This was disturbing. I'm fairly sure that there must be tacit agreement for a party to "snoop" in certain states. Could this lead to law suits?<p>I'm already creeped out with GPS. Sound analysis is just going too far. Cool or not, I really don't want to share that much. And even for the most open of us, can you imagine the information gathered? i.e. seems like you are having sex. want to know which of your friends is having sex right now too? creepy.<p>Considering that I work at one of the world's largest independent creative / marketing firms, I know this will be abused. It always is. We push. You push back.
People recording their own conversations is fine with me, but people being tricked into sending recordings of their conversations to random untrustworthy corporations is emphatically not okay. Those may also be <i>my</i> conversations, which I may not want to be shared.<p>In my home state of Massachusetts, all parties in a conversation must consent to recording, which makes this illegal.
FTA:<p>"Of course, the use of your microphone with these apps is well understood by users, because that's the main purpose of the app.<p>The new apps are often sneakier about it. The vast majority of people who use the Color app, for example, have no idea that their microphones are being activated to gather sounds.<p>Welcome to the future."<p>With all due respect those users are morons. Color is, rightly, proud of their "snooping" technology. People who use Color will probably know it records audio through the microphone.<p>The proper question is: to what extent may people be permitted to degrade their privacy? For example, if both parties in a two-way call agreed to have the call recorded for advertising purposes, and to have ads interjected once every two minutes into the media stream, in exchange for the call being free, should that be allowed?<p>The Libertarian in me says yes. But sometimes people need to be protected from their own stupidity. Or do they? Hmm.
I don't own an iPhone or an Android (yet), so I was wondering: is there any way for the user to control permissions the app will have to access the hardware?<p>Say, for example, that I like an app because it does several cool things and only one not-so-cool thing that involves using the mic to "snoop" on me. Would I be able to download the app and then set up the permissions so it doesn't have access to the mic?
I cant wait to see that 'feature' on WP7 too. Just imagine good old paperclip poping up on your phone:<p>"It looks like you are arguing with your spouse. Would you like me to put you in relation with a counselor?"
With that technology, no wonder Color got so much funding. The list of stuff that they can find out about you is amazing. That would produce some very targeted ads.
Do firmwares like cyanogenmod offer the ability to revoke privileges to certain apps by just providing them with garbage data? If they don't already, I think it would be an interesting area to explore.