Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Amazon device recorded private conversation, sent it out to random contact

kiro7.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 734 posts

Re: Amazon device recorded private conversation, sent it out to random contact

#61

Post by simion314 »

mcny wrote: post #36
softwarefounder wrote: post #14

Pays Amazon for a listening device and installs in home...gets upset when it listens.

I don't know about her but I would be upset not because Amazon recorded private conversation but because they sent it to some random contact on my contact list. I don't want to bother my contacts with my inane ramblings in the privacy of my room.

I would think what if that was not the only time this happened, what if something else was sent to someone else but that person did not did nothing about it, what if the data was sent to some server and logged, what if all it hears is transcoded to text and stored on some dev box logs now.

Re: Amazon device recorded private conversation, sent it out to random contact

#62

Post by dcbadacd »

DiabloD3 wrote: post #45

So when will such devices just be made illegal entirely? It doesn't seem they can be made to be safe for average people if stuff like this keeps happening and companies are unwilling to compensate people. What if this was a lawyer talking about clients or a doctor talking about patients? Is Amazon (or Google, or Microsoft) willing to deal with such legal liabilities? Is this what move fast and break things looks like…

I think this tech is just in it's infancy, calling it inherently dangerous or saying it should be banned is silly. I think it will be done properly some time in the future, it's most likely going to be similar to the Windows vs. Linux vs. MacOS battle.

Re: Amazon device recorded private conversation, sent it out to random contact

#63

Post by cortesoft »

joshstrange wrote: post #51
tambourine_man wrote: post #30

People are volunteerelly paying for their houses to be tapped for the convenience of being able to shout: play me some song. I’m so out of touch with this world it’s scary.

It's a little more than just that. Every light in my house is controlled with Alexa which is a very nice and hard to explain until you have tried it. Also my home theater system is all controllable via Alexa as well. This kind of thinking makes no sense to me. > People are voluntarily paying for their houses to be tapped for the convenience of being able to shout: play me some song. > I’m so out of touch with this wo…

I never thought that voice control would be that useful until I had my daughter... being able to turn on the white noise, turn off the tv, play her music, etc while having my hands full of toddler is very useful.

Re: Amazon device recorded private conversation, sent it out to random contact

#64

Post by solipsism »

virmundi wrote: post #48
tambourine_man wrote: post #30

People are volunteerelly paying for their houses to be tapped for the convenience of being able to shout: play me some song. I’m so out of touch with this world it’s scary.

I like the idea, but wonder if the same features are possible on a stand alone tool. For example, the device does the NLP there on the premise. It exposes a plugin API for apps. The app gets the text translation by registering a callback URI. Then it can do want ever it wants with that. Expose a streaming receiver api for music. Essential get rid of the middle man service. Is this possible of a Pi?

Of course it's possible.

Then all that's left to figure out is...

1. Make it work really well across a vast array of voices, accents, and background noise.

2. Make is easy to add new features to, in order to keep up with the competition.

3. Mass produce it at a price people will pay.

4. Have a viable business model.

Do these simple things and you'll be a very, very rich person.

Re: Amazon device recorded private conversation, sent it out to random contact

#65

Post by trumped »

tambourine_man wrote: post #30

People are volunteerelly paying for their houses to be tapped for the convenience of being able to shout: play me some song. I’m so out of touch with this world it’s scary.

This is one of the many things that should not be processed in the cloud...

Re: Amazon device recorded private conversation, sent it out to random contact

#66

Post by amzn_engineer1 »

What actually happened: Alexa misinterpreted some voice commands and activated a "call" skill. The people involved and local news got very excited and escalated this into a conspiracy story.

Amazon takes customer privacy EXTREMELY seriously. There's no way a team would get the "ok" to build a skill that randomly records private conversations then sends them to a random contact. It also doesn't make any logical sense to build such a skill.

Yes, I might sound biased because I am an engineer at Amazon. This statement is my own and unrelated to Amazon's opinion.

Re: Amazon device recorded private conversation, sent it out to random contact

#67

Post by wooter »

DiabloD3 wrote: post #45

So when will such devices just be made illegal entirely? It doesn't seem they can be made to be safe for average people if stuff like this keeps happening and companies are unwilling to compensate people. What if this was a lawyer talking about clients or a doctor talking about patients? Is Amazon (or Google, or Microsoft) willing to deal with such legal liabilities? Is this what move fast and break things looks like…

illegal? what a joke. if you don't want to take that risk, don't buy one.

Re: Amazon device recorded private conversation, sent it out to random contact

#68

Post by imglorp »

Someone1234 wrote: post #20
simion314 wrote: post #12

This devices should by law always have a big LED on when recording, you would have the option to set it's brightness though. Also why could it send data out without any confirmation from the user.

What does "recording" mean in this context? The way these devices work is they're always "recording" in a loop on a secondary processor looking for the wake word. If we take this request literally the LED would never be off.

I'm skeptical of the "wake word" idea now.

As nerds, it makes sense to us to do local wake recognition and only upload a request phrase after that. But in reality, this not the first time[1] we've learned that continuous speech was getting uploaded.

Charitably, it could be a mistake, maybe the previous request never terminated and it just kept streaming. But again, not the first time.

More likely, my opinion, is there's a mountain of cash on the table in the form of private conversation, and AMZ would be foolish to walk away from it. After you talk about "hardwood floors" in your house, you could expect targeted ads, consumer profiling, variable pricing, and third party sales. Why woudln't they do this? Why else are they pushing home devices so hard? They're front and center on the front AMZ page every time you visit, aren't they? Oh and GOOG too, they just haven't been caught yet.

1. https://www.wired.com/2017/02/murder-case-tests-alexas-devot...

Re: Amazon device recorded private conversation, sent it out to random contact

#69

Post by hnaccy »

joshstrange wrote: post #51
tambourine_man wrote: post #30

People are volunteerelly paying for their houses to be tapped for the convenience of being able to shout: play me some song. I’m so out of touch with this world it’s scary.

It's a little more than just that. Every light in my house is controlled with Alexa which is a very nice and hard to explain until you have tried it. Also my home theater system is all controllable via Alexa as well. This kind of thinking makes no sense to me. > People are voluntarily paying for their houses to be tapped for the convenience of being able to shout: play me some song. > I’m so out of touch with this wo…

Not having to use light switches or a remote does not seem comparable to mobile internet connectivity.

Re: Amazon device recorded private conversation, sent it out to random contact

#70

Post by hutzlibu »

tambourine_man wrote: post #30

People are volunteerelly paying for their houses to be tapped for the convenience of being able to shout: play me some song. I’m so out of touch with this world it’s scary.

Controlling your devices with voice is nice and I can totally understand people wanting it .. it is just that you don't have real control over it.

And about tapped .. well, I don't consider any conversation as private, when there is a Smartphone around.

Post reply on HN