Hey everyone,

So the news about the Xbox One policies have caused quite a fuss on the Internet huh? I myself am from a country where Internet is not reliable, sometimes for days, and I also tend to share a lot of games with my friends, so this is a really bad thing for me. However, as with all new generation consoles, I will wait until really great games come out to make a decision to buy it or not.

However, this topic is about a potential for a big scandal in the future. The U.S. government grants immunity from lawsuit to certain telecommunications companies to basically spy on calls made using their services: http://www.naturalnews.com/040196_Fourth_Amendment_cyber_spying_ISPs.html

I was thinking, what if the government kind of forced this same kind of deal with Microsoft about the Kinect? Since it can't be disconnected, you cannot be sure that it is not actually recording data. Sure, you can "turn it off", but how do you really know it's off?

You don't understand what's going on.

The information being gathered by the NSA is essentially from what number and to what number a call is made or in the case of an online service, such as e-mail, Facebook, or Skype, from who and to whom a message is sent.  That's only for communication made between a US citizen and a foreign citizen.

To take things the next step, which would be to actually access the content of the communication, they would need a court order.

Kinect can't be used for espionage.  However, if you used your Xbox One to communicate with someone within the US via Skype (for instance), and you're a known terrorist, then yes the US government will be able to subpeona Microsoft for access to whatever form of communication you had via Skype.

Are you a "known" terrorist? 

You can be damn sure: IF the NSA or some other american security agency demands access to Kinect data of a certain person, they WILL get a court order forcing Microsoft to cooperate in this respect.

But in practice this won't be used for mass surveillance, it will only be used in a few, special cases.

It isn't for known terrorists though. It targets any customers of participating corporations (including Microsoft) who live outside the United States, or American citizens whose communications include people outside the USA.

It is also a lot worse than just who called who and at what time. Data that the NSA is able to obtain allegedly includes email, video and voice chat, videos, photos, voice over IP conversations, file transfers, login notifications and social networking details. Unlike the collection of call records, this surveillance can include the content of communications and not just the metadata.

How should he know?

I'm sure even people like

• Nelson Mandela
• Cat Stevens
• Shah Rukh Khan
• ...

weren't aware that the USA considers them "terrorists" before they tried to visit the USA.

About this, even 6 year old girls are terrorists apparently: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1SUCmH0jcxs

To adinnieken:

So your question "are you a known terrorist?" isn't really as stupid as you make it seem. Mistakes like the one of the girl above happen, hence this thread. Also, I did understand the extent to the espionage that the U.S. government is involved into. And actually, I don't really mind about their data collection, since in the end it makes people in the U.S. safe.

However, like another user pointed out, the technology in Xbox One could be used on citizens of other countries. I just hope that the people in charge have the common sense and good will to only go after actual threats to society.

Well Ubisoft was joking about it. So maybe it's possible :S

http://gamrconnect.vgchartz.com/thread.php?id=161786&page=1#