Here are LG's contract terms for appliances.[1] They are awful.
Not only can they listen in. You have a contractual requirement to tell everyone in range of an appliance that they may be eavesdropped upon.
CONSENT REQUIREMENT: You acknowledge and agree that it is your sole responsibility to obtain all necessary consents from any third parties whose voices may be captured by the Product and to notify household members and guests that their voices may be captured and processed, in compliance with applicable wiretapping, eavesdropping, and privacy laws. If anyone does not consent, you should disable the microphone or voice features in the settings. LGE disclaims any liability for your failure to obtain such consent or provide such notification.
IANAL but without concent I think LG is comitting a crime here. The owner who ostensibly agreed to obtain concent through the ToS might be breaking their agreement, but wouldn't that be a separate issue?
ToS and other click licenses have been making shit up for way too long.
A strong implication of this consent implicitly involves the device recording me when I tell the device to record me.
If the device is recording me all the time and silently uploading it, and I'm not aware, I can't give my consent. That's wiretapping, zero-person-consent.
Ask how you (or for that matter, a jury) would feel about your phone doing the same.
IANAL, but I believe the argument is that agreeing to the TOS constitutes consent. Even though no reasonable person would believe such a thing would be in the TOS and no reasonable person reads the full TOS (no person actually could...).
Perhaps we start suing one another for not disclosing the wire tapping, forcing the lawsuit upwards towards LG. It'd be more efficient to sue LG, but lawyers don't seem to be done those things. At least not that I'm aware of
IANAL, but only the owner can consent through the TOS. The owner does not collect or process the data, so it's entirely on LG to ensure proper consent, not the owner. Breaking a TOS is not a crime, and can only be punished by restricting or disallowing access to a service, but collecting personal data without consent is a huge problem in the EU.
It’s clearly unreasonable to assume that LG can know and procure consent from everyone you choose to allow into your living room.
It’s reasonable to push the burden of procuring that consent onto whoever controls entry to the space, with terms like this.
As a thought experiment, let’s take a service like Zoom where you can record video of participants. It’s reasonable to say “you’re operating the camera, if someone appears in the background, it’s your responsibility to make sure they’re informed and consent to the recording”. In fact, trying to establish the identity of the person in the background for the purposes of procuring consent is probably a greater intrusion on privacy than not.
The problem here is different. The problem is that the volume of data being collected is clearly unnecessary for achieving the purposes it’s intended for.
I<3ANAL but even if the owner agrees to the TOS, there’s no way other users or guests are verifiably consenting or any way for LG to verify before collecting data.
I could hit someone and say it was someone else’s fault, but delusion isn’t a legal defense.
Various courts have already invalidated clauses of click-through agreements that no reasonable person would expect to find in such an agreement.
Terms of service are not an absolute "I'm rubber you're glue" type shield against all possible accusations of wrongdoing, however much companies would love us to believe they are.
> Even though no reasonable person would believe such a thing would be in the TOS
Even if they did, it's a bad to let clickthrough TOS subvert laws and privacy. This idea that contracts can dismiss all other considerations needs to die.
What's absurd is that this doesn't void the terms by default. There should be limits to what companies can put in their ToS beyond which those terms aren't enforceable.
There are reasonableness limits inherent in contract law, under "Consideration".
There are limits. You can’t waive certain rights, and you can’t overwrite certain laws.
The issue is that we haven’t made this shit against the law yet.
The problem is the ToS can be overruled by the law. But you can still put wild stuff in there without consequence, it just won't hold up in court of course. However this makes it so that companies use the ToS as a scare tactic to deter people going to court in the first place, "look you agreed to us being able to do something illegal, you will lose court against our expensive lawyers".
ToS from a lot of tech companies say the wildest shit that doesn't hold up in court and they should get a penalty for putting that into these documents, as it is misleading and misrepresenting the agreement that the customer has with them.
Until some responsibility for illegal statements in the ToS happens I will read most comments from a ToS with a grain of salt and a lot of skepticism.
Ask LG who has agreed to their wiretapping. They can't tell you if some guest in front of a TV has agreed or not.
How can that be concent?
Because LG is a large corporation and if there is something we have learned (or had proven) in 2026 is that laws don't apply if you oligarch hard enough.
Actually LG is not just a large corporation or even a oligarch, it is one of the major south korean chaebol groups and therefore has way more power in the legal and political space.
tempted to go into my nearest big box electronics store and then sue them when they don't tell me the LG tv's they have on display are eavesdropping on me.
they already have audio video surveillance signs posted everywhere from the moment you walk in so that would go over like a lead balloon
They have video surveillance signs. Audio is a different category in a lot of states. In California, it's illegal to record audio without consent of all of the parties, and I believe you can get a civil remedy of $5000 for this.
I would be willing to bet the TV's demo mode used by most box box retailers disables that by default, specifically to avoid such an issue.
Someone needs to find out. Presumably by the TOS it's in the settings, so verifiable
Finding out would no doubt involves a violation of the CFAA or anti-circumvention or other measures imposed by the corpos.
Ask them if the TVs come with the necessary and relevant audio surveillance signs.
Do it
Is that actually for smart tvs? The first paragraph includes "the products you may access or otherwise connect to via the ThinQ mobile application (not including Smart TVs)" and "These Terms of Use do not apply to any other LG products or services, including Smart Media Products."
[EDIT] Smart Media products terms appear to be at https://us.lgappstv.com/main/terms (for comparison here's UK: https://gb.lgappstv.com/main/terms, there are some other EU versions available for e.g. Germany but I imagine UK terms should be quite close and more accessible for most of readers)
It appears so from the link you provided: https://us.lgappstv.com/main/terms#tabContentTerms6
> 8. I understand that LGE will retain the collected Voice Information for 6 months to fulfil the purposes for which we collected it, and after this period, it will be deleted or anonymized, depending on the case.
> 9. I understand that this Smart Media Product is a household device. If this Smart Media Product will be used by more than one person, I represent that, in addition to agreeing to this Agreement, that I have obtained consent from all other members of my household whose information may be collected through this Smart Media Product and am providing consent on their behalf.
Can that kind of clause really be enforceable? It really doesn't seem legal in any jurisdiction I'm aware of. (not a lawyer)
These (and other TOS agreements) fall under the category of "adhesion contracts".
Because the buyer has no real ability to negotiate, any ambiguity is resolved in their favor. A judge can also strike provisions that a reasonable buyer would not expect, or that are unconscionable. So it's up to the judge's judgment.
https://www.investopedia.com/terms/a/adhesion-contract.asp
The cool thing is that they make you go into forced arbitration rather than through the legal system.
The cooler thing is that if a substantial amount of the 216M TV owners tried to arbitrate across the country/world, they'd cave so fast. Arbitration is cheaper than an individual law suit, but much much more expensive than a class-action.
^claim to — this type of legalese (shrink wrap, clickwrap, liability waivers, etc.) is a bluff (when in doubt: sue)
[dead]
LG probably can't sue you for failing to get consent from a guest, but the guest can sue you, not LG, for being recorded.
> Have a meeting with the executives of LG in their office
> Sue them for not telling you the TV is recording you
I’m sure this would not work under GDPR. The host surely isn’t a data processor.
LG's purpose is to avoid being sued by the guest, not to be able to sue the customer.
lawyers hope to trap / trick people that are smart enough to read, but not legally smart enough to understand enforceability.
are state's attourney's general going to go after them? eh.
you ask if they're enforceable but that's the wrong question, the real question is will anyone do anything to stop them?
This is the kind of thing that states need to make explicitly illegal.
Would be even better if the federal government made it illegal.
Would be even better to have a judge declare that they already are illegal.
Easy to forget, judges determine the legality of things. It is literally their job
I have an LG TV. It has been pestering me with those licensing agreements from time to time, but interestingly enough, I was only required to agree to fairly reasonable basics, everything else I just ignored and left for later.
I'm guessing this is an oversight and the TV does record, but then this is criminal. But, nobody will bother to prosecute them I guess...
They are not the only ones doing it. What about Android?
When do you get to see these terms?
The discussion seems to imply that they are seen only after purchase (I haven't read the article).
If that is so they are void and unenforceable in most jurisdictions as you cannot agree to something in a contract that you cannot read.
Are such terms enforceable in the US?
But isn't it the same as Facebook letting you consent (without actually reading the ToS) that your friends on that freshly-uploaded photo agreed to appear online and have their face scanned?
Clearly not. A person posting a picture is performing an explicit act of sharing a specific piece of content. Even in the case where the person doesn't know what that entails, they have made a choice to share specific content. With smart TVs it will be unclear to the person that recording is even happening, much less how that data is used and for what purpose - so the likelihood of them realizing that data is being shared or that they need to show consideration for how data about others in presence of the TV is shared will be close to nil.
Imagine being the lawyer signing this off. Imagine being the head of product signing this off.
What were they thinking? And most importantly: what TV are they using at home?
Can you actually even turn and keep the microphone off or does it toggle itself back on like Apple's Wifi and Bluetooth one-touch toggle off for now buttons?
> Apple's Wifi and Bluetooth one-touch toggle off for now buttons?
This comparison rubs me off the wrong way every time I see, because.
1. The notifications clearly tell the behavior (doing $THING until tomorrow).
2. There's a way to turn them "really off".
What LG does is completely different. IIRC from the teaser of this video, the microphone is never "completely" off or apps can re-enable them somehow.
Norman Doors.
Good design communicates even without language. It is reasonable to see a toggle switch and think it... you know... toggles. The same reason you see a handle on a door a pill before you read the sign that says push. The sign is literally there because the physical design is telling you something different. It is literally mixed signals.
Apple could have done many different things to make the design clearer. Hell, if they really wanted to keep the toggle like design, make it look like a spring.
But no matter what, the current design is abhorrent because they use the same design language for a temporary toggle and a real toggle. It doesn't take a genius to figure out why people get confused. It is also crazy considering how much Apple prides themselves on design. If it was good design, you wouldn't need the sign...
Could you sketch a spring-loaded button? I just have a hard time imagining how could this time dimension be added properly to a button - not that I would disagree with you in general.
Also, is this really different from a button that reflects state? E.g. you have a battery saver button that automatically turns on at <20%, is that fundamentally different than a button that resets to a given value at 0:00? I genuinely don't know, just asking questions here.
> Good design communicates even without language. It is reasonable to see a toggle switch and think it... you know... toggles.
Yes, good design needs no language. However, it's not reasonable to see a toggle and think it's a permanent toggle. Esp, when it's a button. There are many buttons in the world which doesn't toggle. In iOS, a toggle is also different from a button.
> Apple could have done many different things to make the design clearer.
They did, actually. They added clear messaging, think about a LCD screen on top of a button, and have iconography communicating the status clearly.
> But no matter what, the current design is abhorrent...
I'll respectfully disagree here with you.
> ...because they use the same design language for a temporary toggle and a real toggle.
Sorry to disagree, but this is not true:
Also, again, a real toggle has a different design in iOS, you know, which looks like a Braun inspired sliding switch.Respectfully disagree. Toggle buttons have an expected behavior that everyone understands.
It should work just like a physical button. I don’t appreciate the “we know better for you so we’ll adjust the behavior accordingly” MITM.
> we know better for you so we’ll adjust the behavior accordingly
9/10 times I've used this setting, what I've actually wanted was to temporarily change the behavior. This just saves me from the need to remember to undo it (which I won't remember in a timely manner).
This isn't "we know better than you" paternalistic control - the default/easy behavior should cater to the actions and situation we do regularly. I'm sure they do, in fact, know that for most of their customers, when they disable wifi it's because that user wants to temporarily disconnect from the current wifi, but will want to use wifi shortly after, but won't necessarily remember to go into settings and re-enable.
there is a tiny physical switch right next to the power button on my lg tv that supposedly turns off the tv microphone. the remote mic has no such switch though
There is a reason why Snowden cuts the internal microphones and cameras out of his mobile phones. I suppose you can permanently turn off the TV's microphone(or microphones) in the same fashion.
I wonder how much money LG makes from all of these practices, and if they stopped doing it what impact to cost of a TV would be?
It’s in the video, the subsidiary makes tens of millions in profit from a couple of hundred million in revenue.
What about the stores where the TV is sold?
And yet what lawmakers focused on was getting your consent for a cookie on a website you were only going to visit once.
That was the maliciously compliant way that companies chose to do to a reasonable law.
The exact same law says LG TVs can't record you without consent. Do you like the law or not?
The law has been unable to keep up with tech changes. Let's hope for the irony of AI helping them figure this stuff out.
> The law has been unable to keep up with tech changes.
Nah, for the most part the law has been unable to keep up with (or choose to oppose) corporate power, and new ways it's being used. Usually there's no magic quantum doohickey which demands fundamentally new legal theory.
For example, take this TV spyware thing, and rewind to the year 1986, and imagine RCA started selling televisions with microphones in them that recorded what was in your room and radioed it back to headquarters for some reason.
Obviously the costs wouldn't have worked at the time, but is there anything that was missing in our ability to describe the risks and wrongness? The concepts of privacy and consent, contracts and monopolies, ownership and licensing... They were all there 40 years ago.
In other words, the bee in my bonnet involves how the phrase "keeping up with the technology" sometimes becomes way to shift blame and a false target. It distracts us from the immediate political alignment problem towards a nebulous future technological one, which is so ill-defined it can never arrive. ("Once technology finally stops changing, then we'll legislate for our individual constituents' rights.")
why would it do that?
[flagged]
It just reads as legal boilerplate. How else can voice recognition listen for a wake word without being able to process everything it hears.
Keep all the processing on device? Do so in a way that is legal in the jurisdiction you are selling the devices in without claiming it's the owner's responsibility to get consent from all individuals (even if they cannot legally consent because they are, say, a child!?) to comply with wiretapping laws in their own home? Choose not to sell an object that comes with software made to spy on you and sell all it learns to advertisers?
That fact that you read something like this as acceptable "legal boilerplate" just shows how, very sadly in my opinion, invasions of privacy have been normalized by these corporations.
In a place where recording audio requires consent from all parties, I don't think it matters whether "all the processing is on-device" given that the law was probably written with tape recorders in mind. If I buy a device that can record audio, and place it in my home where unsuspecting guests are recorded by it, whether that recording is transmitted to the manufacturer or stays within my home seems irrelevant.
> 8. I understand that LGE will retain the collected Voice Information for 6 months to fulfil the purposes for which we collected it, and after this period, it will be deleted or anonymized, depending on the case.
Somehow feels like it might be used for more than just wake word detection.
It's normal for home assistants to save what you said after the wake word.
Yes that's giving me a bit of pause. I wonder what, say, Apple's ToS has for this kind of functionality.
[dead]