Re: [directory-discuss] proprietary-surveillance.html

[David Hedlund]

On 2016-12-31 21:18, Greg Rundlett (freephile) wrote:

On Sat, Dec 31, 2016 at 1:24 PM, Richard Stallman <address@hidden> wrote:

 

Please DTRT about this problem in Chromium.
First please check that the situation has not changed since a year ago.
If it has not, then Chromium should be treated as a nonfree program
for the directory.

I just checked, and this was fixed almost immediately (back in June, 2015).

Chromium does not download the "Hotwords" module.  See the response in the bug tracker for chromium:

https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=500922#c44

 

Chrome contains an audio listening module.

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/jun/23/google-eavesdropping-tool-installed-computers-without-permission

  Even nastier, Chromium (supposedly "open source") automatically
loads the nonfree audio listening module at startup.  Effectively,
that module is part of Chromium, which means Chromium as a whole is
not really free software (nor open source).

Chromium does not download nor contain the nonfree audio listening module. Here's the diff of the above-referenced commit: 

https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromium/src/+/0366a5184a70b3eefb5fcef2c2e13721669f00d8%5E%21/

Chrome, a Google product, is a different story.

Greg Rundlett

https://eQuality-Tech.com

https://freephile.org

I added this to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chromium_(web_browser)#Eavesdropping

Chromium version 43-44^[170] automatically downloaded a binary blob audio listening module and run this non-free eavesdropping tool at startup.^[171]