Not unlike Kinect, Skype had assured its users that "wiretaps were technically impossible" the company told CNET in 2008. And four years later, when hackers accused Skype owner Microsoft of changing the service's backend to facilitate government eavesdropping, the company categorically denied the accusations. Now, it seems like the company could have been lying, or at least had quietly changed its mind. Mind you, Microsoft is also denying last Thursday's Guardian report, but the denial is a lot less clear-cut. The company disavows having providing "blanket or direct access" to Skype, but doesn't deny that it provides Skype video or audio to the government upon request. So even if we(consumers) take Microsoft's word that the Kinect doesn't currently upload private conversations to remote servers, can anyone trust that Microsoft won't change that in a future software update?

You close a laptop when you're not using it. Your phone faces the inside of a pocket, a purse, or lies flat on a table. But the Microsoft Kinect, an always-on camera that will come with every new Xbox One game console, gets a perfect view of your living room. It's always listening for voice commands, even when you turn the Xbox off. It can even read your heartbeat with the right software.

Microsoft says it doesn't plan to abuse that power, and claims it couldn't even if it tried. The company told us that the Kinect's cameras and microphones aren't actually recording or transmitting any audio or video data back to Microsoft's servers without the user's explicit consent, and all ambiently collected data is anonymized. While some voice commands are processed at Microsoft's servers, they're converted to text before they ever leave the machine, and biometric data is translated into numerical values that simply indicate, say, where a player's limbs are during online multiplayer games.