Is your Kinect watching you?
I shouldn't even crack open this can of worms. Mostly because I think the only people still spewing this rubbish are the Sony fan boys. I say that because the most common place I see it is in threads about either the PS4 or Xbox One from people bashing the Xbox One.
But, privacy is important. And so it isn't a terrible question. What are the odds? Well, next to none really. But I need to back that statement up for it to carry any weight.
If you read the PR and technical information on the Kinect 2.0 you'll have stumbled across numerous mentions of just how much data your Kinect has to process every second just to identify and track you. Which says a lot about how much data that the Kinect A) has to retrieve, and B) has to deal with before the signal has any value.
That value, was in the Gigabytes per second realm if I remember correctly. Who here has an internet connection capable of uploading several GB's of data per second to the NSA? No one? Hmmmm, I thought not. Ok, so maybe they aren't streaming the contents of your camera directly after all. The several thousand dollar bill for your ISP for going over your limit would be a bit too big of a tip off. Even certain lay people would start to question.
But maybe there is a more subtle ruse going on. Maybe it is collecting and aggregating data and sending THAT to the NSA. Technologically, that is a lot more doable. But what would that require? First of all, your Kinect would need to be both fully powered up and your Xbox would need to be processing and aggregating that massive data stream. Might be able to trick the lay person, but this would cause substantial power draw while idle, the Kinect's IR array would need to be on, which is actually visible and you'd also have to hope no one noticed the Xbox dumping heat into its surroundings. These things wouldn't throw off a tech savvy individual. Again, the ruse would have already been exposed.
Drat! That means that in all likelihood, that, not only is there likely no one sitting in an NSA bunker getting off on whatever inappropriate things you plan on doing in front of your TV that make you so scared that the NSA is watching you in the first place. But the Kinect's cameras are likely not even receiving power and almost definitely not processing anything.
So, I guess that leaves the microphone array. Well, we know that has power, at least if you configure it to do so (but then, maybe even if you don't). It is listening for you to turn it on. We've all seen it happen, and hey Microsoft isn't denying that one. So, it could just as easily be listening in on everything you say. Processing audio doesn't require nearly as much processing power. Likely wouldn't even require active cooling.
So, we're on to something right? This one is harder to disprove. But I can easily move it into the doubtful category.
IF Microsoft were working with the NSA to spy on you they would need some way of telling the Xbox what to listen for. For the same reasons a constant video feed would be too obvious, a constant stream of your mic feed would also be obvious. Which means that the Xbox would need to know in advance what to listen for and it likely wouldn't be the sorts of things you are expecting (like saying "NSA"). If it were that easy to trigger it to send information on you back to the NSA, it would be too easy for some interested in testing the theory to catch them in the action. Specific names and places, things millions of people aren't likely to say on daily basis are much more valuable things to listen for. But, those sorts of "triggers" can change daily. So, again, you need to be constantly feeding data into the Xbox so it is continually listening for relevant terms. Which, again would not go un-noticed by some.
I'll wager that there are things I'm missing. Basically where I'm going with this is, anyone with the right know-how could setup a Linux based router and then log every packet going in and out of the Xbox. Even if the data is encrypted, it should be fairly obvious when the system is reacting to something you said since, in general the Xbox shouldn't be sending or receiving any packets while in idle mode.
I'd be even more surprised if many people hadn't already done this.
And while I can't say conclusively that even if someone had done the work and found nothing suspicious that it meant nothing was afoot. But it would imply that your privacy isn't compromised any further than it is with last generations consoles.
But, privacy is important. And so it isn't a terrible question. What are the odds? Well, next to none really. But I need to back that statement up for it to carry any weight.
If you read the PR and technical information on the Kinect 2.0 you'll have stumbled across numerous mentions of just how much data your Kinect has to process every second just to identify and track you. Which says a lot about how much data that the Kinect A) has to retrieve, and B) has to deal with before the signal has any value.
That value, was in the Gigabytes per second realm if I remember correctly. Who here has an internet connection capable of uploading several GB's of data per second to the NSA? No one? Hmmmm, I thought not. Ok, so maybe they aren't streaming the contents of your camera directly after all. The several thousand dollar bill for your ISP for going over your limit would be a bit too big of a tip off. Even certain lay people would start to question.
But maybe there is a more subtle ruse going on. Maybe it is collecting and aggregating data and sending THAT to the NSA. Technologically, that is a lot more doable. But what would that require? First of all, your Kinect would need to be both fully powered up and your Xbox would need to be processing and aggregating that massive data stream. Might be able to trick the lay person, but this would cause substantial power draw while idle, the Kinect's IR array would need to be on, which is actually visible and you'd also have to hope no one noticed the Xbox dumping heat into its surroundings. These things wouldn't throw off a tech savvy individual. Again, the ruse would have already been exposed.
Drat! That means that in all likelihood, that, not only is there likely no one sitting in an NSA bunker getting off on whatever inappropriate things you plan on doing in front of your TV that make you so scared that the NSA is watching you in the first place. But the Kinect's cameras are likely not even receiving power and almost definitely not processing anything.
So, I guess that leaves the microphone array. Well, we know that has power, at least if you configure it to do so (but then, maybe even if you don't). It is listening for you to turn it on. We've all seen it happen, and hey Microsoft isn't denying that one. So, it could just as easily be listening in on everything you say. Processing audio doesn't require nearly as much processing power. Likely wouldn't even require active cooling.
So, we're on to something right? This one is harder to disprove. But I can easily move it into the doubtful category.
IF Microsoft were working with the NSA to spy on you they would need some way of telling the Xbox what to listen for. For the same reasons a constant video feed would be too obvious, a constant stream of your mic feed would also be obvious. Which means that the Xbox would need to know in advance what to listen for and it likely wouldn't be the sorts of things you are expecting (like saying "NSA"). If it were that easy to trigger it to send information on you back to the NSA, it would be too easy for some interested in testing the theory to catch them in the action. Specific names and places, things millions of people aren't likely to say on daily basis are much more valuable things to listen for. But, those sorts of "triggers" can change daily. So, again, you need to be constantly feeding data into the Xbox so it is continually listening for relevant terms. Which, again would not go un-noticed by some.
I'll wager that there are things I'm missing. Basically where I'm going with this is, anyone with the right know-how could setup a Linux based router and then log every packet going in and out of the Xbox. Even if the data is encrypted, it should be fairly obvious when the system is reacting to something you said since, in general the Xbox shouldn't be sending or receiving any packets while in idle mode.
I'd be even more surprised if many people hadn't already done this.
And while I can't say conclusively that even if someone had done the work and found nothing suspicious that it meant nothing was afoot. But it would imply that your privacy isn't compromised any further than it is with last generations consoles.
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