Orwell’s authoritarian surveillance state is finally here: Amazon to release new TVs that feature constant spying on everything you say by: JD Heyes for Natural News
Fans of Amazon are sure to be receptive to the online e-tail behemoth’s latest technology, Fire TVs, because they will simply make streaming the company’s video offerings, programs and movies that much easier.
What the company isn’t telling the owners of those new TVs, which start shipping in October, is that they will literally be inviting in the government surveillance state that visionary author George Orwell warned about in his prophetic book “1984.”
The Verge, a site that reports on technology, notes:
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Amazon is officially in the TV business. The company has announced its first lineup of Amazon-branded 4K Fire TVs, which will begin shipping in October. This is a major expansion from the company’s “Fire TV Edition” collaborations, where its popular streaming software comes preloaded on sets manufactured by other TV makers. But with its new Omni and 4-Series, Amazon is describing these as “Amazon-built TVs.”
The Omni series is the higher-end of the two, and beyond offering better picture quality, its other key selling point is hands-free voice control. Amazon includes far-field microphones in each model of the Omni series, which comes in 43, 50, 55, 65, and 75 inches. (Only the 65- and 75-inch models have Dolby Vision, but the others at least get HDR10.)
Cool, right?
The Verge went on to note that by building the TV, Amazon executives think they will be able to “create a more seamless Fire TV user experience” than previously, when users were required to use the Fire “stick,” a streaming device that plugs into other ‘smart’ TVs.
But here’s the catch. The new tech really just gives Amazon and, by default, the government, an easier ability to listen in on TV owners.
“…Amazon believes that Alexa voice controls add a major convenience factor,” The Verge reports.
“On Omni sets, voice commands are always available — even if the TV is off. These voice commands can be used for finding something to watch, like usual, but you can also adjust the TV’s brightness, volume, or switch inputs with Alexa,” the outlet continued.
As Natural News has reported, however, these ‘voice command’ modules and devices that tens of millions of Americans have in their homes are all secret listening and recording devices.
When these devices, like Amazon’s Echo, first became popular, they were introduced as part of “the internet of things” (IOT), whereby more technologies for our homes and businesses were connected to the internet. How convenient it would be, for instance, to be at work and adjust the temperature in your home; to set alarms; to activate security measures, and so forth. Only, as stated by The Verge, these devices are constantly listening for commands, which means that, by design, they are always listening.
And since they are connected to the internet, that means they are subject to ‘monitoring’ by a plethora of government agencies, as well as hackers.
We reported:
Much like Apple’s iPhone, which contains a listening apparatus via “Siri” that can be activated in a room simply by speaking out loud, the Amazon Echo is programmed to listen for certain verbal commands telling it to turn on, for instance, or to connect to a certain app. Amazon says the device contains “far-field voice recognition” that can hear a person’s voice across the room, even while music is playing.
But this dream comes at a price, warn skeptics who’ve investigated the capability of the Amazon Echo to spy on people and deliver information to hackers or even government officials.
By making their own TVs, Amazon is simply skipping the ‘middleman’ devices that people may or may not purchase (nearly everyone has a TV and if it is one that can do all that ‘cool Amazon stuff,’ so much the better).
Would these tech companies make products the government can exploit? You bet; allowing that access means Uncle Sam’s deep state won’t come after the tech giants with regulatory regimes that would put them out of business.
Welcome to Orwell’s ‘1984.’ We have officially arrived.
