access the cams resides locally. It could never come on without YOU turning it on.

Originally posted by fedeykin
The only thing that's missing is the thought police and the rationing. Well, at this rate it'll only take a few years for those to be here too. The way the world economy looks - rationing can't be that far off.

That may be true, although my ex-wife used to BELIEVE she was the thought police, I'm sure it was inaccurate. As far as rations, you could well be right there

reply to post by alphabetaone


Funny! Hilarious! Please though, on the serious side, explain.

reply to post by angelchanneller


Well, for the most part it is largely self-explanatory I think.

I get the impression (which I'm wholly open to being wrong about) that you feel all that data acquisition is a good thing and basically innocuous (because it would take far too much computing power and far too long to be of any harm)...in that, it does not matter.

What I was suggesting was, that I would find it exponentially more innocuous if I alone, had all my own data and needn't worry about someone else having the capability (time to obtain notwithstanding) to mine it at all.

iphone spy
the tech has been here for a few years guys. I had this installed on an iphone i had just to see if it worked. It works!!!!! You can enable some of these programs remotely too

reply to post by Lulzaroonie


4chan =

get a regular cell phone and don't download apps. you'll save a sh-t load of money and don't have to worry about some chinese organized crime syndicate listening to you talking nasty with your girlfriend.

reply to post by Vaykun


Apple huh! Even more reason to go Android! But then again will Google stoop that low?

Originally posted by Vaykun

Smart Phone apps gather information from built in camera and mic.

www.computerworl d.com

Your phone is listening

The issue was brought to the world's attention recently on a podcast called This Week in Tech. Host Leo Laporte and his panel shocked listeners by unmasking three popular apps that activate your phone's microphone to collect sound patterns from inside your home, meeting, office or wherever you are.

The apps are Color, Shopkick and IntoNow, all of which activate the microphones in users' iPhone or Android devices in order to gather contextual information that provides some benefit to the user.

Color uses your iPhone's or Android phone's microphone to detect

(visit the link for the full news article)

So "Big Brother" is real and we brought him into our homes voluntarily with joy and excitement! Surprise, surprise...

reply to post by alphabetaone


Sorry, I realize how Machiavellian I come off now. Yes, from a purist's standpoint, the models I would love to test are as a business woman, for marketing only. Never to intrude on privacy and not without the human. I believe you need to test market with the real person present. We have worked on quantum marketing for awhile now. There is no other way, must have the human mind and all the senses.

That aside, I think this effort, well, its a big waste of time and money unless they use this information to study human patterns only. Specific data ages...it just does. I truly believe this data will age before they can write the code to use it.

So apologies for being flippant. But there is a line outside the NSA' s front door to get a chance at this buffet, which makes me happy as a taxpayer. I want my money back.

Originally posted by angelchanneller

Sorry, I realize how Machiavellian I come off now.

First of all please, there is no need to apologize at all. It does not seem Machiavellian, it seems short-sighted, or, rather, posted as short-sighted I'm sure the implications are well known to you.

Originally posted by angelchanneller
Yes, from a purist's standpoint, the models I would love to test are as a business woman, for marketing only. Never to intrude on privacy and not without the human. I believe you need to test market with the real person present. We have worked on quantum marketing for awhile now. There is no other way, must have the human mind and all the senses.

And, of course, herein lies the rub. If it's sole purpose (as well as it's sole INTENDED purpose) were material for marketing, as with any product, we have the choice of simply not buying. Also, quantum marketing and pattern recognition in general have serious implications not from those with honest intent, but from who may obtain it with less than honest intent. As an example, I have many many different firearms, but if the day ever came that where I live I would have to REGISTER my firearms with my local authorities in the community I live, I clearly would either move, OR break the law (which I'm sure I shouldn't profess publicly). The reason? Not that I have anything to hide nor do I care if the police know that I have them, but for those factions of the police who KNOW they're there, and who could, simply put, use that knowledge to frame me for a crime they may want to commit.

Paranoid? Yes, absolutely. Is paranoia still paranoia if you're right? Who knows.

Originally posted by angelchanneller
That aside, I think this effort, well, its a big waste of time and money unless they use this information to study human patterns only. Specific data ages...it just does. I truly believe this data will age before they can write the code to use it.

While some of that may be absolutely true, let me introduce FASTCLUS (cluster algorithmic processing) which takes textual (what one may consider to be a spider) to some unprecendented levels. In a parallel supercomputer environment, the aforementioned data could actually be audited and "mined" in a very short amount of time.

An excerp follows (emphasis is mine):

The FASTCLUS procedure performs a disjoint cluster analysis on the basis of distances computed from one or more quantitative variables. The observations are divided into clusters such that every observation belongs to one and only one cluster; the clusters do not form a tree structure as they do in the CLUSTER procedure.

If you want separate analysis for different numbers of clusters, you can run PROC FASTCLUS once for each analysis. Alternatively, to do hierarchical clustering on a large data set, use PROC FASTCLUS to find initial clusters, and then use those initial clusters as input to PROC CLUSTER.

By default, the FASTCLUS procedure uses Euclidean distances, so the cluster centers are based on least squares estimation. This kind of clustering method is often called a k-means model, since the cluster centers are the means of the observations assigned to each cluster when the algorithm is run to complete convergence.

Each iteration reduces the least squares criterion until convergence is achieved. Often there is no need to run the FASTCLUS procedure to convergence. PROC FASTCLUS is designed to find good clusters (but not necessarily the best possible clusters) with only two or three passes through the data set.

The initialization method of PROC FASTCLUS guarantees that, if there exist clusters such that all distances between observations in the same cluster are less than all distances between observations in different clusters, and if you tell PROC FASTCLUS the correct number of clusters to find, it can always find such a clustering without iterating. Even with clusters that are not as well separated, PROC FASTCLUS usually finds initial seeds that are sufficiently good that few iterations are required. Hence, by default, PROC FASTCLUS performs only one iteration.

If you're interested, the full link is here.

Originally posted by angelchanneller
So apologies for being flippant. But there is a line outside the NSA' s front door to get a chance at this buffet, which makes me happy as a taxpayer. I want my money back.

Again, there is no need I too, want my money back... I just prefer to first have the option to decide to spend it

reply to post by Vaykun


As soon as we got Nano tech we were being tracked, one way or another someone knows what your doing, and if you think about it not everyone knows 100% of everything about eachother, why would a major company / Controller of Impulse buying not want to know what you like and try and get as close to that 100% so youll feed there greed by having new and more addictive/Attractive items for sale.