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Here are LG's contract terms for appliances.[1] They are awful. Not only can they listen in. You have a contractual requirement to tell everyone in range of an
by Animats 28d ago
Here are LG's contract terms for appliances.[1] They are awful.
Not only can they listen in. You have a contractual requirement to tell everyone in range of an appliance that they may be eavesdropped upon.
CONSENT REQUIREMENT: You acknowledge and agree that it is your sole responsibility to obtain all necessary consents from any third parties whose voices may be captured by the Product and to notify household members and guests that their voices may be captured and processed, in compliance with applicable wiretapping, eavesdropping, and privacy laws. If anyone does not consent, you should disable the microphone or voice features in the settings. LGE disclaims any liability for your failure to obtain such consent or provide such notification.
[1] https://www.lg.com/us/terms https://www.lg.com/us/terms
- phony-account 28d agoAnd yet what lawmakers focused on was getting your consent for a cookie on a website you were only going to visit once.
- MetaWhirledPeas 28d agoThe law has been unable to keep up with tech changes. Let's hope for the irony of AI helping them figure this stuff out.
- lazide 28d agowhy would it do that?
- Glyptodon 28d ago[flagged]
- Terr_ 28d ago> The law has been unable to keep up with tech changes. Nah, for the most part the law has been unable to keep up with (or choose to oppose) corporate power, and new ways it's being used. Usually there's no magic quantum doohickey which demands fundamentally new legal theory.
- deleted 27d ago[deleted]
- Terr_ 27d agoFor example, take this TV spyware thing, and rewind to the year 1986, and imagine RCA started selling televisions with microphones in them that recorded what was in your room and radioed it back to headquarters for some reason. Obviously the costs wouldn't have worked at the time, but is there anything that was missing in our ability to describe the risks and wrongness? The concepts of privacy and consent, contracts and monopolies, ownership and licensing... They were all there 40 years ago. In other words, the bee in my bonnet involves how the phrase "keeping up with the technology" sometimes becomes way to shift blame and a false target. It distracts us from the immediate political alignment problem towards a nebulous future technological one, which is so ill-defined it can never arrive. ("Once technology finally stops changing, then we'll legislate for our individual constituents' rights.")
- MetaWhirledPeas 27d ago> imagine RCA started selling televisions with microphones in them that recorded what was in your room and radioed it back to headquarters for some reason The problem is that there are real use cases (whether you want them yourself or not) for having an always-on microphone that phones home. The discussion for regulators and lawmakers then becomes about how the data is handled, and that is where they get left in the dust.
- Akronymus 28d agoThat was the maliciously compliant way that companies chose to do to a reasonable law.
- mitxela 28d agoThe exact same law says LG TVs can't record you without consent. Do you like the law or not?
- Obscurity4340 28d agoCan you actually even turn and keep the microphone off or does it toggle itself back on like Apple's Wifi and Bluetooth one-touch toggle off for now buttons?
- bayindirh 28d ago> Apple's Wifi and Bluetooth one-touch toggle off for now buttons? This comparison rubs me off the wrong way every time I see, because. 1. The notifications clearly tell the behavior (doing $THING until tomorrow). 2. There's a way to turn them "really off". What LG does is completely different. IIRC from the teaser of this video, the microphone is never "completely" off or apps can re-enable them somehow.
- callc 27d agoRespectfully disagree. Toggle buttons have an expected behavior that everyone understands. It should work just like a physical button. I don’t appreciate the “we know better for you so we’ll adjust the behavior accordingly” MITM.
- vineyardmike 27d ago> we know better for you so we’ll adjust the behavior accordingly 9/10 times I've used this setting, what I've actually wanted was to temporarily change the behavior. This just saves me from the need to remember to undo it (which I won't remember in a timely manner). This isn't "we know better than you" paternalistic control - the default/easy behavior should cater to the actions and situation we do regularly. I'm sure they do, in fact, know that for most of their customers, when they disable wifi it's because that user wants to temporarily disconnect from the current wifi, but will want to use wifi shortly after, but won't necessarily remember to go into settings and re-enable.
- Obscurity4340 27d agoIt should be symmetrically facile to do both behaviors, assuming there's not an invisible thumb on the scale that wants to procedurally force you to make the choice most in the company's interest. But its not. It is more effortful, more complex, and requires greater care to actually get Wifi and Bluetooth to the OFF state than ON, or ON+CONNECTED. Respectfully, that is backwards, it should be the easiest thing to turn something off. Yet, here there is needless nuance added because there is a benefit to the company that the device is either chronically or as much as possible connected to the internet, connected to bluetooth, low battery mode is off, and if they cant have it connected to the internet and bluetooth, well, at least keep the beaconing on and sending out signals and at least meshing so advertisers and stores and their own Find/lost services are still able to benefit. Thats not even getting into passive Fingerprinting and secondary furtive location tracking. I was surprised to learn that having bluetooth on identifies your device to stores and anyone else who can track bluetooth devices in range. Even when you toggled off bluetooth, you're still being profiled. I wonder if actually going into settings and turning off bluetooth or wifi even totally stops the device from continuing to signal in all ways, it would be unsurprising if thats another UI nicety that doesnt actually mean what it says or implies
- empyrrhicist 28d agoCan that kind of clause really be enforceable? It really doesn't seem legal in any jurisdiction I'm aware of. (not a lawyer)
- bjt 28d agoThese (and other TOS agreements) fall under the category of "adhesion contracts". Because the buyer has no real ability to negotiate, any ambiguity is resolved in their favor. A judge can also strike provisions that a reasonable buyer would not expect, or that are unconscionable. So it's up to the judge's judgment. https://www.investopedia.com/terms/a/adhesion-contract.asp https://www.investopedia.com/terms/a/adhesion-contract.asp
- msdz 28d ago[dead]
- claaams 28d agoThe cool thing is that they make you go into forced arbitration rather than through the legal system.
- keane 27d ago^claim to — this type of legalese (shrink wrap, clickwrap, liability waivers, etc.) is a bluff (when in doubt: sue)
- vineyardmike 27d agoThe cooler thing is that if a substantial amount of the 216M TV owners tried to arbitrate across the country/world, they'd cave so fast. Arbitration is cheaper than an individual law suit, but much much more expensive than a class-action.
- colechristensen 28d agoare state's attourney's general going to go after them? eh. you ask if they're enforceable but that's the wrong question, the real question is will anyone do anything to stop them? This is the kind of thing that states need to make explicitly illegal.
- charcircuit 28d agoIt just reads as legal boilerplate. How else can voice recognition listen for a wake word without being able to process everything it hears.
- maxv2 28d ago[dead]
- HPsquared 28d agoYes that's giving me a bit of pause. I wonder what, say, Apple's ToS has for this kind of functionality.
- brookst 27d agoApple (and Google, and most others) process wake words on device. Imagine the technical complexity and expense of a billion devices streaming audio that is like 0.01% wake words.
- cuu508 27d ago> 8. I understand that LGE will retain the collected Voice Information for 6 months to fulfil the purposes for which we collected it, and after this period, it will be deleted or anonymized, depending on the case. Somehow feels like it might be used for more than just wake word detection.
- charcircuit 27d agoIt's normal for home assistants to save what you said after the wake word.
- garciansmith 27d agoKeep all the processing on device? Do so in a way that is legal in the jurisdiction you are selling the devices in without claiming it's the owner's responsibility to get consent from all individuals (even if they cannot legally consent because they are, say, a child!?) to comply with wiretapping laws in their own home? Choose not to sell an object that comes with software made to spy on you and sell all it learns to advertisers? That fact that you read something like this as acceptable "legal boilerplate" just shows how, very sadly in my opinion, invasions of privacy have been normalized by these corporations.
- lanerobertlane 28d agotempted to go into my nearest big box electronics store and then sue them when they don't tell me the LG tv's they have on display are eavesdropping on me.
- bix6 28d agoDo it
- stronglikedan 27d agothey already have audio video surveillance signs posted everywhere from the moment you walk in so that would go over like a lead balloon
- BLKNSLVR 27d agoAsk them if the TVs come with the necessary and relevant audio surveillance signs.
- cameldrv 27d agoThey have video surveillance signs. Audio is a different category in a lot of states. In California, it's illegal to record audio without consent of all of the parties, and I believe you can get a civil remedy of $5000 for this.
- deleted 28d ago[deleted]
- buzer 28d agoIs that actually for smart tvs? The first paragraph includes "the products you may access or otherwise connect to via the ThinQ mobile application (not including Smart TVs)" and "These Terms of Use do not apply to any other LG products or services, including Smart Media Products." [EDIT] Smart Media products terms appear to be at https://us.lgappstv.com/main/terms https://us.lgappstv.com/main/terms (for comparison here's UK: https://gb.lgappstv.com/main/terms https://gb.lgappstv.com/main/terms, there are some other EU versions available for e.g. Germany but I imagine UK terms should be quite close and more accessible for most of readers)
- tagrun 28d agoIt appears so from the link you provided: https://us.lgappstv.com/main/terms#tabContentTerms6 https://us.lgappstv.com/main/terms#tabContentTerms6 > 8. I understand that LGE will retain the collected Voice Information for 6 months to fulfil the purposes for which we collected it, and after this period, it will be deleted or anonymized, depending on the case. > 9. I understand that this Smart Media Product is a household device. If this Smart Media Product will be used by more than one person, I represent that, in addition to agreeing to this Agreement, that I have obtained consent from all other members of my household whose information may be collected through this Smart Media Product and am providing consent on their behalf.
- gchamonlive 28d agoWhat's absurd is that this doesn't void the terms by default. There should be limits to what companies can put in their ToS beyond which those terms aren't enforceable.
- dghlsakjg 28d agoThere are limits. You can’t waive certain rights, and you can’t overwrite certain laws. The issue is that we haven’t made this shit against the law yet.
- phkahler 27d agoAsk LG who has agreed to their wiretapping. They can't tell you if some guest in front of a TV has agreed or not. How can that be concent?
- deleted 27d ago[deleted]
- jjav 27d agoBecause LG is a large corporation and if there is something we have learned (or had proven) in 2026 is that laws don't apply if you oligarch hard enough.
- trashb 27d agoActually LG is not just a large corporation or even a oligarch, it is one of the major south korean chaebol groups and therefore has way more power in the legal and political space.
- ChoGGi 27d ago> concent I've been wondering; do you like to sing together with the LG chime sound?
- gchamonlive 27d ago
- jeffybefffy519 28d agoI wonder how much money LG makes from all of these practices, and if they stopped doing it what impact to cost of a TV would be?
- meeb 27d agoIt’s in the video, the subsidiary makes tens of millions in profit from a couple of hundred million in revenue.
- phkahler 27d agoIANAL but without concent I think LG is comitting a crime here. The owner who ostensibly agreed to obtain concent through the ToS might be breaking their agreement, but wouldn't that be a separate issue? ToS and other click licenses have been making shit up for way too long.
- godelski 27d agoIANAL, but I believe the argument is that agreeing to the TOS constitutes consent. Even though no reasonable person would believe such a thing would be in the TOS and no reasonable person reads the full TOS (no person actually could...). Perhaps we start suing one another for not disclosing the wire tapping, forcing the lawsuit upwards towards LG. It'd be more efficient to sue LG, but lawyers don't seem to be done those things. At least not that I'm aware of
- TonyStr 27d agoIANAL, but only the owner can consent through the TOS. The owner does not collect or process the data, so it's entirely on LG to ensure proper consent, not the owner. Breaking a TOS is not a crime, and can only be punished by restricting or disallowing access to a service, but collecting personal data without consent is a huge problem in the EU.
- bigbinary 27d agoI<3ANAL but even if the owner agrees to the TOS, there’s no way other users or guests are verifiably consenting or any way for LG to verify before collecting data. I could hit someone and say it was someone else’s fault, but delusion isn’t a legal defense.
- d1sxeyes 27d agoIt’s clearly unreasonable to assume that LG can know and procure consent from everyone you choose to allow into your living room. It’s reasonable to push the burden of procuring that consent onto whoever controls entry to the space, with terms like this. As a thought experiment, let’s take a service like Zoom where you can record video of participants. It’s reasonable to say “you’re operating the camera, if someone appears in the background, it’s your responsibility to make sure they’re informed and consent to the recording”. In fact, trying to establish the identity of the person in the background for the purposes of procuring consent is probably a greater intrusion on privacy than not. The problem here is different. The problem is that the volume of data being collected is clearly unnecessary for achieving the purposes it’s intended for.
- harrouet 27d agoBut isn't it the same as Facebook letting you consent (without actually reading the ToS) that your friends on that freshly-uploaded photo agreed to appear online and have their face scanned?
- pveierland 27d agoClearly not. A person posting a picture is performing an explicit act of sharing a specific piece of content. Even in the case where the person doesn't know what that entails, they have made a choice to share specific content. With smart TVs it will be unclear to the person that recording is even happening, much less how that data is used and for what purpose - so the likelihood of them realizing that data is being shared or that they need to show consideration for how data about others in presence of the TV is shared will be close to nil.
- malkia 27d agoWhat about the stores where the TV is sold?
- chinathrow 27d agoImagine being the lawyer signing this off. Imagine being the head of product signing this off. What were they thinking? And most importantly: what TV are they using at home?
- jwr 27d agoI have an LG TV. It has been pestering me with those licensing agreements from time to time, but interestingly enough, I was only required to agree to fairly reasonable basics, everything else I just ignored and left for later. I'm guessing this is an oversight and the TV does record, but then this is criminal. But, nobody will bother to prosecute them I guess...
- jacquesmouton 27d agoThey are not the only ones doing it. What about Android?
- ninalanyon 27d agoWhen do you get to see these terms? The discussion seems to imply that they are seen only after purchase (I haven't read the article). If that is so they are void and unenforceable in most jurisdictions as you cannot agree to something in a contract that you cannot read. Are such terms enforceable in the US?