Custom and open operating systems are the only way forward against this sort of bullshit. It's not just crappy engineering, it's also TVs doing analytics on what you watch, always-on cameras, etc..
As long as we have the power to root these devices and install our own software on it, we will be fine. But for how long is that going to keep up?
> TVs doing analytics on what you watch, always-on cameras
Who's doing the watching now? That sounds ridiculously Orwellian...
> As long as we have the power to root these devices and install our own software on it, we will be fine. But for how long is that going to keep up?
The most interesting part of this is that "rooting" often relies on finding and exploiting a vulnerability, something that would be considered detrimental to security and normally thought of as a bug. In other words, this power is coming from having not-so-secure devices. Imagine if this TV was more secure; it used DNSSEC and HTTPS to authenticate/encrypt communications, and was designed to be resistant to tampering via hardware (secure processor, encrypted memory, etc.) -- ostensibly for things like DRM. Do suggestions like "all Internet traffic should be encrypted" start to look less appealing now? To say it plainly, in this case "insecurity is freedom."
The question isn't necessarily about rooting, seeing as the vast majority of people don't know what that even means. They shouldn't be tracking what we watch in the first place.
Reminds me of this story from a year or two ago, where LG continued collecting data even after the feature had been disabled on their TVs.
I agree, but we need proper technical and social solutions. Tracking will be done. Yes, it's disgusting that some of this is legal in the first place, but even if it were illegal there would be companies doing it and we would need solutions against these.
As long as we have the power to root these devices and install our own software on it, we will be fine. But for how long is that going to keep up?