The *nix based O/Ses are considered pretty safe to use. Sure Apple (OSX is built from BSD unix) could have added some hidden surveillance mode. I folded up a little piece of paper and covered up the camera+mic. I probably won't be attaching debugging tools anytime soon trying to detect a theoretical hidden spy mode any time soon. Microsoft allegedly had implemented NSA backdoors into Windows in the past. And I've read speculation that they have put some intentional security holes in the system for the purpose of backdoor spying. Acer recently was accused of bugging their laptops since 1998. And I've read sites claiming other laptop makers like Dell have installed key-logger chips in some of their products. Then there is the prevalence of wi-fi and blue tooth enabled devices. Someone could intercept your wireless keyboard. Supposedly some researchers have been able to discover data by recording the sounds of the typing on the keyboard to reveal passwords IIRC.

Then if you run pre-compiled binaries and closed source software and O/Ses (Microsoft and Apple by default), you're forced to trust the people who made it. Then you can argue well I'll go install linux and compile the damn thing myself from all open source code so that there can be some independent verification that there are not back doors in the code. But then you're still trusting that someone out there is watching. Or would you do it yourself? Examine 15 million lines of code before you compile it? And some of the back doors are sneaky written by clever people and actually get past watchful eyes on occasion. So I think it can become impractical for people after some point to be too worked up over it.

At the moment I have a little bit more confidence in the security out of the box of the Apples (vs the average Windows+PC). I think if someone really wants to know what you're doing, especially if they have the resources of the government behind them, especially if they are from a secret woo-woo faction or agency, they'll figure out a way to find out. I still feel a measure of comfort with the thought that I could just install linux and give up OS X, but then again, there could still be something lurking at the hardware/BIOS/Firmware level in order to circumvent the O/S, with the shrinkage of silicon, availability of cheap memory, it's getting easier to hide that sort of thing in commercial products if someone wanted to do that. And how many people would even open their box and look for it? Which also reminds me of Microsoft's Palladium TCPA initiative. Where all the hardware level stuff is pretty much locked down and communication is authenticated and encrypted, so who knows what your system is doing. I don't know how much of that will find its way into Apple's stuff, but on the Microsoft side of things it seems clear to me that they've declared war against the user and are intent on setting boundaries that make your PC no longer a computer and more like an appliance such as your TV...

But one cool thing I found inside Safari is a realtime spell checker that corrects me as I am typing this post. So even if my grammar is horrible, my spelling should be much improved...

I'm more cautious about _audio_ surveillance. Does your computer have a built-in microphone? Since it's been acknowledged that NSA is already using computers to scan for key words in overseas telephone calls (they never ever do it with local calls, oh no, never ) how easy would it be to remotely turn on the microphone of a "person of interest" and listen in? Or just have everyone's mikes on all the time and scan for keywords?

If anything the technology to be paranoid about now in macs is the iSight.  Don't have iSight or some other camera connected to your mac? Then all you have to worry about is the "normal" hacking. Learn a little bit about computer security and a decent amount of Unix and you can take care of that yourself.

And as far as covert manufacture and implementation of this.... the US government couldn't afford to pay any corporation to do this, and the corporation isn't going to do it for free. It's just not cost effective for either to try.

In essence, this tells me that both MS and Apple are quite clearly involved in the more "all-seeing" side of things, to put it like that. And even if Apples machines may be more user-friendly, that does not (necessarily) translate into the whole business of Apple, its underpinnings and its goals, being equally as friendly. Quite a common tactic to present something ominous as being "your best friend," a kind face, and all that. MS of course deserves at least the same level of scepticism, if not more.

For this display technology, I'm one of those paranoid types and this bothers me, but once the tech is out there, it will get adopted and copied regardless of patent and IP laws around the globe. If they can do it cheaply and consumers don't revolt against it, it will become ubiquitous. And like in the case of RFID, it doesn't matter if consumers don't like it, they'll just implement it covertly instead.

One thing to keep in mind, this goes for the cell phone as bugs also, if someone covertly enables a feature like this, it will have to transmit data, and that's something you could detect if you are alert. You can watch for network activity when there shouldn't be any, look for wireless connections, etc. You can be sure consumers will be provided an "off" switch to make them feel comfortable, but it's probably safe to assume there'll be a method to to enable it in stealth. I would bet also then that tools to detect and circumvent this will pop up. There will be an ongoing arms race of counter-measures etc like always. I bet there will be options for the paranoids to be sure to defeat this sort of monitoring.

Another thing to mention is Open Source operating systems, such as linux or FreeBSD. They are full of eccentric paranoid security freaks who are educated and knowledgeable on security. If something is going to read millions of micro-sensors and assemble it into useful surveillance tech, it will have to have software to do that, and hardware drivers, and probably video drivers built into the O/S, there will have to be a bi-directional data path to the video and all that will need software to run. At least in the open source community, there will be people looking over the source code checking for that sort of funny business. It gets scarier if the drivers are somehow locked down and no source is released (like nvidia drivers for linux currently are). Apple's operating system OS X is based on FreeBSD and in general from what I've seen so far I think there is much less to fear from Apple than from Microsoft.

Maybe it will come to putting the computer into an isolated room with a plain background behind the display and covering it with a sheath and then unplugging it, when you're not using it. But then again I think we're already to the point where privacy is pretty much an illusion any more.