Facebook says it would totally never use its patent to spy on you with your phone’s mic

A patent from Facebook came to light earlier this week, depicting technology that Facebook would use to quietly activate a user’s microphone in order to listen to them as they watch ads.

The patent, filed earlier this month, was originally discovered by Metro. It describes a process by which secret messages embedded in TV ads, inaudible to the human ear, would trigger your smart device to record you while the ad was playing. It would then send the audio to Facebook, in order for it to hear your reaction to the ad. You can view the patent here, complete with stick-figure ballerina.

Facebook Deputy General Counsel Allen Lo said in a statement to Engadget that the company filed the patent “to prevent aggression from other companies,” and it would never be included in a Facebook product, ever....

The idea that Facebook is listening to users is a long-standing theory based on how uncannily its ads seem to target things they believe they’ve mentioned in passing. Mark Zuckerberg addressed this in his Congressional testimony, calling it a “conspiracy theory…that we listen to what’s going on on your microphone and use that for ads” and dismissing it flatly (one of the few questions he gave a decisive answer to that day, I might add).

I’ve even fallen into this mindset myself: I once mentioned Blue Apron briefly to my mother, only to see Blue Apron ads on my Facebook feed within a day. There are other explanations, though. I could have searched something about the company without remembering. Or I could have lingered on a post about them on Facebook, which Facebook mistook for curiosity (no offense, Blue Apron). Facebook’s data collection is so subtle and pervasive that I doubt it needs the audio of my actual conversation to figure it out.

Remember back in WWII and the Cold War days when “they” actually hid bugs all over so “they” could spy on the general population?

Nowadays, “they” don’t have to do a thing to monitor everything we do.

Instead, we, ourselves, buy the bugs from Amazon and others, place those devices in the most strategic places in our homes, and then connect that personal spy network to the internet for “them”! Yay!

We willingly install free surveillance apps on our phones, if not already installed from the manufacturer, which allow “them” to monitor and record everywhere we go and everything we do and say and who all we say and do it with! Yay!

And “they” don’t have to do anything at all but sit back and monitor and collect the data.

And there ain’t no stopping it now.

Instead, we are taking things to another level with self-driving cars, even building AI into killer robots capable of operating autonomously in the air, on the ground, as well as in and under water for the people who watch over us.

We won’t, but while we still can, this might be a good time to step back a bit from whatever it is we are creating and embracing.

But we won’t. Not until some nasty negative feedback, aka “unforeseen consequences”, makes us. It’s just that way.

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