Comments: It's probably nothing....
From Chapter One, 1984, by Geo. Orwell:
...Only the Thought Police mattered.
Behind Winston’s back the voice from the telescreen was still babbling away about pig-iron and the overfulfilment of the Ninth Three-Year Plan. The telescreen received and transmitted simultaneously. Any sound that Winston made, above the level of a very low whisper, would be picked up by it, moreover, so long as he remained within the field of vision which the metal plaque commanded, he could be seen as well as heard. There was of course no way of knowing whether you were being watched at any given moment. How often, or on what system, the Thought Police plugged in on any individual wire was guesswork. It was even conceivable that they watched everybody all the time. But at any rate they could plug in your wire whenever they wanted to. You had to live — did live, from habit that became instinct — in the assumption that every sound you made was overheard, and, except in darkness, every movement scrutinized.
Winston kept his back turned to the telescreen. It was safer; though, as he well knew, even a back can be revealing.
Posted by Mother Effingby at March 26, 2015 5:21 PM
Now of course, the technology has exceeded even Orwell's wildest imaginings. Darkness is no longer a cover. The only thing that will kill the beast is unplugging it.
Posted by Mother Effingby at March 26, 2015 5:33 PM
Knowest that when thee bind the King's eye, the King's minions will visit to find out why ye are an the throes of apostasy.
Posted by Vermont Woodchuck at March 27, 2015 12:03 PM
So never plug the tv into an Ethernet connection, and go through the setup menus and make sure the wireless connection is disabled.
But the setup menu's don't exactly have that option to completely disable the wireless feature (I looked). You may try and prevent it from connecting to your network, but your idiot neighbor may have left his network unsecured. There's nothing to provent your TV from surreptitiously trying to find an open network and phone home, despite your intentions and efforts.
So the next step is to force/entice the TV onto a honeypot network of your own devising, with its own subnet and vlan, where it's satisfied it has an internet connection, but wierdly enough nothing ever seems to go through.
Posted by John A. Fleming at March 27, 2015 12:42 PM
Over at our place all it'd ever see is a buncha cats lounging about yawning and shit.
But on the wall over the couch I'd have a BIG poster of osswipe taking it in the ass from Holder.
Posted by ghostsniper at March 27, 2015 2:39 PM
A "safe house" would not have a TV or DVD or any electronic media equipment; nor a telephone, hard-wired or cellular; nor electrical wiring; nor any but a metal roof. It would have a Faraday cage enclosing the entire structure; double layer sound baffling; heat shielding.
Alternate I: have RF and white noise generators; EMP transmitters; laser and light sources.
Alternate II: just live in a cave and stay away from the opening.
Posted by chasmatic at March 27, 2015 9:00 PM