It might be nice to know that someone finds my conversations worth easvesdropping.
I turn off my location finder on my phone. I donāt use it for anything at the moment. My phone actually has deleted permissions to apps that I havenāt used in the past 6 months.
I do think that Facebook is pretty invasive. It tried to turn on my microphone on my computer that I had disabled. Iām not sure what itās doing on my phone, but it doesnāt have to listen to my conversations to know how to market. It just replicates the groups Iām joining in ads it serves to me.
We are going to have ads thrown at us whatever we do, so I suppose they may as well be relevant to us. I shouldnāt think many people actually take notice of what ads they are getting. I donāt think I do.
I actually do notice ads. I have adblockers on everything except the streaming services on my phone (theyāre blocked on my computer) and Facebook (and itās progeny Instagram). When I get ads, theyāre quite novel since I donāt see them anywhere else. Iām trying to find ways to block those few ads I do get, but when I get them, theyāre noticeable. Iām so suggestible that I find myself looking at the ads on Facebook and clicking on them. Theyāre normally a disappointment but I keep clicking on a few of them, a waste of my emotional energy.
I think we all know that the big sales companies have devices that feed back, to their owners, what web pages you visit, what you check prices on, what you buy.
Alexa (and the others) are, likely to be doing the same with your chit chat, in your lounge.
Maybe your Smart TV is doing it, as well?
I have seen emails itemising things that we have only talked about, in the room.
Hardly coincidence?
What can we do?
We could pull the plug, on the Alexa device, when weāre not using it, and that would cut it back a bit.
Then we might go back to the old war time thought āThese walls have earsā.
I donāt have Alexa or anything similar in my home - for my iPhone, I can turn off Siri any time I want in my Settings. I have only used it to play with occasionally to try it out, so itās usually switched off.
Also, Apps usually request permission to access the microphone - and I can check in the Privacy settings for which Apps currently have access to the microphone and turn it on or off for each App - so I feel as though Iām in control.
I donāt currently have any Apps for which I have given permission to access the microphone and I canāt recall any time my iPhone has automatically input Search suggestions when Iāve used it to access the internet.
Maybe there is some secret listening station somewhere that Iām unaware of - I wonder how clear my voice is when my phone lives most of the time in the depths of my handbag or rucksack, inside a cupboard - poor Siri must get a bit lonely in there if he is secretly āon dutyā behind my back!
As has been mentioned, I always knew that being on the internet is not anonymous, and you are a target from the commercial sector. Not always a problem as itās usually something you are interested in anyway, just a little bit annoying at times. But if you are being monitored by the business world, that you know about, what about the followers that you donāt know about. The establishment for exampleā¦When GCHQ can monitor conversations half way around the world, your living room would be easy pickings. And donāt underestimate the Russians. The Americans are not the only country who have spy satellites orbiting the earth capable of reading a newspaper on the street from several miles up in the sky. Try ordering some bomb making equipment or joining a patriotic organisation and see how long it would be before you get a knock at the door.
Not as free a country as you are led to believeā¦
I was going to say . . . I think that authorities keeping track of people doing harmful things has been going on way before smartphones. Regular phones are not impenetrable. And bugging devices arenāt unheard of.
If anything smartphones makes it harder because thereās so much noise. Itās harder to identify the threats if youāre monitoring innocuous things.
I know someone who has worked for both the military and the police intelligence services and he has told me what GCHQ themselves tell us - they can access data and content from mobile phones and devices but they need a reason to justify access - they donāt waste time listening in to every innocent conversation and staff are not allowed to access conversations on a whim - there would have to be a lead or an activity which triggered a reason to authorise investigation.
Being able to track people who are planning terror related activities is a good thing, in my book - and if an investigation into an observed suspicious-looking activity turns out to have an innocent explanation, with no crime being planned or committed, then no harm done.
Key Fact - Justifying Investigations
āBefore being able to use any of our databases, we must be able to justify our detective work. For each query that is run, the justification is recorded and can be audited.ā
āOur analysts must think about the threat they are investigating, which of GCHQās missions does it relate to? Is the investigation proportionate? Can they demonstrate the search is necessary to advance the investigation?ā
