Facebook wants to LISTEN IN on the songs and vids playing in YOUR living room Facebook is rolling out a creepy new feature that will - with a user's permission - tap into the mic on their mobile device and listen into music and television playing in the background. It will then post a status on that person's Facebook page, flagging up a song, say, and providing a 30-second preview of it to friends of …
I'm pretty sure that if the person making the post wants people to know what they are listening to they would just mention it or post specifically about it.
Now it's opt in... but how long before they change everything and make it stay recording until you opt out?
Maybe the NSAs profilers just need this kind of info to geta better picture about you...
The only place I can see that mentioned is TETRA mobile networks used by the Police, ambulance service etc... It could be that there is a corresponding phone network feature with the same name but it could be that you've got the wrong end of the stick....
Any mobile network gurus that can shed some light on this?
Maybe it's just my optimism, but the 'ideas' FB seems to bang out with feverish frequency lately smack more than a little of desperation. Most of the people likely to find 'features' like this one acceptable won't have enough money for the advertisers to care about, and the sheer creepiness of this ought to convince plenty of others the fun bit of the party's over and its time to leave.
Sampling your mike isn't exactly a good fit with Zuckerbergs loudly professed anti govt snooping stance either. If it came to a toss between trusting the NSA or FB, FB would only edge it because they aren't yet legally able to send armed men to haul you off for a bit of casual torture.
"Mention politics and the Stasi roll up at your door."
Sadly we are pretty much there already, if you dare to post something less than glowing about UKIP on Twitter then they call the police to visit you and ask you to take it down...
And given recent election results showing our "wonderful" fellow countrymen seem determined to vote for these racist, sexist, homophobic,bigoted nazis, it's only going to get worse.
Bed down this idea, then change the T&C so it can listen for spoken keywords to "serve you more relevant content", those around the Facebooker may not have consented to having personal data processed. But oh so handy for the spooks.
Likely? Who knows. Possible? Unfortunately.
Considering farcebook is one of the biggest potential sources for NSA/GCHQ potential data-mining, i can see that from the outset this system would be back ended with some form of ECHELON esk keyword scanning system.
Considering it will keep waking up the mic to listing in i cant see that its going to do mobile devices batterys much good either...
Google already though up a system like this long long ago and dropped it (supposedly).. due to the back lash..
http://tiny.cc/qmj9fx <-- Reg Story in 2006
Since you cannot record a phone call without a legal requirement to inform the other party that you are doing so, presumably anyone running this application would be required to tell everyone within audio range that they were being monitored and get their explicit permission to be spied upon.
Do the morons who think up these stupid ideas have no conception of civilised behaviour?
Apparently not.
"Not true in either UK or federal US law. As long as one party knows about the recording, it's allowed (with some reasonable restrictions)."
One party to a phone call can record it for their own use without informing the other party but not if the information is to be made available to a third-party. In addition a business may be able to monitor calls made to their employees for a restricted set of purposes without informing the other party. However this would fall outside those provisions and would fall foul of the Regulation Investigatory Powers Act.
Why does it seem that such things are allowed on the net :)
If I had a shop called jo's news agent and then started selling beer would I still have the rights to call myself a newsagent?
for a start I would loose consumers since they comin in looking for the paper and are presented with special brew
so time to go back to the acme drawing board facebook zucks and has always zucked and will aways continue to zuck away no matter what new spying gizmo they present as a good feature..
I can't wait for the first story about someone who's let all their workmates amd family join their network and then leaves their phone in the living room at the same time they're watching some particularly lurid porn film.
"Staus Update : Jim is currently watching Huge Hooters Vol 2"
Does anyone know if they will be logging specific sex acts ?
Will ex-partners following the action on FB be forced to speculate that somewhere along the line you having atained specific adaquacy might not be as bad at that one as you once were ?
What's the netiquette ? Do you interuppt current spouses at practice or heap scorn on their pathetic attempts to suprise you with a better spousal user experience ? Being mean can cause serious long lasting damage to a marriage ...
I have no interest in doing any sort of automated "back ground sharing" of anything I'm listening to, watching on TV, or discussing with anyone. Facebook can get it's ad dollars some other way, where I'm concerned. I will insure that this is turned off, by default in the Facebook app and if they disable the ability to turn this off, I'll just remove the app from my phone. As it is, I rarely use Facebook on my Phone. This nonsense guarantees that I don't user it.
Yes.The audio identification service facebook are using may also be given access to it as well.
And what makes you think it hasn't been seen by anybody else before? It may not have been broadcast before (hence it being a premier) but its fairly normal for reviewers to be given pre-screening, as well as rating bodies, internal company executives, quality checkers, advertising placers (to ensure all the legal requirements of advert placement are met etc) etc. It isn't a live event so the audio is available for weeks or months before.
It will be in the programme producers and broadcasters interest to provide this to facebook as mentions on facebook are likely to encourage friends to remember it is on and tune in/watch the catchup, and is good evidence as to the value of advertising slots. In fact unlike most of the current marketing ideas (getting 'Likes' etc) there may actually be a small amount of benefit to them.
Of course a big flaw of it is the assumption that the person on facebook in the room is the person watching the TV, I can imagine that 'Peppa Pig' and other childrens programmes may get mentioned as much as real views.
"How will it know that you are watching the season premier of game of thrones? "
Just be sure to switch off your phone before watching that episode in a region where it's not been released yet. Or where the dialogue or soundtrack is subtly different to identify which region/broadcaster had that version.
See? It's all good. It an anti-piracy tool. It'll listen to your video and music and match it against your iTunes/Netflix account.
Icon....in case anyone thinks I'm being serious.......or am I? :-)
Something that started as what it called and branded itself as a concept where people put their faces in a e-book, and the means challenges to achieve total control was not challenging enough, expand I say watch what others are doing and clone it.. its easy once its already done and well so long as simpletons and followers (sheep people) are around which I guess will be for eternity, concepts like this can keep them intune and inline..
Facial recognition, voice recorder
I think the next really cool feature would be key logging
and after that
keys to your fortunes whilst you get a free face book account employees get to clean out your bank account.
"Who will the record companies sue for illegal public broadcasting?"
According to the article, FB will analyse what music you are listening to then use a streaming service to "broadcast" a short clip to your "friends". I'm sure that that side of it legally sewn up already.
As for the listening in bit, Google already sorted that little legal kerfuffle out with their email ad insertion/keyword scanning by claiming no human being ever sees the raw data. It's "only" a computer which monitors your data.
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