This link, sent to me by another Dan, falls into the Shocking! ... but not surprising file. It captures perfectly what's going on as an actuality, as well as being an analogy of the situation at scale.

Julian Fell, ABC: The largest home robotics company in the world has failed to fix security issues with its robot vacuums despite being warned about them last year.

Without even entering the building, we were able to silently take photos of the (consenting) owner of a device made by Chinese giant Ecovacs.

And then things got even creepier.

Here's an actual robot, embedding itself into human homes, roaming from room to room, recording everything. Talk about data-scraping. It doesn't get more literal than this.

The article describes how a security researcher, Dennis Giese (in Germany), managed to take full control of a Robo-Vac, via a journalist in Australia, armed with an i-phone.

Julian Fell: Soon, his device – helpfully labelled “ECOVACS” – pops up on my phone. And we’re in business.
The robot fails to play its ‘camera recording’ warning sound — that only seems to play if the camera is accessed through the Ecovacs app.

So you'd never know.

Once I’d sent the initial command via Bluetooth to gain access, there was no need for either of us to be anywhere near the robot in order to keep watching through its camera.

Presumably, if you're the company, EcoHackVac - there's no need to even hack it. Just tune in. Either way, it's a totally doable thing for the CCP, the CIA, or any shady ORG-Security-GODS to tap into.

Ecovacs: Ecovacs has always prioritised product and data security, as well as the protection of consumer privacy.

No doubt they value/prioritize consumer data, but protect it? Not so much.

We assure customers that our existing products offer a high level of security in daily life, and that consumers can confidently use Ecovacs products.

Right. By daily life, apparently, they mean they're only vulnerable to hackers, not normal people. Great. In the context the Exploding Pagers, we've arrived in a world where your Robo-vac can sidle up to you ... then take you the fuck out.

It's a good article, worth reading - it goes on to explore the the scariest part: having exposed this high level lack of security, nobody gives a shit

Not Ecovacs, not the company awarding security certificates, not the government overseeing standards of privacy.

It's an industry wide scam where all the players in control are out-of-control ORGS.

It's not in anyone's self-interest, as a human within that industry, to do anything about it. Especially those being paid to do something about it. In fact, they'll be the ones running interference against normal people trying to expose it.

The only interest Geise gets is from the CIA, wanting to know how they could employ it to track people down.