REPORT: British Government Considered Spying With Kinect

National Security Agency whisteblower Edward Snowden has released new documents that accuses the British Parliament of spying on Yahoo users through webcams. The information also suggest that the United Kingdom’s surveillance agency, the GCHQ, thought about using the Kinect as a way to spy on users as well.

The reason given for the potential use of using the Kinect to spy on users was that the device generated “fairly normal webcam traffic”. It was also being considered for use in a wider surveillance program by the GCHQ. These documents date from 2008-2010 meaning it would’ve been done using the original Kinect for Xbox 360.

Privacy for gamers has been a touchy topic over the last year since it was originally announced that Microsoft’s newest version of connect would be required to be on at all teams. That caused such a public backlash against the company that it had to retract that policy, and allow the device to be disconnected when not in use.

Source | The Guardian

Mike’s Musings: Call me crazy, but I don’t think we’ve seen the end of these “invasion of privacy” reports. As long as cameras connect to internet-powered machines are in the home, there will always be the talk of an invasion on someone’s privacy. It’s how we handle that as people that will make companies avoid from using them as surveillance or not.