American Airlines Has Cameras In Their Screens Too (buzzfeednews.com) 113
An anonymous reader quotes a report from BuzzFeed News: A viral photo showing a camera in a Singapore Airlines in-flight TV display recently caused an uproar online. The image was retweeted hundreds of times, with many people expressing concern about the privacy implications. As it turns out, some seat-back screens in American Airlines' premium economy class have them, too. Sri Ray was aboard an American Airlines Boeing 777-200 flight to Tokyo in September 2018 when he noticed something strange: a camera embedded in the seat back of his entertainment system. The cameras are also visible in this June 2017 review of the airline's premium economy offering by the Points Guy, as well as this YouTube video by Business Traveller magazine.
American Airlines spokesperson Ross Feinstein confirmed to BuzzFeed News that cameras are present on some of the airlines' in-flight entertainment systems, but said "they have never been activated, and American is not considering using them." Feinstein added, "Cameras are a standard feature on many in-flight entertainment systems used by multiple airlines. Manufacturers of those systems have included cameras for possible future uses, such as hand gestures to control in-flight entertainment." After Twitter user Vitaly Kamluk saw a similar lens on Singapore Airlines and tweeted photos of the system last week, the airline responded from its official Twitter account, saying the cameras were "disabled." Still, the airlines could quell passengers' concerns by covering the lenses with a plastic cover, if indeed there is no use for the camera.
American Airlines spokesperson Ross Feinstein confirmed to BuzzFeed News that cameras are present on some of the airlines' in-flight entertainment systems, but said "they have never been activated, and American is not considering using them." Feinstein added, "Cameras are a standard feature on many in-flight entertainment systems used by multiple airlines. Manufacturers of those systems have included cameras for possible future uses, such as hand gestures to control in-flight entertainment." After Twitter user Vitaly Kamluk saw a similar lens on Singapore Airlines and tweeted photos of the system last week, the airline responded from its official Twitter account, saying the cameras were "disabled." Still, the airlines could quell passengers' concerns by covering the lenses with a plastic cover, if indeed there is no use for the camera.
Well yeah... (Score:5, Funny)
Probably quite a lot of them do, with the screen units being integrated and similar units used across airlines.
I really doubt they are being used though, or else you would see porn based on captures from them.
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Airlines saying:
"No, no we're not using them"
reminds of some sock puppet accounts here on Slashdot posting and saying:
"No, no I am not creimer"
The question is if they are not using them, who might be using them then? Why not simply cover them as suggested in TFS then?
For sure, a simple cover would not constitute a enormous financial burden.
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The question is if they are not using them, who might be using them then?
As stated, there is no porn based on them, therefore we can be assured they are not being used.
Why not simply cover them as suggested in TFS then?
Tape costs money and has weight (only half joking).
Also Spirit is planning to charge you extra for a tape-camera seat.
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Tape costs money and has weight (only half joking). Also Spirit is planning to charge you extra for a tape-camera seat.
Unless there's something you likely brought on the plane.
"Oh look, a used chewing gum receptacle."
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'Airlines saying:
"No, no we're not using them"' ...unless you're trying to set your shoe on fire.
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Vendor: We have this generic hardware we built to accommodate all possible uses. It's $1,000 each.
Airline: Well, it has a camera and our customers might get freaked out about that.
Vendor: We can customize it to remove the camera, but we'll have to redo the certification process for the hardware, and that'll cost about $500,000, and since you're only buying 100,000 of them, each one will cost an extra $5.
Airline: Camera it is then!
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Probably the way it's introduced - same display as in small laptops.
At least until the cost of removing chewing gums from the cameras exceeds the gain of using the default display units.
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They're waiting until they have enough bandwidth on/off the planes to offer video calling at extortionate rates. It's like seat-back phones.
Re:Well yeah... (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm sure there are some valid uses for the camera. Just not in this case. Here is probably what happened. Some engineer looked down a catalog for a part that he need, in vast quantities he needed. He come across a standard lcd screen and it just happened to have a camera on it. There you go, no conspiracy theory here.
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Except avionics generally has a tighter profile - you don't just buy off the shelf screens and use them. EMI envelopes for avionics is much tighter
Plus, the runs are usually custom in size so
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Where there are cameras, there are always microphones, listening in on private business conversations. Insider trading worth billions.
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Where there are cameras, there are always microphones, listening in on private business conversations. Insider trading worth billions.
This presumes you have a means to record, transcribe, read, evaluate, and summarize "conversations" in an extremely noisy environment spread across thousands of planes and perhaps millions of passengers a day. No matter how much "insider trading" info you might gather, the costs of such a system would greatly eclipse it.
Further, do people really have these conversations on commercial jets in the first place? Most of the time I see people keeping to themselves, not jabbering away. And executives with the
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"This presumes you have a means to record, transcribe, read, evaluate, and summarize "conversations" in an extremely noisy environment spread across thousands of planes and perhaps millions of passengers a day."
That is true, but you have to consider that airlines know who is on every flight and even assigns their seats. It isn't hard to figure out when VPs, CEOs, etc fly. Plus those people are almost always in first class. They could strategically sit certain people together hoping they will talk about cert
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These will all be using a custom designed bezel that fits the seat in use. So even if the screen came as a unit with the camera built in, they could have designed the bezel to simply not have a hole for the camera.
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I'm sure there are some valid uses for the camera. Just not in this case.
You don't see a valid use for a camera on a device that has for the past 20 years been used for communication inside a mode of transport that increasingly has enough bandwidth to offer free internet to passengers?
You may be right, gimme a sec I'm just going to Facetime someone and ask them if you're actually right.
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Perhaps, but they lost me when they provided "hand gestures to control functions" as a possible future rationale. Jesus - what about the obvious seatback video conferencing application? Do they really think people will accept the possibility of being spied on as they jerk off in their seats for the promise of being able to wave their hands to start an in-flight movie?
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Perhaps, but they lost me when they provided "hand gestures to control functions" as a possible future rationale. Jesus - what about the obvious seatback video conferencing application? Do they really think people will accept the possibility of being spied on as they jerk off in their seats for the promise of being able to wave their hands to start an in-flight movie?
If all humans had functioning brains there wouldn't be any PR people in the world.
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I really doubt they are being used though, or else you would see porn based on captures from them.
American Airlines: "We're not using the cameras . . . and if the DHS and NSA we're using them . . . we would not be allowed to tell you."
How come the DHS and NSA always get the best homemade amateur porn . . . ?
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Would be a nice way to get multiple shots of the victims face for creating a deepfake video of them. I can see governments assisting with industrial espionage by creating deepfake masks for fake phishing via Skype etc.
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Probably quite a lot of them do, with the screen units being integrated and similar units used across airlines.
I really doubt they are being used though, or else you would see porn based on captures from them.
This, the new seat back entertainment units are just COTS Android tablets with a custom ROM designed to run one app that connects to the back end. I've seen pretty much the same units in everyone from Virgin Australia to Singapore to Air France to Avianca.
This means they'll have most, if not all of the hardware usually included in an Android tablet. Maybe the addition of an Ethernet port.
I'm also willing to bet that the cameras were an intentional inclusion with the idea that you could have gesture ba
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Who the hell expects privacy on an airplane where your ass is less than 2 inches from a stranger's ass, sometimes on both sides?
Why do you expect privacy on an airline? (Score:3, Insightful)
If you really want to put some electric tape over it to make yourself feel better while in flight, go for it. But why are we expecting privacy from a company that already has a lot of personal information on us?
Re: Why do you expect privacy on an airline? (Score:5, Funny)
Yep, like that Princess Diana chick. Never had to worry about a camera in her life.
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You mean Diana. She lost her title of Princess.
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She lost the title "Her Royal Highness", not the courtesy title of Princess of Wales...
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A "courtesy title"? LOL! A title is a TITLE.
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click the cog next to your name above where your comment replies and shit are, go to posting. scroll down and select Plain old text in the 'Comment post mode' drop down.
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Oh god, thank you.
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I had that same issue a few years ago and I just went and fucked with everything until I got it working correctly.
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Re:Why do you expect privacy on an airline? (Score:4, Insightful)
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I get that privacy should be expected in certain places.
Apparently not.
But on a airline, you already have a seat that is assigned to you. You will be in that seat for most of your journey.
Thanks for the insightful commentary. None of us would have guessed had you not pointed that out.
If you really need privacy for something while flying, you can use the lavatory for that. What are you concerned about someone seeing you doing while you're on a plane?
The next time you're on a plane, train or bus stare at some rando the whole time and see what happens genius.
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You do have limited privacy on an airplane insofar as that it isn't recorded and uploaded somewhere else. Sure, your seat neighbor might write in his blog that you scratched your balls 20 times during the flight, but without evidence its his word against yours and most of it is forgotten by the time you leave the plane.
Recording you means that people can study your behaviour in fine detail, forever.
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If you really need privacy for something while flying, you can use the lavatory for that.
Are you 100% sure about that?
https://www.google.com/search?... [google.com]
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The airlines do have a ton of information. They do canvas tracking on their websites, they tie into credit card companies, and the have very, very identifying information on you. They share information with DHS. Even if the airlines don't use the cameras, will DHS?
If you really need privacy for something
That's where I have a problem. The word "need" is the dangerous one. Once you frame an argument in terms of "need," that person is now on the defensive: you've given the airline the right to surveil, carving out an exception for people who "n
Poor thing... (Score:4, Insightful)
You poor little thing. Are you one of those young'uns whose parents put your whole embarrassing childhood on-line, causing you end-less embarrassment from every new contact you had growing up? "Spread the sour tummy!" is your goal now? Make the others feel as bad as you do, attempting to convince everyone to fail the same way you or yours did?
Grow up. Privacy is there because you and others will make something common in the past and present illegal/immoral/non-politically-correct in the future. Those who did not attempt to retain privacy in their lives will be punished for these things, by the companies, states, neighbors, peers, or just more downers like you. Are you not seeing what is going on around you?
Privacy is not something others give or allow you. It is something you yourself fight for, to acceptable levels, at all times possible. Once you "I don`t care", and give up the information or item to anyone, you give up your own privacy. No one else did.
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Ultimately though you as part of the traveling public have other choices. You can pick a different airline. You can tak
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You are not saying anything different. You want to invade privacy of others to build an evidence haystack to search for modern-wrongs, or even the not-yet-wrongs to which I alluded. The same customers mess up the bathrooms as always, and you want to put cameras inside to prosecute vandals.
Now that not-quite-AI is learning to make anything into a video, those cameras will not even help with what you are wanting. Video will be changed to believable, but still false images.
You want to see what I am doing, you
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You want to invade privacy of others to build an evidence haystack to search for modern-wrongs, or even the not-yet-wrongs to which I alluded.
You're putting words into my mouth here. Please slow down and consider reading what I write instead of making your own assumptions about me.
If someone is in your house, do they have an automatic right to privacy when they are in your living room? The airlines are providing a service to the customer. The customer has a choice to go elsewhere if they wish, or to just not fly at all if they want. The provider of the service has the right to look out for their own investment as well.
You say, "I need to spy, to save my wealth."
So then should doorb
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It is not up to the type of business, to mandate privacy. The laws that still exist right now, for the most part, were made when you would only be seen by having a human paid to be stationed, or follow. Thinking that modern cameras allow for constant and full time logging as appropriate in any way, for any reason, in any place open for the use of the public, is an attack on everyone around. Entitlement is more prevalent now then when those laws were made, too. Neither is a good thing.
People used to ask perm
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You also don't want to let that door open even a crack. Companies have intruded more and more into privacy in the past. Why wait until something awful happens before you tell them to stop it?
You thought you shut the bathroom door for privacy, but the door didn't click and pretty soon the dog is sitting there wagging his tail watching you poop.
so... (Score:2)
can you see this gesture now?
privacy concerns? (Score:2, Interesting)
I'm honestly not worried in the slightest about someone having a video of me being bored and uncomfortable for 9 hours at a time. I guess if someone is really concerned about this they can always travel with a roll of electrical tape.
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Superglue
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I'm honestly not worried in the slightest about someone having a video of me being bored and uncomfortable for 9 hours at a time.
Personally I find it unacceptable. Way too creepy.
I guess if someone is really concerned about this they can always travel with a roll of electrical tape.
Easier to simply chose a different airline.
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Until you learn that they all have a cam... Honestly, privacy is an illusion no matter where you go.
We're fucked anyway so nothing matters? Is that right?
We're all going to die what difference does it make if airlines maintain their aircraft? A sufficiently resourced actor could throw me off the plane without a parachute so what's the point in caring about flight safety?
A sufficiently resourced actor will always be able to get footage of you picking your nose, scratching yourself, or fondling your seatmate.
How would this line of argument ever be falsified?
You seriously seem to be asserting that something COULD happen therefore nothing matters and further caring about the issue at all is pointless as a result.
Airlines might be injecting cam
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Those of us who came out of the WWII period are greatly concerned about things like this. Today's citizens have been so spied on by everything from schools, to their computers, to their cell phones, to store cameras, they don't find anything wrong with their loss of privacy. I live to avoid being spied on, including using cash for everything. I at least still have my integrity, a private life, and a soul intact.
Re: privacy concerns? (Score:2)
That last sentence reads kinda like the start of a speech in the style of Grandpa Simpson's "onion on my belt". Wtf do you integrity and imaginary soul have to do with the subject at hand?
Cameras on seatbacks are irrelevant as you have no goddamn privacy on a flight to begin with. The hysteria is doubly amusing coming from people who carry around mobile computers with radios and multiple cameras built into them. This is a bit like freaking out when someone looks at you while you're in a park, despite the
Note to self... (Score:2)
Note to self: Make sure to bring electrical tape and sewing scissors (less than four inches) next time I fly.
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I never thought of that. I'll have to add that to my bag of tricks.
I like electrical tape because it's durable, easy-ish to remove if you need the camera and blends in with the bezel.
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Vaseline also works -- it's even deniable. You touched the screen with greasy hands...
Cinnabon glaze. I'm gonna have some on my fingers anyway.
Barring that, looks like we've found another use for nose grease.
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4" total or just the blades? Because I have some Klein scissors that will cut a persons finger off. And the blades are like 3" long only.
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https://www.tsa.gov/travel/sec... [tsa.gov]
"Four inches from the pivot, but if the agent is having a bad day he or she can stab you with them."
Or, you know, something like that. Paraphrasing.
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Well buy some of these next time: https://www.zoro.com/klein-too... [zoro.com]
For uhh not protection?
Offering Skype video calls? Meet George Jetson... (Score:3, Informative)
My craptop has a camera and I'm not paranoid about some NSA prick somehow watching me take a shit while catching up on the latest VanossGaming video. Joke's on them if they do.
We ached for video phone calls for decades, but now that it's dead-easy we're all monkey about it. Grow up, humanity. Nobody cares about your mundane life.
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We don't like being real. The moment someone's out on the street because their apartment block is on fire in the middle of the night, they become a target for the local TV news where they get judged for their messed up hair and half-asleep expression.
Mass surveillance hurts us all. (Score:2)
I don't know of anyone who wished for video calls or uses them now that webcam hardware is so commonly available. I know of people who go to some effort to disable video in their calls (apparently including Facebook chief Mark Zuckerberg [theguardian.com] who probably has access to a lot of webcams given how many people still use Facebook).
Apparently the NSA and t
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Nah you win bye
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People have laptops in their bedrooms, where they get changed and have sex. They rightly demand that the built-in webcam can't be used to spy on them.
Activated? (Score:2)
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Hah!
A former boss used to have a transponder front panel on his desk set to "7700". Always good for a chuckle when you came to him with a problem.
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German experts and the SAS would have had a count of who was doing what, real time locations, their history, their faces and type of equipment.
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All the passengers were saved in that case. How would cameras have delivered a better outcome?
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That took time.
Thats why a camera system is so interesting.
Coming soon... (Score:2)
Solution: (Score:2)
Delta Too (Score:1)
I've resolved to bring electrical tape with me the next time I fly to cover them.
One way to identify terrorists (Score:2)
If you can watch the facial expressions and demeanor of every passenger, you could pick out the ones that are about to go batcrap crazy.
Airlines Drive the Requirements (Score:5, Informative)
FFS just carry a piece of black tape with you! (Score:2)
Accidental (Score:2)
We accidentally had a microphone in your thermostat ... we accidentally had a camera in your screen ...
Companies are so accident prone these days.
Never activated ... by the _airline_ (Score:2)
However, it is inconceivable that they have 'never' been activated by someone.
IFE's are obsolete (Score:2)
But if there is going to be an IFE, at least outfit it with Android Auto and Apple CarPlay, so we can use it as a heads-up screen while we charge our phones.