Kohler Can Access Pictures from "End-to-End Encrypted" Toilet Camera

▲ Kohler Can Access Pictures from "End-to-End Encrypted" Toilet Camera(varlogsimon.leaflet.pub)

185 points by TimDotC 8 hours ago | 162 comments

▲ lrvick 3 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

So basically some idiot company connected toilets with cameras to the internet claiming the media collected of peoples "ends" was end to end encrypted. Except, it wasn't.

These compromised toilets could be easily used to exfiltrate compromising videos of exfiltrations.

The toilets leak pictures of people taking leaks.

The internet really is going to shit.

▲ Terr_ 8 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

So basically their marketing-department is abusing a security term in order to sound good, as opposed to a software flaw.

They're claiming "end to end" encryption, which usually implies the service is unable to spy on individual users that are communicating to one-another over an individualized channel.

However in this case there are no other users, and their server is one of the "ends" doing the communicating, which is... perhaps not a literal contradiction in terms, but certainly breaking the spirit of the phrase.

▲ bmandale 8 hours ago | parent | next [-]

This is an incredibly common misuse of the term e2ee. I think at this point we need a new word because you have a coin flip's chance of actually getting what you think when a company describes their product this way.

▲ WatchDog 7 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Any new term you come up with, will end up being misused by marketers.

▲ fastball 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I have never seen "e2ee" abused this way personally.

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N-Krause 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

There was a discussion here on hn about OpenAI and it's privacy. Same confusion about e2ee. Users thinking e2ee is possible when you chat with an ai agent.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45908891

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charcircuit 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

>Users thinking e2ee is possible when you chat with an ai agent.

It shouldn't be any harder than e2ee chatting with any other user. It's just instead of the other end chatting using a keyboard as an input they chat using a language model to type the messages. Of course like any other e2ee solution, the person you are talking to also has access to your messages as that's the whole point, being able to talk to them.

	▲	swiftcoder 22 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		I do not think this matches anyones' mental model of what "end-to-end encrypted" for a conversation between me and what is ostensibly my own computer should look like. If you promise end-to-end encryption, and later it turns out your employees have been reading my chat transcripts...

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pyuser583 36 minutes ago | parent | prev [-]

I saw a YouTube video claim similar levels of privacy are possible using trusted computing.

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ljlolel 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Zoom also did this once

	▲	wkat4242 an hour ago \| parent \| next [-]
		They don't care about security at all. They once shipped a backdoor in their macOS app. It was noticed and called out and they refused to remove it. It took Apple blacklisting it for Zoom to finally take action.
	▲	internetter 5 hours ago \| parent \| prev \| next [-]
		They also paid me something around 100 dollars in settlement for this
	▲	bayindirh 2 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		I believe they now have a proper e2ee mode which disables all the cloud powered features, no?

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hulitu 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Whatsapp, Signal, Telegram, iCloud

	▲	baumschubser 2 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		I would say Telegram is communicating their level of encryption pretty good ("client-to-client" and "client-to-server" is a good way to avoid the ambiguity of e2e). https://telegram.org/faq?setln=en#q-so-how-do-you-encrypt-da...
	▲	junon 2 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		Please cite where Signal is not e2ee.

▲ g-b-r 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

It's not incredibly common, there's sure a lot of companies that try to misuse it, but the average person (even non technical) still interprets it in the correct way

▲ tacitusarc 7 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

“In transit encryption”

▲ boomboomsubban 7 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Creating a new term for the less secure definition doesn't work, as they'll just continue to call it E2EE encrypted.

▲ calebio 7 hours ago | parent | next [-]

I think part of the problem is that prior to WhatsApp's E2EE implementation in like 2014, TLS was very often called "End to End Encryption" as the ends were Client and Server/Service Provider. It got redefined and now the new usage is way more popular than the old one.

I can't blame most people for calling TLS "E2EE", even some folks in industry, but it's not great for a company to advertise that you offer X if the meaning of X has shifted so drastically in the last decade.

▲ kstrauser 7 hours ago | parent | next [-]

I’m pushing back on that one. I’ve been running websites since the ‘90s, and I’ve never heard E2EE used that way until very recently by vendors who, bluntly, want to lie about it.

▲ calebio 7 hours ago | parent [-]

It was pretty common to call client-side encryption/SSL "end to end encryption" among network engineers who were analyzing data flowing through their networks[0] as well as those who were implementing SSL/TLS into their applications[1]. The ends were the client and the server and the data was encrypted "end to end". The goal at that time was to prevent MITM snooping/attacks which were highly prevalent at the time.

Papers in academia and the greater industry[2] also referred to it in this way at the time.

Stack Overflow has plenty of examples of folks calling it "end to end encryption" and you can start to see the time period after the Signal protocol and WhatsApp implemented it that the term started to take on a much wider meaning[4]

This also came up a lot in the context of games that rolled out client side encryption for packets on the way to the server. Folks would run MITM applications on their computer to intercept game packets coming out of the client and back from the server. Clever mechanisms were setup for key management and key exchange[3].

[0] as SSL became more common lots of tooling broke at the network level around packet inspection, routing, caching, etc. As well as engineers "having fun" on Friday nights looking at what folks were looking at.

[1] Stack Overflow's security section has references from that era

[2] "Encrypting the internet" (2010) - https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/1851275.1851200

[3] Habbo Hotel's prime and generator being hidden in one of the dynamic images fetched from the server as well as their DH mechanism comes to mind.

[4] Jabber/XMPP however used E2EE in the more modern sense around that time as they were exploring going beyond TLS and having true E2EE.

▲ Sophira 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

At least in some circles, the real meaning of "end-to-end encryption" was being addressed. For example, in the field of credit card processing, here's an article from 2009 which talks about how people back then were misusing the term: https://web.archive.org/web/20090927092231/http://informatio...

Granted, it's a marketing piece trying to sell a product, but still.

▲ g-b-r 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

I wasn't a network engineer, but to my recollection "end-to-end encryption" was only used occasionally, probably by people not too knowledgeable in cryptography

▲ calebio 4 hours ago | parent [-]

Well respectfully your recollection is missing lots of references by people that were "knowledgeable in cryptography".

You can easily find these references in the literature, often comparing link encryption with end-to-end encryption. Some of the earliest papers outlining the plans for SSL in the 90s (Analysis of the SSL 3.0 Protocol) are based on this exact foundation from the 80s (End-To-End Arguments in System Design).

Hell, you can even go back to 1978 and see MITRE discussing this exact thing in "Limitations of end-to-end encryption in secure computer networks".

▲ g-b-r an hour ago | parent [-]

With three citations I was about to give in, and accept that my experience might have been limited, but then I checked those citations and... are you trolling? Or were those given you by an llm?

1. "End-To-End Arguments in System Design" (https://web.mit.edu/Saltzer/www/publications/endtoend/endtoe...) argues that it's appropriate to perform various functions at the high-level, application, ends, rather than for example leaving encryption to devices external to the hosts.

It's really a stretch to affirm that it considers "end-to-end encryption" a proper term for transport, client-server encryption.

Actually, I'd say that transport-level, origin-server -> server-destination encryption is precisely one of the things that the paper would not consider end-to-end.

2. "Analysis of the SSL 3.0 Protocol" (https://www.schneier.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/paper-ss...):

  a. it doesn't "outline the plans for ssl", it's an analysis of its third version???
  
  b. It doesn't reference "End-To-End Arguments in System Design" anywhere, and doesn't even contain the expression "end-to-end"

3. "Limitations of end-to-end encryption in secure computer networks" is mostly concerned with warning about side-channels, that they can be used to disseminate information despite encryption.

Its usage of end-to-end encryption is defined in the paper that's being criticized (https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/1499799.1499812): «The term end to-end encryption refers to data being enciphered at the source and remaining unintelligible until it deciphered at its final destination.»

	▲	calebio 21 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		I'll take the hit on the loose phrasing regarding the SSL paper "outlining plans". That was a poor description of mine of an analysis paper and wasn't a good example of the point I was trying to make. However, you are focusing on the trees and missing the forest. The citations you analyzed actually prove the semantic shift I am describing, specifically the MITRE one. You quoted the MITRE paper (or the older paper it references) defining end-to-end encryption as: > "data being enciphered at the source and remaining unintelligible until it deciphered at its final destination." This is the exact crux of the disagreement. In classic Client-Server architecture, the Server was the "final destination". The application processing the data lived on the server. Therefore, by the definition you just quoted, SSL/TLS from Client to Server was "End-to-End Encryption" because the network (routers/ISPs) could not decipher it. The "modern" definition (post-Signal/WhatsApp) effectively redefined "final destination" to mean "another human user," relegating the Service Provider to a mere hop in the middle. That is a massive semantic shift. re Saltzer's "End-to-End Arguments": The paper argues that functions (like reliability or encryption) should be moved from the lower network layers (links) to the "ends" (hosts/applications). SSL/TLS is the literal implementation of this argument: moving encryption out of the network links (Link Encryption) and into the application endpoints (Host-to-Host). The term "End-to-End" in networking has historically meant Host-to-Host (Transport Layer), whereas the modern messaging usage means User-to-User. That is why a lot of folks from that era (and the RFCs) called SSL "End-to-End encryption" because relative to the network, it is. --- RFC 4949 from 2007 (Internet Security Glossary) is quite explicit on this: https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc4949 > $ end-to-end encryption > (I) Continuous protection of data that flows between two points in > a network, effected by encrypting data when it leaves its source, > keeping it encrypted while it passes through any intermediate > computers (such as routers), and decrypting it only when it > arrives at the intended final destination. (See: wiretapping. Compare: link encryption.) > > Examples: A few are BLACKER, CANEWARE, IPLI, IPsec, PLI, SDNS, SILS, SSH, SSL, TLS. > > Tutorial: When two points are separated by multiple communication > links that are connected by one or more intermediate relays, end- > to-end encryption enables the source and destination systems to > protect their communications without depending on the intermediate > systems to provide the protection. --- RFC 1455 from 1993 (32 years ago) also uses the term in the IP/Host context: https://pike.lysator.liu.se/docs/ietf/rfc/14/rfc1455.xml > At this time all Internet Protocol (IP) packets must have most of their header information, including the "from" and "to" addresses, in the clear. This is required for routers to properly handle the traffic even if a higher level protocol fully encrypts all bytes in the packet after the IP header. This renders even end-to-end encrypted IP packets subject to traffic analysis if the data stream can be observed. --- Regarding your claim that "no one really used the E2EE term before it got the current meaning," the IETF standards for the internet (albeit an informational RFC and not a standards RFC) explicitly list SSL and TLS as examples of End-to-End encryption. The definition of "End" has simply shifted from the Machine to the User.

▲ g-b-r 40 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> prior to WhatsApp's E2EE implementation in like 2014, TLS was very often called "End to End Encryption"

That's pretty wild

The reason that a different term had to be invented was that some centralized messaging system defined itself as "encrypted" when it begun to use TLS.

It would have been stupid to pick a term commonly used for TLS to differentiate yourself from TLS

▲ lukeschlather 7 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

The two endpoints of the communication with Kohler's app are the client and the server. In WhatsApp's E2EE implementation the endpoints are two client devices. Both are valid meanings of E2EE. You're defining that "end to end" means the server cannot access it but that's simply not what it means.

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calebio 7 hours ago | parent [-]

The modern usage of E2EE definitely means that "the server cannot access it". That's the meat of this entire discussion.

While you are technically correct in a network topology sense (where the "ends" are the TCP connection points), that definition has been obsolete in consumer privacy contexts for a decade now due to "true" E2EE encryption.

If we use your definition, then Gmail, Facebook, and Amazon are all "End-to-End Encrypted" because the traffic is encrypted between my client and their server. But we don't call them E2EE because the service provider holds the keys and can see the data.

In 2025, when a company claims a camera product is "E2EE", a consumer interprets that to mean "Zero Knowledge". I.e. the provider cannot see the video feeds. If Kohler holds the keys to analyze the data, that is Encryption in Transit, not E2EE. Even though in an older sense (which is what my original comment was saying), it was "End to End Encrypted" because the two ends were defined as Client and Server and not Client to Client (e.g. FB Messenger User1 and FB Messenger User2).

	▲	lukeschlather 4 hours ago \| parent [-]
		> If we use your definition, then Gmail, Facebook, and Amazon are all "End-to-End Encrypted" because the traffic is encrypted between my client and their server. That may or may not be the case. TLS is always terminated at a load balancer that uses TLS but it's still common to use HTTP within datacenters. So it may not be E2EE and it's a meaningful security feature.

▲ SchemaLoad 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

No term will stop marketers from lying. If users see one as being the more secure one, marketers will use it. Unless they get sued for false advertising.

▲ kstrauser 7 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

I despise how often that’s used. “Do you have end to end encryption?” “Sure! We use TLS for everything, and KMS for at-rest.” “So… no?”

▲ koolba 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> However in this case there are no other users, and their server is one of the "ends" doing the communicating, which is... perhaps not a literal contradiction in terms, but certainly breaking the spirit of the phrase.

Am I understanding correctly that the other end of this is a rear end?

	▲	hulitu 4 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Every front end needs a rear end. So, yes.

▲ addaon 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

While they’re taking one “end” much less literally than usual, they are taking the other “end” much more literally…

▲ geoduck14 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

This is exactly what E2EE means. I used to work at a bank, and our data was E2EE, and we had to certify that it was E2EE - from the person paying, through the networks, through the DNS and Load balancers, until it got to the servers. Only at the servers could it be unencrypted and a (authoried) human could look at it.

Of course, only authorized users could see the data, but that was a different compliance line item.

▲ modeless 7 hours ago | parent | next [-]

No, E2EE doesn't mean it's encrypted until the service provider decrypts it. E2EE means the service provider is unable to decrypt it. What you are describing is encryption in transit (and possibly at rest).

Bank data is never E2EE because the bank needs to see it. If banks call it E2EE they are misusing the term. E2EE for financial transactions would look like e.g. ZCash.

▲ RHSeeger 6 hours ago | parent [-]

I would argue it depends on context. E2EE means it's encrypted until the "target" receives it. For a messaging protocol, it's the intended recipient of the message. For what the person you're replying is discussing, the intended recipient IS the bank.

That being said, the person you're replying to seems to be saying that "the server" is always an "intended" end, which is wrong.

▲ modeless 6 hours ago | parent | next [-]

No, it doesn't depend on context. The intended recipient of a financial transaction is not the bank. The intended recipient is the party you're trying to pay. It is possible for financial transactions to be E2EE and completely indecipherable by anyone but the two parties of the transaction. Crypto like ZCash can do it. Banks cannot.

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RHSeeger 6 hours ago | parent [-]

Can you expand on this a bit. It was my understanding that you're telling the bank to pay the vendor (from your money/credit). In that case, the bank certainly needs to know about the transaction... so it can make the payment.

Are we talking about 2 different things here?

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modeless 6 hours ago | parent [-]

I suggest researching how ZCash uses zero-knowledge proofs to allow paying money from your balance to another person's balance without any middleman like a bank being able to decrypt your transaction, while still allowing everyone to verify that important invariants are maintained, such as not allowing you to spend more money than you have.

This is what it takes to make a financial transaction E2EE. I'm not saying that banks could or should do this. I'm just saying that their systems do not qualify as E2EE unless they do. It's not ambiguous.

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RHSeeger 3 hours ago | parent [-]

Doesn't the anonymous-ness of crypto/zcash make it impossible for the bank to handle fraud (reversing of charges and such)?

My understanding is that banks, at least in the US, need to have fairly extensive knowledge relating to all transfers of money, both for fraud handling and for non-fraud (money laundering, etc). A transaction they can't know anything about other than "transfer X money to some recipient you can't know anything about" just doesn't seem realistic with the regulations involved.

Plus, even "transfer X money to some recipient you can't know anything about" is a message that you're sending _to_ the bank, that they have to be able to decode and read. And, presumably, you'd encrypt that message and expect the bank to decrypt it.

Honestly, I don't understand what argument is that you're not sending a message TO the bank, and they need to be able to read it in order to act on it, and they need to decrypt it to read it. The bank is the target of the message, they are one of the "ends" in E2EE.

I feel like I need an "Explain this like I'm 5", because clearly you believe differently than me... and I don't understand _how_ it can be otherwise.

	▲	jstanley an hour ago \| parent [-]
		Yes, banks have a bunch of regulations which means they can't run an end-to-end encrypted payment service. That's an argument that their payment service is not end-to-end encrypted, not an argument that you can simply redefine the ends and say that it is.

▲ stephen_g 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

While what you're saying makes sense, it's not the normal use of the term - in fact, the term 'end to end encryption' was basically coined to differentiate user-to-user encryption (through an intermediary service that can't decrypt the message) from the regular case (user to service encryption) that you're talking about!

▲ calebio 9 minutes ago | parent [-]

It wasn't coined, it was reused. It historically meant things that were encrypted from the client to the server, e.g. SSH, SSL, TLS, etc.

RFC 4949 (Internet Security Glossary, Version 2) from 2007: https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc4949

     $ end-to-end encryption
      (I) Continuous protection of data that flows between two points in
      a network, effected by encrypting data when it leaves its source,
      keeping it encrypted while it passes through any intermediate
      computers (such as routers), and decrypting it only when it
      arrives at the intended final destination. (See: wiretapping.
      Compare: link encryption.)

      Examples: A few are BLACKER, CANEWARE, IPLI, IPsec, PLI, SDNS,
      SILS, SSH, SSL, TLS.

      Tutorial: When two points are separated by multiple communication
      links that are connected by one or more intermediate relays, end-
      to-end encryption enables the source and destination systems to
      protect their communications without depending on the intermediate
      systems to provide the protection.

There's a bunch of older references as well. Since SSL/TLS wasn't really adopted by a lot of services until 2008+ usages of it are mainly in papers, old forum posts, etc. I saw it used and was discussing it back in the day on IRC with folks who were way more knowledgeable than me on this topic and had been in the trenches for a while :D

▲ pyuser583 35 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

It sounds like one term is being used for two very different things.

▲ kstrauser 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Nah. You have no reasonable expectation that the bank itself can’t access your financial records. Anyone reading Kohler’s lies would have every expectation that the Internet of Poopcam screenshots are theirs and theirs alone.

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lukeschlather 7 hours ago | parent [-]

Anyone reading that is misunderstanding what E2EE means. As the article says, that's client-side encryption. Kohler isn't lying, people are confusing two different security features.

	▲	kstrauser 6 hours ago \| parent [-]
		That is an uncommon interpretation that’s far different than the usual meaning.

▲ hahn-kev 7 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Doesn't that just mean HTTPS then?

▲ lmm 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

> They're claiming "end to end" encryption, which usually implies the service is unable to spy on individual users that are communicating to one-another over an individualized channel.

It doesn't "imply", it outright states that. Their server isn't the end, it's the middle. They're not "breaking the spirit" or something, what they are doing is called lying.

▲ poisonborz 6 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

The problem is genuinely the misleading nature of the phrase "end to end" and the lack of a better alternative. HTTPS is "end to end". There should be some new word for "decryptable only by the user".

▲ codingdave 8 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Sounds like the crappiest data source for AI training yet.

But in all seriousness, of course they can access the data. Otherwise who else would process it to give any health results back? I don't think encryption in transit is relevant to privacy concerns because the concerns are about such data being tied to you at all, in any way. At the same time, yes, this could product valuable health information.

Their better bet would be to allow full anonymity, so even if there is a leak (yeah, the puns write themselves), there is never a connection between this data and your person.

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fastball 7 hours ago | parent | next [-]

You could have a classifier running on-device that sends summary data (rather than raw images) back to Kohler.

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karlgkk 7 hours ago | parent [-]

Yeah, it’s kinda like such a reasonable thing too

Doing on device compute is probably expensive and would prohibit such a product based on the economics but ITS A GENITAL CAM

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Sanzig 7 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Well, this waste analyzing piece of e-waste costs $600, so you could probably cram a lot of inference horsepower in there if you wanted to.

	▲	aerostable_slug 6 hours ago \| parent [-]
		And the heat from the processor(s) would make for a comfy user experience in the wintertime.

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xp84 44 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Isn’t it more of a poo cam if it’s pointed down?

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IncreasePosts 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Only for the very well endowed since it points down. Though hopefully they're doing something other than let their bits dangle in the toilet water.

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duskdozer 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

>Otherwise who else would process it to give any health results back?

Well it could be processed on-device.

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tbrownaw 5 hours ago | parent [-]

That would only work after they're done training the ai models.

	▲	mindslight 5 hours ago \| parent [-]
		So like after the alpha and beta phases, when they have an actual product worthy of selling?

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g-b-r 7 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

> But in all seriousness, of course they can access the data. Otherwise who else would process it to give any health results back?

It's "of course" for very knowledgeable people, normal people just assume that it means guaranteed privacy

▲ internet_points 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

The Norwegian term for e2ee is "ende-til-ende-kryptering".

And "ende" can also mean 'butt' https://naob.no/ordbok/ende_3#52867988

So I guess it makes some kind of sense.

	▲	xp84 an hour ago \| parent [-]
		Rear-end-to-end encryption, if you will.

▲ schmuckonwheels 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Imagine the collective brainpower that could be used to help solve the world's ills, and instead decided, no, what we need is a camera pointed at your asshole which we feed into an AI-powered SaaS we can then sell to you for a subscription. This industry is finished.

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Aeolun 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

It’s pretty impressive that that juicero thing wasn’t the most bizarre thing they could come up with.

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mzhaase 3 hours ago | parent [-]

I watched a teardown of it and the truly bizarre thing was that the build quality was actually amazing. Machined out of a huge block of aluminum, really big bearings, etc.

	▲	kortilla 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		That was part of why it failed though. The over-engineering made it very hard to recover costs

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venturecruelty 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

This is downstream from the notion that companies need to have infinite growth forever. Of course, that's not possible, so this is the end stages of that: wealth trickles up while the, well... you can guess what's trickling down.

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EdwardDiego 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

They claim it only points about your doings, but even then...

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phoronixrly 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Who the hell buys this...

▲ sriram_malhar 26 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

This world is upside down. I wake up feeling like I am the man in the middle being attacked from all sides.

▲ andai 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

We're past The Onion clips coming true, now it's Adult Swim:

https://youtu.be/DJklHwoYgBQ

▲ stevenjgarner an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Here we are 35 years after the invention of the web browser, and now browser fingerprinting is an exact science. [1] I'm guessing 35 years from now toilet bowl fingerprinting will be an exact science. Claims of "de-identified and/or anonymized data" are reckless and naive.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46016249

▲ lambdaone an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

This brings back memories of Adult Swim's "Smart Pipe" spoof infomercial.

▲ alexjplant 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Satire is dead. A toilet company killed it.

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halapro 6 hours ago | parent [-]

Could easily have been an SNL sketch in 2010

	▲	avidiax 6 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Smart Pipe https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DJklHwoYgBQ

▲ Cyphase 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Our crypto cookies implement end-to-end encryption by creating a digest of the input morsels and securing their transit between the front end and the back end. Be warned, certain failure modes can result in over-encryption or return of partially-encrypted ciphertext to the sender.

▲ lotrjohn 8 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

They can encrypt data coming out of both ends?!

	▲	fransje26 31 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		Sounds like something they pulled out of their ass..

▲ tracerbulletx 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

This obsession with personal health data collection is in its self counter productive to health outcomes and insane behavior.

▲ recursivedoubts 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

congratulations, you have lived to see man made horrors beyond your comprehension

▲ neilv 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> Kohler Health’s homepage, the page for the Kohler Health App, and a support page all use the term “end-to-end encryption” to describe the protection the app provides for data. Many media outlets included the claim in their articles covering the launch of the product.

When companies first wanted to sell things over the Web, a concern I heard a lot was that consumers would be afraid of getting ripped off somehow. So companies started emphasizing prominently how the customer was protected with n bits of encryption. As if this solved the problem. It did not, but people were confused by confident buzzwords.

(I was reminded of this, because I actually saw a modern Web site touting that prominently just last week, like maybe they were working from a 30 year-old Dotcom Marketing for Dummies book, and it was still not very applicable to the concern.)

Some marketers lie, or don't care what the truth is. They want success, and bonuses, and promotions. And, really, a toilet company possibly getting class-action sued for a feces camera that behaves in an unexpected way, that attorneys would have to convince a judge was misrepresented, and then quantify the unclear harm, and finally settle, several years later, for lawyers' fees and a $10 off coupon for the latest model Voyeur Toilet 3000... isn't on the radar of the marketers.

▲ BrenBarn an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Let's think about why we're in a world where someone wants to sell you a camera to put in your toilet.

▲ RockRobotRock 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Kohler is a registered sex offender.

▲ jmonty900 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Kohler can "de-identify [the user’s] data for lawful purposes." I mean exactly how would that ever be justified? "Hey, we see a man-sized log in the bowl. There's only supposed to be women there. The perp must be in that house!!!"

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tbrownaw 5 hours ago | parent | next [-]

That is very strangely worded, to a degree they I wonder if maybe the wordsmithing was outsourced to either an ai or someone who didn't do English very well. Or if it's meant to be confusing.

But the linked privacy policy talks about making anonymous (aka de-identified) bulk data sets and using them for "lawful business purposes" (aka anything they want that's not illegal).

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duskdozer 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

IP address, device identifier, mother's maiden name, SSN, etc etc

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venturecruelty 5 hours ago | parent [-]

You mean the I-Pee address? Sorry, y'all, I gotta get it out in this thread, it's too easy.

	▲	duskdozer an hour ago \| parent [-]
		oof, how did I miss that?

▲ joezydeco 8 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

How does one "train" an AI with a flood of random toilet pictures and no corresponding medical data to match it with?

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imglorp 8 hours ago | parent | next [-]

"potty training". Sorry.

Anyway a chemical or biological sensor in the bowl might be more useful.

Optical could be useful if it's doing spectrographic analysis: the color of poo and urine is sometimes informative.

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venturecruelty 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

You pay someone in a developing nation $1.00 per day to look at thousands of photos of shit. Like, how do people think Facebook moderation and semantic labeling happen? Cheap labor in places with no labor laws. It was ever thus.

	▲	xp84 40 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		Appropriate username. And oh dear, that’s all too realistic. Imagine responding to the job posting and finding out these are the images you’ll be classifying.

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hackernudes 8 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

They probably do clinical trials (or at least something like that) where they get baseline data from participants through other means.

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joezydeco 8 hours ago | parent [-]

I'm talking about sold units in the field.

	▲	themafia 5 hours ago \| parent [-]
		The same thing we always do. Pay some citizens of an African nation a pitiful wage to just make up annotations. Then you can incorporate this into a "health care product" and charge insurance companies insane rates on personal toilet cameras.

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captainkrtek 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I think the obvious things are:

- Deviation in consistency/texture/color/etc.

- Obvious signs related to the above (eg: diarrhea, dehydration, blood in stool).

Ultimately though, you can get the same results by just looking down yourself and being curious if things look off...

tldr: this feels like literal internet-of-shit IoT stuff.

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g-b-r 7 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

They probably do match it, with data collected from other sources

▲ rglover 8 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Even (especially?) for its stated purpose, this is cursed technology.

▲ cowsandmilk 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

?? I got very confused from the start of this article because it is clear that Kohler is one end of the communication from how the product is described and marketed. They’re just stating the data is encrypted between the device and them.

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amingilani 7 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> it is clear that Kohler is one end of the communication

That’s not end-to-end encryption. By that logic HN, and any other website over HTTPS is E2E encrypted.

	▲	richbell 7 hours ago \| parent [-]
		That is what "end-to-end encryption" has come to mean in marketing. In the same way that every single product is "natural."

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g-b-r 7 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

No, they're just trying to mislead their clients

▲ handfuloflight 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I'm so sorry for the people who work on this and have to look at the data.

	▲	tasty_freeze 6 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		The old adage is "garbage in, garbage out". s/garbage/feces/g This sounds like the marketing department came up with this "market opportunity" and then some poor team at Kohler was asked to make it real. No doubt there is health data to be had in waste products (it was used extensively during covid to figure out community-wide infection rates) but that used physical samples that were then analyzed. Trying to figure out if someone has a UTI, or pathogenic poop from a webcam image ... it is hopeless.
	▲	adamwong246 6 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		some poor soul has to do train this AI. Imagine your job is categorizing pictures of poop

▲ woeirua 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

What. Who is buying a $600 camera to take pictures of your stool?

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mingus88 6 hours ago | parent | next [-]

People who have clinical gut issues need to track this kind of thing

And people who are being treated for gut issues can pay for their $600 medical toilet with HSA or insurance

Honestly, that this camera toilet exists is not a WTF for me. If my doctor needs to track changes to my stool, I certainly don’t want to have to hover over the bowl with my phone out. Please, just have the toilet take the picture.

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kstrauser 5 hours ago | parent [-]

You know, obvious humor potential aside, that’s a great point. Fewer people would laugh about a pee analyzer: “Oh, it can tell if you’re dehydrated, or in ketosis, or whatever? Makes sense!” I can imagine how this could gather similar types of information.

And yes, if my doctor wanted me to collect that info, I’d vastly rather buy a smart toilet and let it do the dirty work. That is, assuming it was actually secure.

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mingus88 5 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Yeah I hate to kill the party but if you can’t imagine a need for this product, consider yourself blessed. GI issues are not pleasant.

An ADA toilet at Home Depot is $300 so even the price isn’t that outrageous, honestly. It’s a unique niche product so it’s gonna be a little bit pricey.

I don’t know, it just feels a bit gauche to make jokes about a medical device. Nobody’s buying this unless they need it, and if they need it then best of luck to them.

	▲	venturecruelty 5 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		Which GI issues are currently only medically manageable with a camera in your toilet bowl, and how were people managing them before?
	▲	themafia 5 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		It's the idea of buying it that's nonsensical. I'm not sure how you could realistically use this thing long term. Someone has to sort through the data, spot trends, and offer competent advice. Presumably once you have your diet under control then there is no further need of this bowl level analysis. If you continue to have GI issues anyways, perhaps due to genetic causes, then what is constant surveillance of the situation -- at $7,200/year -- going to improve?

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venturecruelty 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Assuming you're appropriately sighted, you don't need a $600 toilet cam to tell you if you're dehydrated.

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defrost 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Not the people spending $12.1m on a gold toilet that's for sure.

You wouldn't want that cheap tat miring up the clean lines of your throne.

* https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cjd07dprln9o

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dgrin91 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Don't forget the subscription fee

▲ Duanemclemore 8 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

So they made Google TISP?

https://archive.google/tisp/index.html

	▲	jchw 8 hours ago \| parent [-]
		To me it reminds me of Smart Pipe. https://youtube.com/watch?v=DJklHwoYgBQ

▲ petterroea 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

It would be naive to assume they couldn't access the data from a technical perspective. I think anyone in here would think so. The problem is regular customers who aren't technical and don't have much choice but to trust claims by the seller - these are the real victims here.

▲ est 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I feel End-to-end is over marketed. Yes it protects your data from transmission pipes, but data on both your "ends" can be easily controlled and duplicated. Your picture on your device can be accessed by 3rd party, so does your data on the server.

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g-b-r 7 hours ago | parent [-]

End-to-end encryption is not a term used for communication between clients and servers, although I saw several marketers trying to do it.

For normal people E2EE means privacy, and that's why some company tries to sneak the term in products where it makes no sense.

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est 7 hours ago | parent [-]

> For normal people E2EE means privacy

It's misunderstood.

In the begining it's used to describe chat apps, your chat message are delivered in a secure way.

But later some marketers try to use it as a "transport channel" for client-server interactions.

	▲	g-b-r 6 hours ago \| parent [-]
		> > For normal people E2EE means privacy > > It's misunderstood. Not in my experience, except by very few > But later some marketers try to use it as a "transport channel" for client-server interactions. Some, still few enough to not make the term confusing, for what I can tell

▲ gowld 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DJklHwoYgBQ

Smart Pipe | Infomercials | Adult Swim

Everything in our lives is connected to the internet, so why not our toilets? Take a tour of Smart Pipe, the hot new tech startup that turns your waste into valuable information and fun social connectivity.

[Smart Pipe Inc. is a registered sex offender.]

▲ levocardia 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Huh what could possibly go wrong here?

>https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/02/world/asia/south-korea-ca...

Oh...

▲ doctorzook 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Holy crap.

I remember a sign in our dorm bathroom that read, “toilet cam is for research purposes only”. It was a joke, but always got a nice reaction from new people in the building.

But they actually sell this?! And want to charge me for it!?

Holy crap!

	▲	Sanzig 7 hours ago \| parent [-]
		They want to charge you $600 for it, plus a $7/mo subscription.

▲ kstrauser 8 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Did they say which ends they meant?

▲ teekert an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

"Hey man, we didn't specify where the ends are."

▲ adamwong246 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

The theranos of toilets

▲ calebio 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

It was only a decade or so ago that "End-To-End Encryption" began to mean something other than "encrypted in transit".

E2EE now means something wildly different in the context of messaging applications and the like (since like 2014) so this is more of an outdated way of saying "no one is getting your poop pictures between your toilet and us".

It also feels like it would never make sense for this to be "E2EE encrypted" in the modern sense of the term as the "end user recipient" of the message is the service provider (Kohler) itself. "Encrypted in Transit" and "Encrypted at Rest" is about as good as you're going to get here IMO as the service provider is going to have to have access to the keys, so E2EE in a product like this is kind of impossible if you're not doing the processing on the device.

I wonder if they encrypt it and then send it over TLS or if they're just relying on TLS as the client->server encryption. Restated, I wonder how deep in their stack the encrypted blob goes before it's decrypted.

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g-b-r 6 hours ago | parent [-]

> It was only a decade or so ago that "End-To-End Encryption" began to mean something other than "encrypted in transit".

No, before that it was simply not a term, except in some obscure radio protocol (and even there someone competent in cryptography would probably not have chosen that term)

> E2EE now means something wildly different in the context of messaging applications and the like (since like 2014) so this is more of an outdated way of saying "no one is getting your poop pictures between your toilet and us".

The outdated way was saying "Military-grade 128-bit encryption", no one really used the E2EE term before it got the current meaning

> I wonder if they encrypt it and then send it over TLS or if they're just relying on TLS as the client->server encryption. Restated, I wonder how deep in their stack the encrypted blob goes before it's decrypted.

Some homemade encryption added on top of TLS is very unlikely to increase the security of the system

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calebio 4 hours ago | parent [-]

> No, before that it was simply not a term, except in some obscure radio protocol

> no one really used the E2EE term before it got the current meaning

It most certainly was a term and no it wasn't simply limited to "some obscure radio protocol".

1994: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/363791

1984: https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/357401.357402

1978: https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/tr/pdf/ADA059221.pdf

> Some homemade encryption added on top of TLS is very unlikely to increase the security of the system

"Some homemade encryption" is not what I was suggesting at all. E.g. encrypted-at-the-source (client side) AWS files are still sent over TLS as an encrypted blob within an encrypted blob but remain encrypted past the TLS boundary.

	▲	g-b-r 10 minutes ago \| parent \| next [-]
		> "Some homemade encryption" is not what I was suggesting at all. E.g. encrypted-at-the-source (client side) AWS files are still sent over TLS as an encrypted blob within an encrypted blob but remain encrypted past the TLS boundary. They need to analyse the data; adding layers of encryption, thus, could only improve security if the keys for the inner encryptions are better protected than the server's TLS private key. Which would honestly, actually, likely to be the case, but it would probably be a modest improvement
	▲	g-b-r 19 minutes ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		The 1994 paper (freely available at https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc1341727/m2/...) is actually about proper E2EE. I addressed the other two at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46132220 . You did show that the term was already used, but in the current meaning

▲ beej71 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Features fully secure e2mitm2ee.

▲ davedx an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Does this count as enshittification?

▲ boxerab 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

"end to end" I see what you did there.

▲ comradesmith 8 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Holy fuck they actually built Smart Pipe[1]

1: https://youtu.be/DJklHwoYgBQ?si=bSRE2lOqwwm1Q_D9

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jack1243star 8 hours ago | parent | next [-]

I'm convinced whatever Torment Nexus we can think of will get built.

	▲	ChrisMarshallNY 7 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Rule 34(B)?

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anArbitraryOne 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Now's the time to get on board so that, when they launch the social network, you can be a top influencer just like Scout

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g-b-r 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

#itsmyanus

▲ lisbbb 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

What exactly is the toilet camera for? Are they taking pictures of your daily bowel movements?

▲ Mistletoe 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I honestly cannot believe this device exists. I'm living in the absolute weirdest timeline that I could have never imagined. Imagine being an engineer working on this particular ring of the torment nexus.

▲ m3kw9 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

No pictures were shown on the website.

▲ mystraline 8 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

So, end-to-end-encraption?

Oh wait, maybe this is what Cory Doctorow is referring to as enshittified?

I mean, these jokes make themselves, including whoever buys the hardware, AND buys the marketing pitch.

	▲	bombcar 7 hours ago \| parent [-]
		It would be end-to-end only if it was pee-to-pee.

▲ SoftTalker 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Enshittification has gone too far.

▲ crmd 8 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I’m sorry the shit had hit the fan at Kohler, but there’s no reason a cloud poop camera even exists.

▲ patjensen 8 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Hi, who just joined?

▲ geraldalewis 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Apotheosis of enshitification.

▲ jimt1234 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Years ago, a friend and I were kicking around startup ideas. We weren't coming up with anything good, so we flipped it and decided to come up with the worst/dumbest idea possible. We landed on a social media site dedicated to poop (this was back when social media sites were all the rage). People could upload pictures of their poop, discuss poop, share "best poop" stories, and so on. We never actually built anything, realizing it was just a joke, a total waste of time. ... Fast forward to 2025: For $600-plus-monthly-subscription, we'll take pictures of your poop!

BTW, someone please tell me that there is/was a social media site dedicated to poop, and the founder got rich from it. I need that today.

	▲	venturecruelty 5 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		Look on the bright side: you can tell people you were simply ahead of your time!
	▲	lisbbb 5 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		I believe it is called "reddit"

▲ jamesgill 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Enshittification.

▲ nurettin 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> collects images and data from inside, promising to track and provide insights on gut health, hydration, and more

cough bullshit.

▲ iwontberude 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

What I want to know is who is taking pictures of their poop like this? There has to be a better way.

▲ bvan 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

AI enshitification. Literally.