NSA Once Banned Furbies Over Unfounded Spying Concerns
-
The NSA banned Furbies from their premises in 1999 out of concern they could be spying devices with advanced AI capabilities.
-
FOIA documents reveal the Furby ban was primarily precautionary since NSA didn't analyze Furby internals.
-
Furbies contained basic electronics like a microcontroller and speech synth chip, not advanced AI.
-
Their "learning" used preset vocabulary to replace gibberish with English over time.
-
The FAA also made people turn off Furbies, treating them like other electronic devices.