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LG smart TVs caught logging audio with screen off and snooping on local devices
(www.notebookcheck.net)
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this post was submitted on 07 Sep 2026
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Secretly recording conversations in peoples homes sounds like it should be against the law in a number of countries.
Imagine someone working for the government, security services, or a defence contractor. I suspect LG may be in trouble with a number of National Security agencies.
It is illegal. Unfortunately crime is legal for corporations. They just pay the crime fee and can continue undisturbed. Shareholders must be held responsible individually, otherwise it will only get worse.
So, are you personally on the hook here because the company managing your pension fund is holding stocks in LG? Because that technically makes you a shareholder as it was bought with your money, right?
Edit: not sure why I get downvoted, this is a legitimate concern/nuance to the debate. The managing company doesn't own these stocks so they're not the shareholders, that's the people whose money they are managing, but these people are not directly in control of the funds. Who is the liable party in this?
The highest level employee/officer who had knowledge of it should be held responsible
You mean the CBO[^1]? Because the higher level officers didn't know anything about it and you can't prove they did.
[^1]: Chief Blame Officer
I mean, depending on the scale you probably can with investigation.
Being deliberately ignorant should not be a defense. Just like it isn't for the peasants.
It doesn't matter how many layers of evasion there are. Responsibility has to be with individuals in order for there to be change.
The fact that a pension fund can hold shareholds is crazy by itself, also, is the pension found a company or managed by your state? It shouldn't really be a thing in first placw
Both in my case, as there are both the government pension fund that is mandatory and the one used by my employer which uses one of the large primary pension institutions in my country.
Is it a bit weird that I don't just manage all my pensions myself? Yes, a bit. But it's how its done in my country and it has some tax benefits compared to getting the money in hand and investing myself.
Naah, at least, i don't know anyone that does it in my country
Me either. My union pension is controlled by the union and managed by a bank as far as I can tell.
If I don't get executive say in what happens at the company, I am not included in liability. I am not allowed to sit on the damn board with my pension fund.
Executives and controlling board members get held personally liable. It really is as simple as that. If you are in the meetings, and you get a vote, you are liable. There is absolutely no slippery slope fallacy here.
Any bullshit "uhm actually you technically are a shareholder" is just trying to ward off people having to take responsibility for their decisions. (also, in many pension schemas you aren't actually the shareholders, the investment fund technically is and you are just given the license to decide how they invest those funds and get a portion of the payout, but it is different than manually retail investing for example)
Ok, so shareholders shouldn't be liable after all is what you are saying, only people having a say.
90 percent of stocks are owned by ten percent of Americans. Just throwing this fact out here
That might stop this madness.
See the thing is if your pension also funds a murder company does outsourcing who manages it not make you at least a little culpable? I think it does and i think the only way to stop this madness is for a little justice to come your way.
What if i have no control over who manages it? I have two, one is government managed and mandatory, the other is part of my salary (and mandatory) and who manages my company paid pension is decided by my employer. I have no control of either aside from general risk profile and high level market groups on my company paid pension (e.g. "tech" or "renewable energy").
That just sounds like a good way to destroy index funds.
Okay.
Also, which shareholders? Shareholders have no say in the business decisions outside of the annual voting for board members and whatever broad issues are brought up for a vote. If someone holds stock and then sells it before a vote, are they responsible for the business decisions? If a swing trader bought and then sold in one day/week/month (even at a loss), how much is their liability? If someone sells their shares just before a vote, then buys them again after, are they liable?
Not shareholders. Decision makers. Upper management. Shareholders should pay in share value (the financial penalty to the corporations should be high enough to affect that), bu the personal an criminal responsibility belongs to managers, CEO in particular.
There should at least be something resembling an attempt of investigating, who, where, and when signed an order to implement this shit into their products. That way they will at least think twice if they want to risk the chance of being held personally responsible.
Recording without consent is very much a crime in any two-party state, but my guess is that the TOS that people click past to use the TV gives them permission to record you. If it didn't, they would be in big legal hot water.
Clicking through ToS does not magically make illegal things legal.
Consenting to recording makes recording legal.
Making that consent required to use the TV or its features and it being buried within lengthy, opaque terms of service in a country with a low level of literacy should be illegal, but it stands in the US because it's a consumer hostile country.
A TOS presented after an electronic device has been sold is not valid in most of the World since it's considered an attempt to, after the sale, force a change of the terms of the implicit contract which is the sale.
A company can shove whatever they want in front of the customer as contract conditions they have to accept for a sale before the sale - by which point the potential customer can refuse and not buy or accept and buy - not after.
Of course, they don't do that because they would lose most sales, so instead there's a TOS or EULA which the owners of the devices are forced to agree to after the sale to fully enjoy that which they bought, but these are really just legal fictions in most countries.
Mind you, this does not apply to a subscription to an ongoing service, though even then at least in Europe, there are conditions they much obbey to have the customer accept a TOS or a TOS change after subscribing, such as it being possible for the customer to cancel the service at no cost rather than accept the new TOS.
Unconscionable bunk. It's illegal anyway, just like how you can't sign a contract to sell yourself into slavery.
If the courts won't enforce it, vigilantes should.
"In any two-party state" what? That's such a weird thing to say. Two-party systems are a worse version of applied democracy, that should be incredibly obvious. I just seriously don't understand why you would even think about saying that it's a crime in two-party states only, it's so odd. If anything two-party states are more akin to not having strong laws against that because of the very fact of it. Look at the US, which I'm guessing is a big part of your mind in this. Do yourself a favor and search for countries two-party systems and their laws on this compared to actual democracies with more parties.
Should be. Hope it happens and quickly
Or hired by those same agents of authority.
Only in trouble if they didn't loop them in on the audio feeds.