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This page says it's disabled by software - not by hardware. So it really depends on how much you trust the software and the people making it. The software is cl

by mikelat 13y ago

This page says it's disabled by software - not by hardware. So it really depends on how much you trust the software and the people making it. The software is closed source and the people making it also happened to be the first ones to sign onto PRISM.

taopao 13y ago
Your computer and phone are big balls of blind faith in software/firmware.
- katbyte 13y ago
  My computer doesn't have a webcam or mic plugged in all the time pointed at my living room.
  - Groxx 13y ago
    would you recognize one if it were on the motherboard? it's not like microphones are big.
    - katbyte 13y ago
      no, but i've never heard of a motherboard having an internal mic. Is that a thing now?
      - Groxx 13y ago
        Well, laptops. But we never heard of prism before now, which doesn't make it not a thing. I'm completely building this into a paranoid delusion, but then this whole thread is a demonstration that we lack / are denied the knowledge to dispel paranoid delusions, and sometimes they're right.
  - scott_s 13y ago
    My computer has a webcam and microphone pointed at me whenever I'm using it. Same for many, many people.
    - rjd 13y ago
      And unsurprisingly there are many accounts of this being abused already, heres a few high profile examples: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robbins_v._Lower_Merion_School_District http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robbins_v._Lower_Merion_School_... , http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/03/rat-breeders-meet-the-men-who-spy-on-women-through-their-webcams/ http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/03/rat-breeders-meet...
      - scott_s 13y ago
        Indeed. But it happens rarely enough that its usefulness to video chat with friends outweighs the risks for me and many other people. Most people are already okay with a camera on a device that is constantly pointing at them.
        katbyte 13y ago
        I dare say most people are blissfully unaware of how often and how easy it is for someone to use their webcam to spy on them. Either way thats not the point, I don't have a webcam or mic plugged in, except when i am using it for video chat or gaming, and afterwards i unplug them. The xbox's cannot be removed like my PCs.
    - katbyte 13y ago
      But you have the option of unplugging the mic and camera, apparently that is not the case with the xbox.
      - scott_s 13y ago
        I do not have that option with my Macbook, nor do I think people have such an option with most laptops that have an integrated camera and mic. I could physically cover the lens and mic, but you can do that with a Kinect, too.
  - dominicgs 13y ago
    Many new smart TVs do, and they have already begun to be exploited - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jA_2AiaAkvk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jA_2AiaAkvk
  - LaurelCrowned 13y ago
    Your computer or phone doesn't need a conventional microphone to record sound. They could very easily be hidden in software, or by anything that can detect vibration. Not that I'm worried about a console doing this anyway.
    - katbyte 13y ago
      I'm pretty sure a computer with no mic is unable to record sound...
baddox 13y ago
Well everything is about trust, right? The PS4 could have a completely hidden camera that always on, but most people trust that Sony wouldn't do that, or that if they did, someone would quickly find it.
- brigade 13y ago
  It's almost like iFixit doesn't exist.
  - baddox 13y ago
    It's still trust though. We trust that iFixit or some other third party would discover and publicize the secret camera. A few of us might even do it ourselves, but most of us would just trust that someone else would.
    - mikeash 13y ago
      Those are all extremely different levels of trust. It's useless to treat them as equivalent.
      - baddox 13y ago
        I think the "software vs. hardware" disabling of the Kinect is very similar.
        Dylan16807 13y ago
        Software vs. hardware means you trust Microsoft to never in the future decide to spy and to never make a coding mistake that could turn the equipment on when it's not supposed to be. When it comes to teardowns you trust that multiple independent parties aren't all actively lying to you in concert. I don't see how these are at all similar.
        mikeash 13y ago
        When somebody figures out how to leverage a buffer overflow exploit in order to create a camera or microphone where none exists, then the might be similar.
amalcon 13y ago
The aftermarket part to disable the Kinect without breaking warranty is not very expensive: http://www.amazon.com/Post--3-Inches-Canary-Yellow-12-Pads/dp/B00006JNNE/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1371683713&sr=8-2&keywords=post-it+note http://www.amazon.com/Post--3-Inches-Canary-Yellow-12-Pads/d... Though there are a number of reasons I don't like the Xbox One, the Kinect isn't one of them.
- superkamiguru 13y ago
  There is still the mic part. Should we use bubblewrap instead?
- mikelat 13y ago
  You could very well do that. You could also crack open the kinect as soon as you buy it and change it so you can disable it by a switch or something like that. Although permanent disconnection apparently isn't a good idea as saying "xbox on" will I hear be the only way you turn the device on. Really though I think it'd be easier for them to just give customers the option not to plug it in, but my guess is that they're trying to make sure everyone uses the kinect that they ship with the console (its not necessarily being used for nefarious purposes), but with that being said I still don't trust Microsoft.
  - jevinskie 13y ago
    > "xbox on" will I hear be the only way you turn the device on. Really? What about mute people? Microsoft can't be that accessibility-impaired!
    - mikelat 13y ago
      I'm just telling you what I've read. I don't agree with it, but it's reasonable to assume they ship a kinect with every xbox one, they want people to use it and they probably aren't thinking of mute people.
- Dylan16807 13y ago
  You can disable the camera by turning it around. The microphone is the bigger issue.
m3mnoch 13y ago
nah. you can totally disable it with hardware: http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-jpMACMgKo2A/UaaIiPp3IvI/AAAAAAAAAPU/sbHhof6QIO4/s320/ducttape.jpg http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-jpMACMgKo2A/UaaIiPp3IvI/AAAAAAAAAP... m3mnoch.
kabdib 13y ago
Ex Kinect engineer here. I wrote a bunch of firmware in the original Kinect and a bunch of support stuff on the 360 console. I also did a lot of design on the new Kinect system before I left MS. I won't reveal any secrets, but: 1) It should be very easy to determine if the Kinect is listening when it should not be, at least when the unit is off. So whatever MS claims the unit does should be verifiable. 2) I trust the Kinect team to do this right. They're dead serious about privacy issues. You don't know me, so my trust in point #2 isn't necessarily transitive. But you should be able to look at signals and verify #1.
- nknighthb 13y ago
  If they're that serious, why not do the obvious thing and provide a physical switch? Why make it dependent on code we all know is fallible?
  - kabdib 13y ago
    Well, what does a switch do? How does a physical switch work? Phones -- the old ones -- have big honking mechanical switches, but you can still listen through the things, with a little engineering. A switch that just twiddles a bit on an input line can be ignored by software. A switch that controls power might be interesting. But then there's a cable from the camera to the console itself, which could carry some power, and might be used to run a microphone, or maybe the camera electronics, a little bit. Really, your recourse is to unplug the camera. Or not have one. Others have pointed out that there are microphones on laptops and tablets (that appear to be off, but who knows?), and many celebrated cases in which reverse-spyware has been used to recover stolen hardware. This stuff is all around us now. There's no coordinated plan for NSA-like folks to glue it together, or light it up without us knowing, and I think this would be hard, at least for the time being, and doubly hard to do without someone noticing.
    - nknighthb 13y ago
      The "switch" in a telephone was never designed as a privacy mechanism, and the device itself necessarily requires a live connection to the telephone network at all times. By contrast, there is no compelling reason the Kinect component(s) must be connected to the xbox when not in use. I obviously don't know what sort of bus is being used internally, but if it were, for example, USB, then the mechanical switch could easily behave as the equivalent of removing a USB connector from a socket. The laptop/microphone argument is a red herring. "Everybody else is doing it" is not a valid excuse for doing the wrong thing.

by mikelat 13y ago

taopao 13y ago

Your computer and phone are big balls of blind faith in software/firmware.

katbyte 13y ago
My computer doesn't have a webcam or mic plugged in all the time pointed at my living room.
- Groxx 13y ago
  would you recognize one if it were on the motherboard? it's not like microphones are big.
  - katbyte 13y ago
    no, but i've never heard of a motherboard having an internal mic. Is that a thing now?
    - Groxx 13y ago
      Well, laptops. But we never heard of prism before now, which doesn't make it not a thing. I'm completely building this into a paranoid delusion, but then this whole thread is a demonstration that we lack / are denied the knowledge to dispel paranoid delusions, and sometimes they're right.
- scott_s 13y ago
  My computer has a webcam and microphone pointed at me whenever I'm using it. Same for many, many people.
  - rjd 13y ago
    And unsurprisingly there are many accounts of this being abused already, heres a few high profile examples: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robbins_v._Lower_Merion_School_District http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robbins_v._Lower_Merion_School_... , http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/03/rat-breeders-meet-the-men-who-spy-on-women-through-their-webcams/ http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/03/rat-breeders-meet...
    - scott_s 13y ago
      Indeed. But it happens rarely enough that its usefulness to video chat with friends outweighs the risks for me and many other people. Most people are already okay with a camera on a device that is constantly pointing at them.
      - katbyte 13y ago
        I dare say most people are blissfully unaware of how often and how easy it is for someone to use their webcam to spy on them. Either way thats not the point, I don't have a webcam or mic plugged in, except when i am using it for video chat or gaming, and afterwards i unplug them. The xbox's cannot be removed like my PCs.
  - katbyte 13y ago
    But you have the option of unplugging the mic and camera, apparently that is not the case with the xbox.
    - scott_s 13y ago
      I do not have that option with my Macbook, nor do I think people have such an option with most laptops that have an integrated camera and mic. I could physically cover the lens and mic, but you can do that with a Kinect, too.
- dominicgs 13y ago
  Many new smart TVs do, and they have already begun to be exploited - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jA_2AiaAkvk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jA_2AiaAkvk
- LaurelCrowned 13y ago
  Your computer or phone doesn't need a conventional microphone to record sound. They could very easily be hidden in software, or by anything that can detect vibration. Not that I'm worried about a console doing this anyway.
  - katbyte 13y ago
    I'm pretty sure a computer with no mic is unable to record sound...

baddox 13y ago

Well everything is about trust, right? The PS4 could have a completely hidden camera that always on, but most people trust that Sony wouldn't do that, or that if they did, someone would quickly find it.

brigade 13y ago
It's almost like iFixit doesn't exist.
- baddox 13y ago
  It's still trust though. We trust that iFixit or some other third party would discover and publicize the secret camera. A few of us might even do it ourselves, but most of us would just trust that someone else would.
  - mikeash 13y ago
    Those are all extremely different levels of trust. It's useless to treat them as equivalent.
    - baddox 13y ago
      I think the "software vs. hardware" disabling of the Kinect is very similar.
      - Dylan16807 13y ago
        Software vs. hardware means you trust Microsoft to never in the future decide to spy and to never make a coding mistake that could turn the equipment on when it's not supposed to be. When it comes to teardowns you trust that multiple independent parties aren't all actively lying to you in concert. I don't see how these are at all similar.
      - mikeash 13y ago
        When somebody figures out how to leverage a buffer overflow exploit in order to create a camera or microphone where none exists, then the might be similar.

amalcon 13y ago

The aftermarket part to disable the Kinect without breaking warranty is not very expensive: http://www.amazon.com/Post--3-Inches-Canary-Yellow-12-Pads/dp/B00006JNNE/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1371683713&sr=8-2&keywords=post-it+note http://www.amazon.com/Post--3-Inches-Canary-Yellow-12-Pads/d... Though there are a number of reasons I don't like the Xbox One, the Kinect isn't one of them.

superkamiguru 13y ago
There is still the mic part. Should we use bubblewrap instead?
mikelat 13y ago
You could very well do that. You could also crack open the kinect as soon as you buy it and change it so you can disable it by a switch or something like that. Although permanent disconnection apparently isn't a good idea as saying "xbox on" will I hear be the only way you turn the device on. Really though I think it'd be easier for them to just give customers the option not to plug it in, but my guess is that they're trying to make sure everyone uses the kinect that they ship with the console (its not necessarily being used for nefarious purposes), but with that being said I still don't trust Microsoft.
- jevinskie 13y ago
  > "xbox on" will I hear be the only way you turn the device on. Really? What about mute people? Microsoft can't be that accessibility-impaired!
  - mikelat 13y ago
    I'm just telling you what I've read. I don't agree with it, but it's reasonable to assume they ship a kinect with every xbox one, they want people to use it and they probably aren't thinking of mute people.
Dylan16807 13y ago
You can disable the camera by turning it around. The microphone is the bigger issue.

m3mnoch 13y ago

nah. you can totally disable it with hardware: http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-jpMACMgKo2A/UaaIiPp3IvI/AAAAAAAAAPU/sbHhof6QIO4/s320/ducttape.jpg http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-jpMACMgKo2A/UaaIiPp3IvI/AAAAAAAAAP... m3mnoch.

kabdib 13y ago

Ex Kinect engineer here. I wrote a bunch of firmware in the original Kinect and a bunch of support stuff on the 360 console. I also did a lot of design on the new Kinect system before I left MS. I won't reveal any secrets, but: 1) It should be very easy to determine if the Kinect is listening when it should not be, at least when the unit is off. So whatever MS claims the unit does should be verifiable. 2) I trust the Kinect team to do this right. They're dead serious about privacy issues. You don't know me, so my trust in point #2 isn't necessarily transitive. But you should be able to look at signals and verify #1.

nknighthb 13y ago
If they're that serious, why not do the obvious thing and provide a physical switch? Why make it dependent on code we all know is fallible?
- kabdib 13y ago
  Well, what does a switch do? How does a physical switch work? Phones -- the old ones -- have big honking mechanical switches, but you can still listen through the things, with a little engineering. A switch that just twiddles a bit on an input line can be ignored by software. A switch that controls power might be interesting. But then there's a cable from the camera to the console itself, which could carry some power, and might be used to run a microphone, or maybe the camera electronics, a little bit. Really, your recourse is to unplug the camera. Or not have one. Others have pointed out that there are microphones on laptops and tablets (that appear to be off, but who knows?), and many celebrated cases in which reverse-spyware has been used to recover stolen hardware. This stuff is all around us now. There's no coordinated plan for NSA-like folks to glue it together, or light it up without us knowing, and I think this would be hard, at least for the time being, and doubly hard to do without someone noticing.
  - nknighthb 13y ago
    The "switch" in a telephone was never designed as a privacy mechanism, and the device itself necessarily requires a live connection to the telephone network at all times. By contrast, there is no compelling reason the Kinect component(s) must be connected to the xbox when not in use. I obviously don't know what sort of bus is being used internally, but if it were, for example, USB, then the mechanical switch could easily behave as the equivalent of removing a USB connector from a socket. The laptop/microphone argument is a red herring. "Everybody else is doing it" is not a valid excuse for doing the wrong thing.