The linked article is written as a bit of a scare piece, but the surveillance society rolls on.
Evidently, the “WiFi Motion” feature is turned off by default, but one might fairly wonder if that will always the case, if it’s something that can be turned on by court order, or if there may be opportunities for malicious use.
I am not a fan of Comcast, full stop. But the writer of the linked article shows a fundamental misunderstanding of Comcast’s “owners” that makes me consider him a conspiracy theorist.
Due to its massive business, Comcast is a core holding of index funds, mutual funds, retirement accounts, and many individual retail portfolios. Blackrock, Vanguard, and State Street are three of the largest operators of these types of accounts. These firms hold Comcast shares on behalf of their clients; Vanguard in particular was founded to help small investors own mutual funds with extremely low fees.
I agree that the conspiracy angles are off-putting. I’ll also stipulate that the motion detection features as marketed are largely benign.
At the same time, I think the chances are near 100% that such features eventually will be used or misused in ways that are not so benign.
Yet another reason to buy/build your own Wi-Fi router and not use ISP-provided equipment.
It has always been a good idea, for cost-saving reasons, but this makes it even more important, because your ISP can’t just push updated firmware into devices they don’t manage.