Actually, Ive suspected they were doing it. I havnt read the entire thing, but it
more than likely real.
1stly, they already can turn on (when its off) your phone from remote, and listen in on your
conversations. This has already been proven fact. I believe they also track it with GPS.
Why not cable spying?
In fact, its easier to spy with cable. The boxes are huge... have Hard Disks to store
oogles of recordings... and mysteriously start their drives up (when off) on a frequent
basis.
Its easy to hide Mics into such devices. And of course any speaker can be tapped
as a mic. Cameras are not as easy to hide.. but it can be done. Especially when
people are not thinking to crack open their boxes to inspect for them. Cameras
can also be images made up of something like how bats see (sonar?). And cameras
could be disguised as some other part or dual function part. (Led when on, camera
captures when off)
Its probably also able being done with modern PC hardware. Mics secretly tapped.
Cameras snapping images occasionally. Info leaked in packets during normal transmissions (masked). And cable modems mic'd too?
I do really find it funny that people arent willing to think this is possible, yet
they KNOW cell phones are tapped!!! Quite stupid and Naive.