So, what about Siri and Cortana?
Same deal right? Always-on microphone constantly polling an audio signal?
Why You Should Never Buy an Amazon Echo or Even Get Near One
31–40 of 41 posts
Re: Why You Should Never Buy an Amazon Echo or Even Get Near One
#32Earlier quoted context omitted.
Strong encryption is a thing. EDIT: Another thing that just came to my mind. Even when you analyze network traffic and observe that traffic only occurs during your queries (i.e. in the seconds after the hotword is uttered), that doesn't mean that the Echo won't use the opportunity to send some previously-recorded audio to the server together with the current recording. In the same way that clever hackers disguise the…
Yes but we could could look at the amount of of data transmitted in total. Audio compression is well understood, and can infer within an range of usable quality, if any excess voice or other data is sent over the network.
So what you're saying is, if a company like Amazon or Google has the excess bandwidth, it is beneficial for them to send way too much data in the first place in order to disguise what data is actually being sent.
Now, there is some security basis
http://www.cs.unc.edu/~fabian/papers/tissec2010.pdf
>Uncovering Spoken Phrases in Encrypted Voice over IP Conversations
Re: Why You Should Never Buy an Amazon Echo or Even Get Near One
#33There's a lot of conjecture in this article. While I'm sure most voice assistant makers would love to be able to tag multiple voices simultaneously in realtime and perhaps even in the background, it's simply not there in today's technology.† The Alexa works in a crowded environment because it has directional microphones and facing the Alexa makes a big difference. The Google Home assistant does differentiate requests…
I have learned to never rely on something being, "technically not possible" that is only a side effect.
Re: Why You Should Never Buy an Amazon Echo or Even Get Near One
#34Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes but we could could look at the amount of of data transmitted in total. Audio compression is well understood, and can infer within an range of usable quality, if any excess voice or other data is sent over the network.
Assuming its sending it as audio, and not as transcribed text which is both smaller and also much more compressible.
Modern voice codecs are extremely compact. An annotated text representation of voice will take up equivalent space.
Re: Why You Should Never Buy an Amazon Echo or Even Get Near One
#35Earlier quoted context omitted.
Assuming its sending it as audio, and not as transcribed text which is both smaller and also much more compressible.
ASR is a hugely complex process that is handled by ML algorithms on Amazon's servers. The echo simply does not have the hardware to handle this on it's own.
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Re: Why You Should Never Buy an Amazon Echo or Even Get Near One
#36There's a lot of conjecture in this article. While I'm sure most voice assistant makers would love to be able to tag multiple voices simultaneously in realtime and perhaps even in the background, it's simply not there in today's technology.† The Alexa works in a crowded environment because it has directional microphones and facing the Alexa makes a big difference. The Google Home assistant does differentiate requests…
I have learned to never rely on something being, "technically not possible" that is only a side effect.
My point is not about whether or not it's possible because just about anything can be done eventually. It's simply a case of what is more likely:
1) Bleeding edge algorithms that can not only separate multiple speakers in parallel on a small device, but also transcode them and track their identities over periods of time and report back.
2) Alexa does exactly what it says on the bin because Amazon already extrapolated everything they need to know about you (including whether you have a teenage daughter who is pregnant[1]) from your last 3 text searches.
Also see this relevant comic: https://xkcd.com/538/
Now I may sound defeatist but this is not my intention. Like I said you should stay vigilant, but this article is barking up the wrong tree and may in fact distract from the real dangers in mass surveillance and tracking. Those dangers are far more primitive, yet effective, than you might think.
--
[1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2012/02/16/how-targ...
Re: Why You Should Never Buy an Amazon Echo or Even Get Near One
#37Earlier quoted context omitted.
I have learned to never rely on something being, "technically not possible" that is only a side effect.
My point is not about whether or not it's possible because just about anything can be done eventually. It's simply a case of what is more likely: 1) Bleeding edge algorithms that can not only separate multiple speakers in parallel on a small device, but also transcode them and track their identities over periods of time and report back. 2) Alexa does exactly what it says on the bin because Amazon already extrapolated…
Awesome, thanks for the clarification. We tots agree.
This article could be correct in 1 or 2 revs of all these devices. Which makes sense in our superscalar universe.
Re: Why You Should Never Buy an Amazon Echo or Even Get Near One
#38Surely it's possible to sniff what's being sent back to Amazon's servers? If Amazon are lying and they are storing/analysing everything the Echo hears, surely this would be easy to prove?
Strong encryption is a thing. EDIT: Another thing that just came to my mind. Even when you analyze network traffic and observe that traffic only occurs during your queries (i.e. in the seconds after the hotword is uttered), that doesn't mean that the Echo won't use the opportunity to send some previously-recorded audio to the server together with the current recording. In the same way that clever hackers disguise the…
You own the client. You can break any crypto it is doing.
Re: Why You Should Never Buy an Amazon Echo or Even Get Near One
#39Earlier quoted context omitted.
Assuming its sending it as audio, and not as transcribed text which is both smaller and also much more compressible.
ASR is a hugely complex process that is handled by ML algorithms on Amazon's servers. The echo simply does not have the hardware to handle this on it's own.
Is it though? Not trying to be argumentative but I remember using dragon naturally speaking to do voice dictation way back in like 98 on a processor that makes today's average smartphone look like a supercomputer. I thought all the ML stuff was for figuring out context and the like, but straight transcription?
Re: Why You Should Never Buy an Amazon Echo or Even Get Near One
#40Did anyone of you walk out of a party or other social gathering because you did not want to be recorded by an Echo (or similar)? I'm quite sure that I would, but I haven't come across one of these yet. (Or, at least, I wasn't aware of it...)
Walking out on Google glass "spies" is a real thing. Echo, Alexa, Siri not yet I assume.