Former CIA Agent Warns Smart TVs Can Spy on You, Even When Turned Off
John Kiriakou, a former Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) agent, has warned that intelligence agencies are capable of turning smart TVs into hidden listening devices, even when they are seemingly turned off — a claim that aligns with confidential material published by WikiLeaks nearly ten years ago.
Kiriakou is a former CIA insider and no marginal figure. He served the agency between 1990 and 2004 and later became the first CIA agent to publicly admit to the use of waterboarding during an interview with ABC News in 2007, writes Niamh Harris .
A post about the CIA’s surveillance capabilities went viral on X on May 21 after the account @LeadingReport shared footage of the agency’s former head of counterterrorism, in which he stated that the CIA “has access to the microphones and cameras of your phone and laptop.” MSN reports: Kiriakou’s warnings are directly related to the ‘Vault 7’ leak, a treasure trove of more than 8,000 secret CIA documents that WikiLeaks began publishing on March 7, 2017. The documents, dating from 2013 to 2016, provided a detailed overview of the agency’s cyberwarfare toolkit and revealed a program codenamed ‘Weeping Angel’.
Weeping Angel, jointly developed by the CIA and the British MI5, was designed to attack Samsung F-series Smart TVs . The tool put the targeted devices into a ‘Fake-Off’ mode, making them appear to be off while the built-in microphone continued to record calls and transmit audio to a secret CIA server.
The Vault 7 files also revealed CIA tools for hacking Apple and Android smartphones, exploiting security vulnerabilities in major web browsers, and infiltrating Windows, macOS, and Linux operating systems.
They can take control of your car.
Kiriakou, who served as head of counter-terrorist operations in Pakistan, first set out these claims during an appearance on Steven Bartlett’s podcast ‘The Diary of a CEO’ in January 2026.
“They can take control of your smart TV and turn the speaker into a microphone so they can listen to what is being said in the room, even when the TV is turned off,” he said. “The device can still hear everything that is said in the room and send it back to the CIA.”
He also warned that the agency could remotely take control of a car’s computer system “to kill you,” describing possible scenarios of intentional accidents designed to look like accidents. The Vault 7 documents confirmed that the CIA had been exploring ways to hack vehicle control systems since October 2014, although no specific operational use was revealed.
Kiriakou added that these surveillance capabilities were not new. “When I was first hired, they could already do that; that is old technology,” he said, referring to his hiring in the late 1980s.
Not only the CIA
The former officer emphasized that the threat extends far beyond American intelligence agencies. “It is not just the NSA, the CIA, and the FBI you should be worried about,” he told Bartlett. “It is the British, the French, the Germans, the Canadians, the Australians, the New Zealanders, the Russians, the Chinese, the Israelis, the Iranians. Everyone possesses these capabilities.”