Smart homes could possibly be smart enough to monitor owners

“I am in general distrustful of leaks of this nature,” says attorney Chris Dore, a partner at Edelson PC in Chicago, which specializes in consumer privacy, technology and data security. “But from what I know of data security issues and privacy issues at the consumer products level, I have no doubt that hackers can do this, and certainly the CIA and NSA are capable of doing this type of thing.”

According to the WikiLeaks data dump, CIA hackers can break into iPhones, Android phones, PCs running Microsoft Windows, and Samsung smart TVs and exploit the microphones inside such electronics.

Microsoft and Google told USA TODAY they are looking into the situation. Apple and Samsung haven’t responded to a request for comment. The CIA has declined to comment.

WikiLeaks documents say the Samsung TV can be placed into a “fake-off” mode, duping an individual into thinking the television was powered down while in fact conversations were being secretly recorded then sent via the Internet to “a covert CIA server.”

Similar unsettling questions have already been raised before.

24 months ago, the Electronic Privacy Information Center filed an official complaint with the Federal Trade Commission over the “always on” listening capabilities inside Samsung Smart TVs. Samsung issued a statement then that the feature could be disabled at any time and that the TVs “do not monitor living-room conversations.”

Meantime, it was only recently that TV maker Vizio paid $2.2 million to settle charges over software on several of its smart TVs that was used to collect viewing data without consumers’ consent. The FTC and the Office of the New Jersey had alleged that beginning in February 2014, Vizio captured information about 11 million consumer TVs in regards to what viewers were watching on cable, streaming services and over-the-air broadcasts.

Vizio at the time said its software “never paired viewing data with personally identifiable information such as name or contact information” while lauding the FTC resolution as setting a best standard for makers of smart TVs.

There’s a an opposing side: The ability of consumers to talk to devices in the home, and also be heard in kind, is a convenience many have come to appreciate. Amazon’s Echo speaker is actually in a listening mode for the “Alexa” wake word. But Dore says Amazon does a pretty good job of explaining that: “People can make a choice.”

Sinan Eren, a vice president at the Avast security firm, says: “Any embedded device will remain a great target because it presents a significant return on investment to hackers and nation-state actors. Even though compromising mobile systems and smart devices takes significant financial investment and manpower to do so, once they’re in they’ll likely get several years of use out of their malicious toolkits.”

Should consumers be paranoid over the WikiLeaks revelations?

“I think paranoia is a strong word,” Dore says. But he does believe consumers should be “skeptical” every time they bring a device into the home that is connected to the Internet.

Dore says, “We are literally coating our house, our most personal space, in new Internet of Things devices that are being rushed to market, usually without much thought in terms of data security.”

Really makes you wonder about when smart is too smart. We’d love to get some feed back from. To leave us your comments click here