Your vacuum cleaner could be a Chinese spy! This is what Estonia's intelligence services report
Estonian intelligence warns that a popular cleaning robot model produced in China may actually be a disguised spy!
This has never happened before: a vacuum cleaner is a spy! If the revelations provided by Estonia's intelligence services turn out to be true, we will be dealing not only with an international scandal, but also with an exaggerated demonstration of what a huge role new technologies can play in contemporary geopolitical conflicts. Not necessarily strictly military ones.
A cleaning robot spies on behalf of China
From the report published by the Estonian intelligence we learn, among others: what we have known for a long time: China wants to destabilize Western countries and collect useful information about them. What is more disturbing is the fact that the authors of the report also inform that China may use its mass-produced technology, e.g. one that collects information about the environment, to spy on other countries.
“(…) the goal of Chinese companies is to scan the entire environment and send all data to a database in China. This means that autonomous cars equipped with Chinese technology can be used for intelligence purposes.” – we read in the report of the Estonian services.
What is particularly interesting and shocking is that the report also states that the Chinese could potentially use many other electronic devices, such as cleaning robots, in their espionage activities. Any equipment equipped with lidar systems – devices that use remote sensing to create precise three-dimensional maps – is suitable for collecting valuable information about the surroundings.
TikTok a real threat
Of course, not only the equipment they create is suitable for spying, but also the software. What has been talked about more or less officially for a long time is that such an application closely linked to the Chinese government may be the extremely popular TikTok, which comes directly from the Middle Kingdom and this is no secret.
“China needs access to visual and behavioral data from people of all origins to develop perfect artificial intelligence. TikTok collects extensive information about the device and its user, such as phone contacts, calendar, other apps, Wi-Fi connections and location. This information may be useful for intelligence gathering.” – warn the authors of the report.
