In the old days, it used to be a big deal for listening devices or bugs to be placed into your home. Here is a clip from the movie Charlie Wilson’s War where a CIA agent placed a bug onto a bottle of scotch given to Senator Charlie Wilson.

Charlie Wilson gets all offended that his conversations were spied upon.

Today we each have multiple listening devices in our home, car or carry around. We pay for the privilege of using them. Voicebot had a consumer survey that found those who are very concerned about privacy risks posed by smart speakers were only 16 percent less likely to own one than the general public.

These are smartphones, smartwatches, fitness watches, voice assistants, laptops, tablets and many toys and other gadgets.

There have been many reports that Amazon and Google record and using recordings from Voice assistants beyond the tasks that consumers intend. There are reports that cameras are activated on laptops without informing the users.

Google says it only turns on and begins recording when you utter the words “OK Google”. It was reported OK was enough to turn on recording. The voice assistant devices are always listening. It is likely the NSA and CIA are at least as good as ordinary hackers. The NSA has $10 billion per year budget and the CIA $2 billion per year digital intelligence budget. They clearly have backdoors to get video and audio from any internet or networked listening device and sensors.

The microphones on laptops and other devices can be activated or are already activated.

Voice to text apps are trivial and free now. The Otter app is very good at text to speech.

Parents can install apps on their childrens smartphones to monitor all activity on their phones. It would clearly be trivial for large tech companies and government agencies to perform such monitoring on a wide scale.

We know we are being spied upon but we just cannot quit them.

SOURCES- Voicebot, Charlie Wilson’s War
Written By Brian Wang, Nextbigfuture.com

Brian Wang is a prolific business-oriented writer of emerging and disruptive technologies. He is known for insightful articles that combine business and technical analysis that catches the attention of the general public and is also useful for those in the industries. He is the sole author and writer of 
nextbigfuture.com, the top online science blog. He is also involved in angel investing and raising funds for breakthrough technology startup companies.

He gave the recent keynote presentation at Monte Jade event with a talk entitled the Future for You.  He gave an annual update on molecular nanotechnology at Singularity University on nanotechnology, gave a TEDX talk on energy, and advises USC ASTE 527 (advanced space projects program). He has been interviewed for radio, professional organizations. podcasts and corporate events. He was recently interviewed by the radio program Steel on Steel on satellites and high altitude balloons that will track all movement in many parts of the USA.

He fundraises for various high impact technology companies and has worked in computer technology, insurance, healthcare and with corporate finance.

He has substantial familiarity with a broad range of breakthrough technologies like age reversal and antiaging, quantum computers, artificial intelligence, ocean tech,  agtech, nuclear fission, advanced nuclear fission, space propulsion, satellites, imaging, molecular nanotechnology, biotechnology, medicine, blockchain, crypto and many other areas.