Nintendo Wii May Allow Foriegn Police to Spy On Our Children

This troubling recent change to Nintendo's privacy policy makes public Nintendo's willingness to download software to your Wii that may "assist law enforcement" without your knowledge or consent. Prior to this the Wii always asked for your permission to install available updates or patches.

From:

http://www.nintendo.com/consumer/systems/wii/en_na/privacyPolicy.jsp

Downloaded Tuesday, Nov 18 10:44 CDT

"We may without notifying you, download updates, patches, upgrades and similar software to your Wii Console and may disable unauthorized or illegal software placed on your Wii Console to ensure that your Wii Console is operating properly and efficiently, comply with applicable laws, assist law enforcement, protect us and our customers, or prevent the use and distribution of software obtained through improper channels."

Ostensibly these changes are to combat illegal copyright infringement which impacts Nintendo's business model. In my opinion this is reasonable - if you make illegal copies of games then you take on the risk of getting caught and prosecuted.

However, the devil is in the lack of details. The privacy policy does not define what "assistance" to law enforcement is. This is unreasonable.

With a PC you have some control over what software gets installed. For example, you can install anti-virus and firewall software from different vendors and have at least a fighting chance at keeping your goings on private. With the Wii I can watch everything my child does while playing and still be completely unaware that someone else is watching as well.

First, a technical explanation about the Wii's networking capability. The Nintendo Wii can connect to the internet using its own internal Wi-Fi adapter or to a wired network using a USB Ethernet converter purchased separately.

For security reasons we do not use Wi-Fi in our home. However, short of taking the Wii apart and removing the wifi module there is nothing we can do to stop our Wii from attempting to connect to one of our neighbor's Wi-Fi routers to circumvent any security measures we may have taken on our wired network. Once the Wii can connect to the internet then it's all over.

What happens if a patch Nintendo installs on my Wii contains a vulnerability? A few years ago Sony released multimedia music CDs that installed copyright protection software which contained a flaw that malicious hackers could exploit to gain control of your computer. Can I trust Nintendo employees to write perfect, bug free software every time? Pffft. No.

To put things in perspective, it's very unlikely that anyone in my household will be involved with anything that requires the notice of local or international law enforcement - especially while playing video games on the Wii. Still, why does Nintendo see fit to put my family at risk, all over Nintendo's inability to create a video game console that will only play legal copies of video games?