I agree with you in principle, but I think the Nest actually only includes a hidden microphone, not a hidden camera.

Yep, it's "only" a microphone, but it's still an inexcusable breach of trust.

The breach of trust is bad enough, but the fact that it is a microphone opens the possibility of criminal wiretapping charges.

Well first of all this isn't a phone call so there's no chance at all of wiretapping charges regardless of any other circumstances. Second of all, the only potentially related charge would be something like eavesdropping and while that would vary by state, that would have required Google to actually use the microphone. If they didn't actually eavesdrop on anyone or design that in with the intent to eavesdrop on anyone then they haven't committed any kind of eavesdropping crime.

https://definitions.uslegal.com/e/eavesdropping/

The rules for you and I are not the same rules for Google.

Even if the mic was never on?

Yes! Even if the gun to your head was never fired.

This is either stupid or dishonest.

A gun to your head is a threat of violence - that’s the criminal act. Threatening murder is a crime in itself.

The crime of wiretapping would be secretly listening/recording (and willfully so, not by accident as e.g. when baby monitors cross-talk). Having an inactive piece of hardware present, with no intention of using it for spying, is not a crime.

Having the hardware present is extremely unlikely to be nefarious. It could have been (a probably was) future-proofing. It could be a bundled package (unlikely I think for a mic, but you e.g. pretty much can’t buy cheap motion sensors without temp and luminosity bundled, so things like Philips Hue motion sensors measure temperature too).

I disagree strongly that characterisation of stupid and dishonest. Play ball. You didn't know about the gun to your head, are you ok with that? It was futureproofing in case you later might want the gun and we're claiming it's not loaded.

Yes gun to the head is the extreme example, that's the point. Not switching it on does not absolve you of guilt. Same thing here.

That is an entirely reasonable point of view and argument. If you really do find it stupid and/or dishonest reflect on that.

If there is no law against putting secret wire taps in people's houses "by mistake" and claiming it wasn't switched on there should be because ethically its a crime worthy of the Stasi. I would prefer if we didn't have a turnkey solution to creation of a facist state of the kind the soviets could only dream of. Perhaps you like the idea? Ah but "google wouldn't" So there's no need for law surrounding google because they just wouldn't. I know some of the engineers and no way would they allow that.

Democracy deserves better defence. Even if the gun to your head is never fired and you don't know about it. Criminal. If the law says otherwise, change it.

Now I wonder if there is something you would like to disclose about your vested interests? Perhaps not. I'm old enough to remember smart and kind people being Soviet apologists then finding out later something approximating the truth to their revulsion. You don't have to be on the take to be an apologist. But there is a lot of defence of big silicon valley companies behaving badly around here and very little "Disclosure, I work for.." going on.

Many other Nest products, such as the Smoke alarm, doorbell and camera have microphones too. I agree that not disclosing that one was bad, but realistically if you have a Nest home, you probably have at least one microphone somewhere.

It also comes down to much you trust them that the microphone was disabled. If you don't, then you probably also shouldn't be carrying a smartphone with you either.

This is something I always ask people with those little "camera blockers" attached to their laptops: "How do you block the microphone?" and "Which is worse? Recording video of you all day, or recording audio of you all day?

That's a good point. I think it varies from person to person.

Part of my reason for blocking video is I can never figure out when videoconferencing tools will default to transmitting video, which I never want, before I have a way to turn it off.

Also, I don't think I'm a high profile enough target that somebody would bother sifting through everything I say in front of my laptop for something interesting.

Capturing images every minute or so and looking for something embarrassing (someone showing lots of skin) seems much easier for malware to automate.

>I don't think I'm a high profile enough target that somebody would bother sifting through everything I say in front of my laptop for something interesting.

The threat model is closer to automated transcription, global history search, and parallel construction.

I am amazed at the general level of understanding regarding this sort of thing. People simply don't know enough, on average, to even make an informed decision about this stuff.

They think the FBI is gonna sit and watch or listen to a recording. They have no idea this is gonna sit as text in a database forever to be searched against later.

I think that would be hard to pull off in the US, where I live. There are enough paranoid infosec people that would spot the data transmission or CPU usage.

But certainly no harm done in muffling or ripping out a mic if you're concerned!

Why would anybody bother trying to hide traffic? Lots of apps already waste bandwidth and CPU to exfiltrate a wide variety of data, often sending it straight to Facebook[1]. They simply relabeled it "analytics",

[1] https://media.ccc.de/v/35c3-9941-how_facebook_tracks_you_on_...

Not if it’s intermittent / on-demand and hiding within existing traffic.

There are startups that automate listening to devices. See www.deepgram.com

Lenovo lets you order a ThinkPad with neither camera nor microphone, and USB webcams are small and fit easily in a bag or backpack.

My son worked in a chip fab for a couple of years. The only devices allowed in there must be certified to have no cameras, including phones. They issue modified phones with out working cameras to employees. All devices must have a big certification sticker on the back. Just thought it was interesting.

It's not "would you rather be recorded in video or audio?", it's "would you rather be recorded in just audio, or in both video and audio?".

It's easy and quick to put some tape over the webcam, so unless you use it all the time, there's very little reason not to to so.

Disabling the microphone is harder and maybe not worth the effort.

You crimp the internal microphone with a pair of pliers.

So how do I block the microphone on my MacBook?

Zuckerberg released a photo once where he had a piece of tape over the microphone hole on the size. I don't know what the effect is, but it would be easy to test.

It would muffle it slightly. It would still give an attacker perfectly usable sound.

The muffled sound is enough to prevent acoustic keylogging from working properly though.

https://www.davidsalomon.name/CompSec/auxiliary/KybdEmanatio...

Plus if you know about it you can cover it over etc.

And get to question why they even need a camera to start with, before buying the product.

wait, that's even in question?