Samsung is warning customers about discussing personal information in front of their smart television set.

三星警告消费者在智能电视前不要交谈个人信息。

The warning applies to TV viewers who control their Samsung Smart TV using its voice activation¹ feature.

这个警告针对的是那些使用三星声控智能电视的人。

When the feature is active, such TV sets "listen" to what is said and may share what they hear with Samsung or third parties, it said.

警告说，当声控功能被激活后，这些电视会“偷听”人们说话并且会将谈话内容分享给三星或第三方。

Privacy campaigners said the technology smacked² of the telescreens, in George Orwell's 1984, which spied on citizens.

在乔治·奥威尔所著的《1984》中，隐私维权者曾说科技冲击了电视荧屏，让他们监视民众。

Data sharing

数据共享

The warning came to light via a story in online news magazine the Daily Beast which published an excerpt³ of a section of Samsung's privacy policy for its net-connected Smart TV sets. These record what is said when a button on a remote control is pressed.

网上新闻杂志《每日野兽》的一则报道让这一警示公诸于众，他们刊登了三星联网智能电视系统隐私策略的章节摘要。当遥控器上的声控按钮按下时，人们说的话就被会录下来。

Smart TV owner Peter Kent: "It makes me think twice."

智能电视用户彼得·肯特说：“这让我开始重新考虑（是否要买）。”

The policy explains that the TV set will be listening to people in the same room to try to spot when commands or queries⁴ are issued via the remote. It goes on to say: "If your spoken words include personal or other sensitive information, that information will be among the data captured and transmitted to a third party."

隐私策略解释说，当指令或要求通过遥控器传达以后，电视系统就会听房间内的人们说的话，并从中辨别指令发出者。策略原文是：“如果你所说的话包含个人信息或其他一些敏感信息，这些信息将包含在电视系统捕捉并传输到第三方的数据信息中。”

Corynne McSherry, an intellectual property lawyer for the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) which campaigns on digital rights issues, told the Daily Beast that the third party was probably the company providing speech-to-text conversion⁵ for Samsung.

为电子前沿基金会服务的知识产权律师瑞尼·麦克谢利，告诉《每日野兽》那第三方可能是给三星提供语音到正文转换技术的公司。电子前沿基金会一直致力于争取数字权益。

She added: "If I were the customer, I might like to know who that third party was, and I'd definitely like to know whether my words were being transmitted in a secure form."

她补充说:“如果我是消费者，我也许会更想知道第三方是谁，我也肯定很想知道我的话是否通过安全的形式被传输。”

Soon after, an activist⁶ for the EFF circulated the policy statement on Twitter comparing it to George Orwell's description of the telescreens in his novel 1984 that listen to what people say in their homes.

不久后，一位电子前沿基金会活动家通过推特将这份隐私政策传播开来，将其与乔治·奥威尔在《1984》中对智能屏幕的描述进行比较。

In response to the widespread sharing of its policy statement, Samsung has issued a statement to clarify how voice activation works. It emphasised that the voice recognition feature is activated⁷ using the TV's remote control.

三星发表了一篇澄清声明对此作出回应，解释了声控功能激活是如何运行的。声明称，声音识别功能是通过电视机的遥控器来操控的。

It said the privacy policy was an attempt to be transparent⁸ with owners in order to help them make informed choices about whether to use some features on its Smart TV sets, adding that it took consumer privacy "very seriously".

声明表示，隐私政策意在对消费者开诚布公，让用户在了解智能电视机所有信息后选择是否使用某些功能。他们同时表示，他们对顾客的隐私“非常重视”。

Samsung said: "If a consumer consents and uses the voice recognition feature, voice data is provided to a third party during a requested voice command search. At that time, the voice data is sent to a server, which searches for the requested content then returns the desired content to the TV."

三星表示:“如果消费者赞成并且使用声音识别功能，声控数据将会被提供给第三方做声控搜索支持。同时，声音数据将会传输给服务器，再将搜索要求的内容返回给电视。”

It added that it did not retain voice data or sell the audio being captured. Smart-TV owners would always know if voice activation was turned on because a microphone icon⁹ would be visible on the screen, it said.

他们同时补充说，他们没有保留声音数据或者将其出售。智能电视用户随时可以知道声控系统是否打开，因为电视机屏幕上会有一个麦克风的图标。

The third party handling the translation from speech to text is a firm called Nuance¹⁰, which specialises in voice recognition, Samsung has confirmed to the BBC.

三星向BBC证实，帮助三星处理语音到文字转换的第三方Nuance公司是一个专门从事语音识别的公司。

Samsung is not the first maker¹¹ of a smart, net-connected TV to run into problems with the data the set collects. In late 2013, a UK IT consultant¹² found his LG TV was gathering¹³ information about his viewing habits.

三星不是第一个生产智能联网电视结果陷入数据收集风波的公司。2013年末，一家英国IT公司顾问发现他的LG电视在收集他的观看习惯信息。

Publicity¹⁴ about the issue led LG to create a software update which ensured data collection was turned off for those who did not want to share information.

这一信息的公开使得LG公司将自己的软件升级，让不想分享信息的用户可以关掉这些功能。