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According to the patent, spotted by Metro, the system would use 'a non-human hearable digital sound' to activate your phone's microphone.
This noise, which could be a sound so high-pitched that humans cannot hear it, would contain a 'machine recognisable' set of Morse code-style beeps
Once your phone hears the trigger, it would begin to record 'ambient noise' in your home, such as the sound of your air conditioning unit, plumbing noises from your pipes and even your movements from one room to another.
Your phone would even listen in on 'distant human speech' and 'creaks from thermal contraction', according to the patent.
TV advertisers would use this data to determine whether you had muted your TV or moved to a different room when their promotional clip played.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 03 2018, @07:23PM (15 children)
We have arrived. Fear and hate running rampant, media used to manipulate the public, and corporations / gov spying on the people.
(Score: 5, Touché) by edIII on Tuesday July 03 2018, @07:29PM (12 children)
To be fair, you would need to be watching commercials in the first place, and have an app running on your phone that turns the mic on 24/7/365. My guess is that if you're that fucking stupid to begin with, and you still suffer commercials, can you even recognize the Dytopia around you?
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 03 2018, @07:44PM (3 children)
It is all around us, even now on this very room. You can see it when you look out your window or when you turn on your television. You can feel it when you go to work, when you go to church, when you pay your taxes. It is the world that has been pulled over your eyes to blind you from the truth.... Like everyone else you were born into bondage, born into a prison that you cannot smell or taste or touch. A prison for your mind.
(Score: 3, Touché) by Snow on Tuesday July 03 2018, @07:53PM
Morpheus?
(Score: 3, Interesting) by anubi on Wednesday July 04 2018, @12:44AM (1 child)
Maybe all this fear of "The BogeyMan" is seeing how our own Congress is interfering with our attempts to verify their isn't a bogeyman there.
Yet, they have shown that *they* are the Bogeyman many times over... but is the Bogeyman after you? You don't know.
You hear something go bump in the night. So far, you are free to turn on the light and see if the monster is under your bed.
Now, say we have some Congressman saying: "No! I forbid you to turn on the light and see! I am a Law-Maker and You are Not! The Bogeyman has shaken my hand, and I cannot let you see if the bogeyman is under your bed. For if you knew what the bogeyman looked like, or whether or not he is under your bed, he can no longer control you. As your Congressman, I must protect his business model."
So you hear something go bump in the night... and shake in your bed. Or break the law, reverse-engineer your situation, turn on the lights, and verify whats making the noise.
We are being kept ignorant... and ignorance breeds fear of the unknown. Check the history books and see who was so pissed off at Gutenberg for printing the Bible. A lot of business models require their mark to be ignorant for that particular business model to work.
For me, the last mainstream machine I truly trusted ran on DOS. Now, its Arduinos. I can trust an Arduino to turn a sprinkler on if the soil gets dry. Or let me telnet into it. Without someone dialing it up only to tell it to spy on me or retrieve some sort of marketing information.
I trusted my old Western Electric dial phone, as I could verify the hook switch had the phone's voice circuit completely off the line when it was on the hook... all that was on the line, when the handset was in the cradle, was a 20Hz series resonant circuit comprised of the ringing solenoid and its resonant capacitor, neither of which had the intelligence to snoop. When the handset was lifted, the bell circuit was switched out and the microphone/earphone circuit switched in. I knew I could discuss private things in the presence of the telephone as long as that thing was on the hook. Off the hook, consider the conversation public. This was during the day of the party line anyhow.. I believe most of us knew that anyone with a handset could listen in on the line. The only reason they did not listen more was the same reason I went to sleep in Church a lot... most telephone conversations are almost as boring as TV ads.
I still don't consider any telephone conversation to be truly private. They can do voiceprint analysis and know exactly who is on the line, at the central office, or watch for you should you show up on any line. Not likely unless you are a particular person of interest though.
Things aren't that simple anymore. Maybe I can still trust a cheapie LED flashlight or screwdriver these days to do what it was advertised to do - and nothing else.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 1, Flamebait) by frojack on Wednesday July 04 2018, @03:16AM
Next time maybe just a link to your journal page.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by koick on Tuesday July 03 2018, @09:32PM (1 child)
I am far from being a lawyer, but this would very likely fall under wiretapping laws and would be considered illegal (no matter what the fucking terms of service we never read says).
(Score: 2) by bitstream on Wednesday July 04 2018, @07:15AM
These are people for which the juridical law won't apply. But physical law is however inescapable.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by acid andy on Tuesday July 03 2018, @10:14PM (2 children)
Ha ha -- what? An app? You honestly don't think the smart phone operating systems themselves (or the firmware) do this already? Whilst offline it could log this stuff undetected if it wrote into a pre-allocated, fixed length file so you wouldn't notice a change in free space. I suppose you could run regular diffs on all files, but it could probably stash data on hidden sectors of the phone's internal memory.
Actually I'd be interested to see a diff on a smartphone's entire internal file system when it's been left switched off for a few hours. I wonder if there's a way to read the internal storage on an external device without waking up the phone. I wouldn't want to see any changes at all. After all, it's supposed to be "Off"!
If a cat has kittens, does a rat have rittens, a bat bittens and a mat mittens?
(Score: 2) by frojack on Wednesday July 04 2018, @03:21AM (1 child)
The Phone OS has no reason to attract bad publicly or law suits to help Facebook.
The most generous thing one could say about this patent is that it is merely defensive. But I suspect nobody would believe that.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by acid andy on Wednesday July 04 2018, @09:08AM
TFA is about Facebook, yes. But Google, Apple and Microsoft make smartphone OSes. They want data too. I'll say no more.
If a cat has kittens, does a rat have rittens, a bat bittens and a mat mittens?
(Score: 2) by cubancigar11 on Wednesday July 04 2018, @03:43AM (1 child)
Just wait until it becomes part of your "package" and "Terms and Conditions". Want game of thrones?
(Score: 2) by edIII on Wednesday July 04 2018, @04:45AM
While I see your point, that doesn't apply to me. Nothing is worth going back to advertisements, or Big Cable. It would need to be blowjobs with hundred dollar bills raining down from the ceiling before I watch their commercials again. Very. Serious. Compensation. I don't mean that Brave bullshit either, but cash money. After my epiphany that I was paying over one hundred dollars per month to people that were selling my eyeballs as a product, I decided that I would get paid for my eyeballs, or that it would be a net positive, not a net negative.
Also, I've never watched Game of Thrones :)
If I did want it, I would pirate it to get the quality I desire. I do compensate the artists where possible. The number of Redbox DVDs I returned within 60 seconds of renting them is quite high. $1 with no ads, no real restrictions (pirate material), and no tracking is attractive.
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 04 2018, @10:06AM
The fact that you are one of the few people who avoid commercials (face it, most people have an incredible tolerance for ads) helps tremendously in making you identifiable.
Are you sure you don't already have that?
Note that this "App" could well be the operating system itself. Or some firmware operating below the operating system.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 03 2018, @09:38PM (1 child)
I have news for you, Mister Drama Queen :
Virtually none of the things you mention are new.
The only thing "new" is the different tech than that which was used in the past.
Please read some history so you can self-modulate your whining.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 03 2018, @11:14PM
I remember this as a small child: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subliminal_stimuli [wikipedia.org]