Am I going Mad! Sky is spying?

CrazyCruizChick · Post by **CrazyCruizChick** » Mon Jul 11, 2011 4:41 pm

Just heard this from the radio, sky boxs that listen's to your conversations while it is conneted to phone line? A mirochip that is inside the sky box. If thats true, its crazy. :S

Has anyone else heard this crazy news!

Post by **spot** » Tue Jul 12, 2011 12:07 am

You can read what's claimed about it here:Digital cable TV boxes, such as Scientific Atlanta, have had secret in-built microphones inside them since their inception in the late 1990's.

Government, Industry To Use Computer Microphones To Spy On 150 Million Americans

It's said to be why they have a two-way phone connection to dial back to their supplier, instead of just a one-way channel to pick up broadcast schedules.

Telephones have exactly the same arrangement, mind, and there's a lot more telephones. Telephones have microphones as well, and they can be dialed into and dial out. I'm not sure why a government or a news organization would bother rigging Sky boxes to silently turn on and record conversations when households already have thousands of times as many equally amendable phones already installed.

Clodhopper · Post by **Clodhopper** » Tue Jul 12, 2011 3:23 am

Not much point tapping a landline when most traffic is mobile/internet. Great advantage for a News organisation with no scruples, mind. Do you trust a Murdoch organisation after this?

I'm biased. Can't stand the man. Sky salesmen have got a rant about political domination of our media from me for years now.

But I reckon Virgin is less likely to be up to that sort of thing. I don't say Branson is a saint, but he does at least seem to have some sort of moral compass.

(Bring the bastard down so I can watch Test Match Cricket. That's the core of the matter.)

Post by **spot** » Tue Jul 12, 2011 6:09 am

Clodhopper;1362558 wrote: Not much point tapping a landline when most traffic is mobile/internet.The issue is more an ability to remotely turn on a microphone in your domestic setting and to listen indefinitely. It's as simple to jimmy a landline to do that is it presumably is to do it with a Sky box, assuming the Sky box has that facility. Landlines obviously have the microphone and they're all programmable these days, I'd bet most have a remotely erasable PROM to hold the functions they perform. Why bother with a low-probability Sky box when you can hit on a high-probability landline instead? And, of course, it all applies even more so to cellphones.

Clodhopper · Post by **Clodhopper** » Tue Jul 12, 2011 3:24 pm

Microphones won't do email. So fixing the central hub all communications go through would make sense. All completely and infinitely deniable though. Who knows the real requirements of tech these days?

Murdoch is planning an empire. That means a successor. LOL! That's where empires collapse unless they have created institutions which survive them and the frailties of that successor. I actually think James might have been a decent guy, if it weren't for his dad.

But corruption spreads. Please God this is the lancing of a boil on our political body. Murdoch's undue influence in our democratic process at time of writing still is a desperate illness. Look at the way all our political leaders of importance (so not my Liberal Democrats who were targeted last year by the Murdoch Press) have tongued his arse.

Guardian and BBC need to tone down the accusations a touch at present I think. Unless they've got legal backing for everything they are saying they are overreaching and that would let the Murdochs off the hook. Please God they've got backing...