Tivo Users Take Heed

[acroyear]

Take this as a warning. Your viewing habits ARE being watched. You should go ahead and assume that the history of what shows you tivo and how often you watch them are already being catalogued and sold to advertisers and nielson-types.

All it takes is for some extension to the Patriot 2 act to turn Tivo into a "financial institution" and the feds could look at your viewing habits. At any rate, if the feds or the courts accurately assume they exist they can be subpoenaed for just about anything. Get accused of child porn or child abuse? they can subpoena your tivo records to see if, for example, you've been replaying baby diaper commercials or the like. Get accused of stalking, and they can look at your viewing records for a history of scinemax softporn. Such facts WILL come out and be public record, even if you aren't even charged; they'll be part of the grand jury testimony.

Two-way digital systems to corporations with a potentially "flexible" privacy policy are generally not to be trusted.

Comments

Re:

[landkurt.livejournal.com]

It dials using a built in modem. I don't think they have broadband connections working yet except maybe on hacked units. This doesn't necessarily mean that TiVo has access to the caller ID information. I doubt TiVo has spent the money to construct their own nationwide modem network. Since they don't use an 800 number I think they are purchasing use of a pre-existing nationwide bank of local dial-up numbers. I suppose the ISP they use could be forwarding the caller ID information to them, but I don't think that is a given.

The TiVo company has been a lot more up front about their privacy policy than most companies are. They have repeatedly stated exactly what they do and why they do it. They claim that they are going to great lengths to keep the viewer data anonymous and I see no reason not to believe them. Of course I don't particularly mind being monitored, at least in the anonymous aggregate sense. I like it that when I watch a show it is actually counted and adds to that show's popularity and ratings in the eyes of the advertisers and networks executives. Makes it more likely that I can continue to watch the shows that I like. I'm sure it doesn't hurt that the TiVo viewer ratings reflect the interests of early adopting gadget freaks who will shell out good money for high tech products like TiVo.

Of course if you want to worry about this sort of thing here's a scenario for you. Once the men in the dark suits decide they want access to your viewing habits and can convince a federal judge to to subpoena records its all over. Get the anonymous records from TiVo for your zip code with the exact time stamp when they were uploaded. There shouldn't be an unmanageable number from a single zip code. Then get the records from the local phone company for exactly when your house called the local dial up number. Put two and two together and quite likely determine exactly which anonymous entry belongs to the suspect. Take your data to court and prove your miscreant is guilty of the heinous crime of watching TV. Wait, no need to prove anything in court any longer with Homeland Security and the Patriot Act. Heck why bother to subpoena records at all when you can just hold someone indefinitely without a hearing or access to a lawyer. Simply call them a suspected terrorist and no proof of anything is necessary anyway.

By the way, if you are under the mistaken impression that a firewall somehow makes your internet access anonymous, I've got bad news for you. A fire wall is designed to keep unwanted connections out, "don't call me, I'll call you". It does nothing to keep them from tracking any connections you voluntarily send out. It may disguise which PC in your house queried that underground page, but they still get an IP number that is specific to your cable modem. Better rethink that whole anonymous web access thing.

[acroyear70.livejournal.com]

I had no pretensions about firewalls == anonymity, though sometimes the PC disguise is a good thing in and of itself.

I've worked with Windows-based, real cheap, PBX phone systems that supply a large number of services including voicemail and auto-data-collecting and the like. Caller-ID is EASY to enable; its built into the toolkit you get with these things. A "Call" object has the return phone number in plain view. A little WIntel hardware, a PBX card, and a $10000 package of software, and you can do anything.

And "I've nothing to hide, so I don't care if they log what I see" is simply ignorance to the extreme, and part of me hopes you get accused of something where this "information" people have on you can be interpreted so incorrectly that you have to prove your innocense.

For example, its not that you watched TV -- if accused of some sex-related crime, your TV viewing habits become VERY suspect, as their general statistical belief is that porn-watching == potential for sexual predation. Similarly, having Tivo records that show a lot of high-violence movies could become an issue should your child be accused of planning a Columbine-style attack. Plenty of those kinds of false accusations have been made in the last few years, and plenty of records like video-rentals have been subpeonaed as a result. With Tivo's record-keeping, they can pin you down for watching a particularly violent scene over and over, when all you were doing was objectively looking at the special effects.

I would rather they simply not have that kind of info; it has nothing to do with them.

TiVo and Privacy

[landkurt.livejournal.com]

I understand your suspicion of having your every choice tracked and be used against against you at some later date. I was responding to what I see as a common over-reaction to tivo: "Oh my, they are tracking exactly what I watch and keeping records of it and there's nothing I can do about it". I apologized if that isn't at all what you were saying. However if that was what you were saying, I still disagree. I would say that everyone should be aware of what data TiVo is capturing and make up their own mind on whether they want one. You can always opt out of the viewing log uploads if that bothers you (and you take them at their word).

My position is that I really like TiVo and what it can do for your television watching. It's the greatest thing for TV since the VCR and is likely to have just as much impact if not more. I support the anonymous aggregate collection of viewing data, in part to support TiVo with another income stream and in part to have a small influence on what is shown on TV. I trust that TiVo is collecting the data anonymously, I don't see how it would be in their business interests to lie about it, there is little profit in precise tracking and a huge potential stink if it's found they are. I feel that there are much larger privacy issues than TiVo.

Just to get a handle on where you are coming from, would TiVo's opt out of data collection be enough for you? Do you trust them not to collect the data? Are you morally outraged that you even have to opt out of anonymous data collection? Does the thought that a company might make a little bit of money off of selling aggregate viewership data annoy you? I've heard people say "they're making money off of my data!" which is just wrong to me, you are represented in aggregate data every minute of the day, get used to it. No one cares enough to purchase records of exactly what you personally watch and I've seen no evidence that TiVo sells or even collects that precise information.

What I watch on TV is nearly a non issue. The largest privacy issue is going to be snooping on web access. A lot of dirt can be dug up on me or anyone by tracking exactly what web sites are visited and queries performed. There is a lot more underground content to catch someone accessing on the Internet. A quick look at the logs for our web server shows a few interesting things captured in the referrer string from the query page the user came from. Was someone really looking for a government fruit database when they queried for "arnold" and "nude"? I think you have a lot more to be worried about by having your ISP subpoenaed than TiVo.

As for watching porn on TiVo: the good porn isn't free. I've yet to see any cable or satellite system where you can subscribe to premium adult content or pay per view anonymously. The system always knows who you are simply in order to bill you. Those sort of records can and probably will be subpoenaed from time to time. I suggest buying your porn and other subversive materials with cash while wearing a disguise.