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Hey, Alexa, What Can You Hear? And What Will You Do With It?

nytimes.com

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Re: Hey, Alexa, What Can You Hear? And What Will You Do With It?

#61

Post by criddell »

SlowRobotAhead wrote: post #38
fortythirteen wrote: post #26

The things people are willing to give up for the most minimal of conveniences are only going to get worse in the next decade. I wouldn't be willing to put an open wiretap in my home, even if it did something amazing, like extend my lifespan. The quality of my life is not significantly improved with these devices, and all of their practical uses can be duplicated with the minimal effort of tapping a screen a couple of…

I'm seriously shocked by the number of people that are putting always on "assistants" in their home - but more so on the number of people that should know better, like HN people.

What's shocking about it? For just the Echo, Amazon claims to have sold 20 million devices so they are probably in at least 10 million homes. How many of the people that buy an Echo have been harmed so far?

I have an Echo and use it daily for music, weather, timers, home automation (ie controlling lights and fans), etc...

I also drive a car almost every day and that has a relatively high probability of killing me. Compared to that, having an Echo in my house seems somewhat harmless.

Re: Hey, Alexa, What Can You Hear? And What Will You Do With It?

#62

Post by bluGill »

crankylinuxuser wrote: post #39
bluGill wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In addition to snips, there is also mycroft.ai. Both are still in the early stages, and work slightly differently. Check them both out.

There's also Sirius by University of Michigan. Its also completely open source, and can do text, voice, and picture search.

one more I wasn't aware of. We will see which gets anywhere.

Re: Hey, Alexa, What Can You Hear? And What Will You Do With It?

#63

Post by woolvalley »

fortythirteen wrote: post #56
whoisjuan wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not true. Those devices are designed on the same ethical grounds you claimed for the phone case. They're only supposed to listen after you invoke them. Regardless if this is true or not, a phone is millions of times more dangerous for privacy if it's being used to record you and track you.

> They're only supposed to listen after you invoke them. How can a device that is only activated by listening not always be listening? If I turn off Siri on my phone the microphone is supposed to go off . Edit: I know about the wake word. It was a statement on the quote that a device that only works on voice wouldn't be "listening".

Remote activation of the microphone, wake word or not.

https://www.cnet.com/news/fbi-taps-cell-phone-mic-as-eavesdr...

I don't know how easy it is with today's smartphones, but it was definitely a thing in the dumbphone era.

Similar issues with your laptop or these smart speaker devices.

Re: Hey, Alexa, What Can You Hear? And What Will You Do With It?

#64

Post by philipodonnell »

pdkl95 wrote: post #8
rb808 wrote: post #4

With a court order can authorities turn on the microphone and just listen to everything? Seems easy to do but I haven't heard about it yet. I guess phones can do the same. Presumably the Russians and Chinese do this already. :)

A warrant is required only as long as "voice assistant" technology "is not in general public use"[1]. Kyllo v United States created a bright-line[3] test that removes the warrant requirement to see "details of a private home that would previously have been unknowable without physical intrusion"[2] when use of the technology is normalized. Note that this removes the warrant requirement in general , even if you persona…

> The test is if the public expects audio in the home might be recorded and sent to a 3rd party. If the answer is "yes", then the police can use their own hardware to do the recording.

Honest question, are you an attorney or can one comment? I am not, but I don't read this opinion the same way.

The case referenced concerns using thermal imaging from outside a home to look inside it, which I guess makes sense then that if thermal imaging was super common maybe they would argue that its not a big deal to point one at a house by a cop, but thermal imaging is not common so it was ruled an unconstitutional search.

But you seem to have taken that as the police being able to enter a residence and install a transmitting microphone just because most people have transmitting microphones inside the house. There's a huge difference in a search that requires entering a home and one that does not.

SCOTUS actually seems pretty explicitly concerned in the text about technology eroding the expectation of privacy by the progressing deeper into a private residence without having to enter it, so that again implies this case was about technology being used to search a home without entering it.

Re: Hey, Alexa, What Can You Hear? And What Will You Do With It?

#65

Post by StanislavPetrov »

cptskippy wrote: post #44
fortythirteen wrote: post #26

The things people are willing to give up for the most minimal of conveniences are only going to get worse in the next decade. I wouldn't be willing to put an open wiretap in my home, even if it did something amazing, like extend my lifespan. The quality of my life is not significantly improved with these devices, and all of their practical uses can be duplicated with the minimal effort of tapping a screen a couple of…

> I wouldn't be willing to put an open wiretap in my home... all of their practical uses can be duplicated with the minimal effort of tapping a screen a couple of times. I've never understood this argument. Why is the portable wiretap in your pocket inherently safer?

>Why is the portable wiretap in your pocket inherently safer?

Who says it is? Its astounding to me that people willingly carry around portable (wi-fi enabled!) wiretaps.

Re: Hey, Alexa, What Can You Hear? And What Will You Do With It?

#66

Post by kop316 »

cptskippy wrote: post #44
fortythirteen wrote: post #26

The things people are willing to give up for the most minimal of conveniences are only going to get worse in the next decade. I wouldn't be willing to put an open wiretap in my home, even if it did something amazing, like extend my lifespan. The quality of my life is not significantly improved with these devices, and all of their practical uses can be duplicated with the minimal effort of tapping a screen a couple of…

> I wouldn't be willing to put an open wiretap in my home... all of their practical uses can be duplicated with the minimal effort of tapping a screen a couple of times. I've never understood this argument. Why is the portable wiretap in your pocket inherently safer?

Not the Parent commenter, but I can give some thoughts:

- The phone is not designed to listen around the room explicitly, more near field, so it can't hear everything.

- An iPhone seems to have pretty decent privacy settings (only the app can listen while app is open, etc)

- I personally have a phone I can reflash with mostly open source software (only baseband/fivers proprietary), so I am reasonably sure that my phone is not spying on me.

Re: Hey, Alexa, What Can You Hear? And What Will You Do With It?

#67

Post by StanislavPetrov »

fortythirteen wrote: post #51
cptskippy wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I wouldn't be willing to put an open wiretap in my home... all of their practical uses can be duplicated with the minimal effort of tapping a screen a couple of times. I've never understood this argument. Why is the portable wiretap in your pocket inherently safer?

Not safer, but not there is a key difference. If I turn off voice assistant on my phone, ethically speaking , it shouldn't be recording my voice. Companies/governments doing so is an actual wire tap, and they should have a warrant. Putting these devices in your home is giving Amazon/Google/Apple permission to record your every conversation.

You're living in a fantasy world if you think that fiddling with the settings deters, in the slightest, any corporation or government from using your portable-wiretapping device to listen to you and track everything else its technically capable of tracking (with its gyroscope and internal measurement devices of all kinds).

Re: Hey, Alexa, What Can You Hear? And What Will You Do With It?

#68

Post by sqdbps »

Companies use patents defensively and the Times is fully aware of that so this comes across as cynical clickbait.

What I find interesting is that they keep quoting "consumer watchdog" an anti google organization turned anti technology (they're against self driving cars and robots now).

The scary thing is that mainstream respected news outlets casually traffic in technophobia as evident form articles about automation and AI for example and how every piece mentioning a tech company is permeated with FUD about their motivations or their "power".

Re: Hey, Alexa, What Can You Hear? And What Will You Do With It?

#69

Post by Programmatic »

pdkl95 wrote: post #8
rb808 wrote: post #4

With a court order can authorities turn on the microphone and just listen to everything? Seems easy to do but I haven't heard about it yet. I guess phones can do the same. Presumably the Russians and Chinese do this already. :)

A warrant is required only as long as "voice assistant" technology "is not in general public use"[1]. Kyllo v United States created a bright-line[3] test that removes the warrant requirement to see "details of a private home that would previously have been unknowable without physical intrusion"[2] when use of the technology is normalized. Note that this removes the warrant requirement in general , even if you persona…

Glancing at the supreme court case, I'm not sure that observations that police officers can do from a public place have a good application to this area.

I think the public expectation part was specifically whether thermal imaging was too invasive and not an observation that the general public would make from the street.

Re: Hey, Alexa, What Can You Hear? And What Will You Do With It?

#70

Post by StanislavPetrov »

criddell wrote: post #61
SlowRobotAhead wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm seriously shocked by the number of people that are putting always on "assistants" in their home - but more so on the number of people that should know better, like HN people.

What's shocking about it? For just the Echo, Amazon claims to have sold 20 million devices so they are probably in at least 10 million homes. How many of the people that buy an Echo have been harmed so far? I have an Echo and use it daily for music, weather, timers, home automation (ie controlling lights and fans), etc... I also drive a car almost every day and that has a relatively high probability of killing me. Co…

>How many of the people that buy an Echo have been harmed so far?

That entirely depends on your definition of "harm". Those of us who see intrinsic value in privacy would be grievously harmed.

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