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

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

#151

Post by spraak »

imglorp wrote: post #68
Someone1234 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ther…

What's with using the tickers over just typing Google or Amazon?

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

#152

Post by tambourine_man »

vorpalhex wrote: post #119
hnaccy wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

If I'm home and don't have my phone (or have my hands full, or it's dark, or whatever) I can easily turn lights on or off and without fumbling around for switches or trying to juggle a cat or a child. I can also control my tv, thermostat, get a news briefing, check my calendar and set reminders. Yes, it's ultimately a convenience, but so is indoor plumbing and store bought bread.

>Yes, it's ultimately a convenience, but so is indoor plumbing and store bought bread.

I’m sorry, clean water and food are not conviniences. They are among the most basics of human needs. That’s the kind of thing that scares me. That someone would make such a comparison with a straight face.

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

#154

Post by cortesoft »

DoofusOfDeath wrote: post #115
cortesoft wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As developers, we use 'programmed' in that manner all the time, to mean what we were trying to get it to do rather than what it actually does.

I don't. And in this particular scenario, it's an important distinction to make because there's a risk of Amazon using equivocation to deflect responsibility.

If this was intentional, then yes they shouldn't be able to deflect responsibility. However, if it was just a bug, I think it is a bit unfair to vilify either the company or the developers. Bugs happen, and hopefully they can learn what caused this and prevent this class of bugs in the future.

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

#155

Post by Amezarak »

ryanwaggoner wrote: post #136
Amezarak wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Because the computational requirements of good speech rec exceed what you would build into a $100 device, I have difficulty believing this. We had good speech recognition on <$1000 devices 10 years ago.

For unrestricted language, without training?

Yes to the former, pretty much for the latter - the "training" I recall was less than a minute long and consisted of repeating one or two example sentences, hardly anything that would be an adoption impediment to devices like an Echo. The resulting voice recognition worked, in my experience, better than that on modern Android phones.

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

#157

Post by _jal »

fastball wrote: post #40
_jal wrote: post #26

If you bug your own home and consent to third-party, opaque management of the surveillance, things like this will happen[1]. I expect worse to come. [1] Am not saying anyone deserves this, or that AZON is either evil or beneficent, or anything else other than precisely what was stated.

Amazon's ticker is AMZN.

Oops, no idea what my fingers were doing there.

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

#158

Post by ryanwaggoner »

Amezarak wrote: post #155
ryanwaggoner wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For unrestricted language, without training?

Yes to the former, pretty much for the latter - the "training" I recall was less than a minute long and consisted of repeating one or two example sentences, hardly anything that would be an adoption impediment to devices like an Echo. The resulting voice recognition worked, in my experience, better than that on modern Android phones.

I'm pretty skeptical of this. Apple has a pretty good commitment to privacy, one that is costing them on the AI front, and as far as I can tell they still upload Siri audio to the cloud for processing. If this was easy to do 10 years ago, I think Apple would at least offer as an option.

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

#159

Post by fouric »

mikeash wrote: post #116
tapatio wrote: post #74

People who use these "microphones" are idiots. They are right on up there with the people that give away their DNA to web companies.

I’m one of those “idiots.” Can you explain how it’s any worse than carrying a cell phone?

Android has per-app microphone permissions that you can disable, if you want. At least in theory, Google apps honor these permissions, and on LineageOS, you can verify that this is the case - while with the Alexa, not only is there no way to audit any of the code running on the device, but it's explicitly marketed as being always listening.

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

#160

Post by grkvlt »

DoofusOfDeath wrote: post #22
asn0 wrote: post #15

Summary of vague technical details (which may be all we hear about this): > an Alexa engineer investigated ... they said 'our engineers went through your logs, and they saw exactly what you told us, they saw exactly what you said happened, and we're sorry.' He apologized like 15 times in a matter of 30 minutes and he said we really appreciate you bringing this to our attention, this is something we need to fix!" > th…

> The device did not audibly advise that it was preparing to send the recording, something it’s programmed to do. Apparently it's not programmed to do that. Unless this was a hardware glitch or cosmic-ray event.

Or just a bug.
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