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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

#551

Post by pocketstar »

carbocation wrote: post #258
kinsomo wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I have this idea of a system I would like to have in my house. It contains cameras in every room that are constantly watching where people are and relaying the coordinates to a central server. That server makes decisions on if lights should be on or if A/C should be running in that room. But I would never buy this system. I would have to make it myself. I am hopeful that open source software and hardware can produc…

Might be cool to add thermal sensors to that, so the lights don't shut off because you're not moving enough.

commodity motion sensors are thermal sensors[0]. Perhaps a FLIR[1]?

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passive_infrared_sensor [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forward_looking_infrared

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

#552

Post by ahumm »

tfandango wrote: post #387
SilasX wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm just thankful that the response is more satisfying than the typical, "nope, couldn't have happened, can't reproduce".

I thought the response was pretty disturbing. They have logs of everything you say to Alexa? I guess I assumed the private conversations were not kept beyond some sort of metadata. No thanks.

That response could easily mean that they saw that there was an interaction where a message was recorded and sent without the device getting confirmation beforehand which matched what was reported to them, not necessarily that they kept the content of the conversation and could play it back. That's also a paraphrased conversation reported by a possibly non-technical person and likely passed through a customer service representative, so I'd take any technical details gleaned from it with a grain of salt.

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

#553

Post by jfoutz »

chalkandpaste wrote: post #530
komali2 wrote: post #529

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I remember switching to Android way back whenever the iPhone 3gs was "second-best" iPhone (was the 4 the next?), from the 3gs. The 3gs had perfectly functional "play my xyz playlist", "next song," "play songs by artist" functionality, and to this day I don't understand why it took so long for Google to implement it, and why the implementation is so shitty.

The issue is google doesn't care about they're users. As long as it's good enough to keep the data-gravy-train going.

Well, it’s probably not that bad. I think it’s more like google makes everything work ok, apple tries to really nail core functionality and let the rest slide.

Music interaction is a great example of the trade off.

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

#554

Post by namibj »

edwhitesell wrote: post #515
fmj wrote: post #505

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My friend does this fairly often. He'll finish a call, and turn off his screen, but he has a tendency to to hit the fingerprint scanner as he's putting it into his pocket due to the design of the case and the way he holds it.

Some Androids (like mine) won't lock for a few seconds after turning off the screen. It's a nice feature when you press to turn off the screen, and quickly realize you need to do something else. Just turn on the screen and it's still unlocked. Entering the pattern after it's locked is pretty much impossible though.

I can configure how long that delay should be. IIRC it's int he display/lockscreen menu. I don't like it tho, as I much prefer the device to be locked when I tell it to, so I won't have to care anymore. The fingerprint scanner on the back makes the unlocking trivial though.

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

#555

Post by drb91 »

harryh wrote: post #525
Digital-Citizen wrote: post #521

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed, "if you apply General Curtis Le May to a situation and you get havoc, well, that s what you called General LeMay in for" (to use an Eben Moglen quote out of the context in which he said it); if you host a device in your home running proprietary software you ought not be surprised that it is spying on you and the proprietors determine what to do with that data, not you. We must not forget another critical comp…

The idea that if these devices ran free software they would be more humane than the proprietary software they currently run is ridiculous. What are you giving your mom? A Mac running OSX or a PC running Linux?

So this is what poe’s law looks like.

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

#556

Post by bmans94 »

saas_sam wrote: post #496
bmans94 wrote: post #455

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course I do. But that's not my point. They wallpapered their house with Echos! And now they are 'shocked'. When I get home, my phone usually gets tossed on a charger in my room, and forgotten about (while checking for messages every once in a while). And my phones sole purpose, while capable of it, is not to listen to everything I say and interpret voice commands. I never use Siri, and I would be 'shocked' at this…

> I would be 'shocked' at this point if it sent out a message, that I didn't intend, without alerting me. Yep. So was couple. About Alexa. Same thing.

But I don't use that function on my phone. And it's not the main purpose of the device. And it's been around longer than Alexa. That's my point. Not the same thing.

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

#557

Post by tantalor »

yason wrote: post #297

I am oversimplifying here but: * install device that is designed to listen to speech in the house * the device is connected to internet * the device is capable of contacting other internet peers/services/hosts * the device knows a bit about its owner's internet presence such as contacts * the device is equipped with simple conversational user interface based on fuzzy human speech-command detection These basically bou…

They key feature you missed,

* devices can operate without user's knowledge

These types of devices are easy to accidentally trigger; it must be vastly obvious when that happens.

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

#558

Post by namibj »

edwhitesell wrote: post #369
modzu wrote: post #349

Earlier quoted context omitted.

some kind of acoustic biometrics would be helpful here (ie respond only to account holder, or disable some actions for others) along with better heuristic recognition of directives thats not foolproof but much better than what we have now, and i think we are pretty close

Agreed, but I think vocal biometrics is a significantly more difficult problem to solve when even the best speech recognition still has issues like this. Phonetics is hard. Especially with ambient noise, echo and such. I had a conversation with one of the speech engineers when I worked at a speech recognition company and the level of detailed problems to solve was impressive. Totally made sense after talking about it…

The vibration detection is commercially available, in the 3-digit $ range, but it's unfortunately hideous as it needs some mild force against the throat and thus requires a very high neckline or a scarf. The potential alternative, Subvocal recognition, suffers from the need to have nerve/muscle-sensing electrodes on/around the throat, which have poor long-term bio compatibility (think >10h/day, on average) and the alternative, implants, suffer from growing out if a wire sticks out, at least as far as I know. One might be able to implant special electrodes the skin would not reject, but I don't know of any suitable material. The obvious benefit is that you use your normal speaking logic, just stop at the point where you actually move your throat (afaik), and don't modulate with your mouth or lungs. It's silent for anyone around, so one could, theoretically, call someone while sitting inside a meeting, and hear both speakers, while being able to selectively talk to the other end of the phone line.

Both of these technologies work in nightclubs and fighter jets. I assume they are very high SNR, as far as ambient noise is concerned. The subvocal one might just be a phonetic/intonation input, which then requires voice synthesis if actual voice is the goal.

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

#559

Post by dpark »

squeaky-clean wrote: post #354
dpark wrote: post #344

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m aware. The microphone is always on in order for stage 1 to work.

It doesn't need to be based on the microphone, it can be based on that second processor. It can be based on network activity (my USB Wifi adapter blinks whenever data is sent/received, even though it's connected 24/7, I don't see why anything else couldn't do that). We're also discussing theoretical hardware changes, there's no reason it can't have 2 sets of microphones where one is hardwired only to the wake-word pr…

Your WiFi led is probably blinking pretty constantly, which would freak people out if they were told that blinking means active listening (as opposed to checking it updates or any of dozens of other things that might use the network). It’s probably also software controlled anyway.

The idea that there would somehow be a dedicated wake word microphone is a little ridiculous. Firstly, no one would trust this supposed 1-way connection. Second, it would require a dedicated processor to make the wake word even work, driving up costs. Third, the echo uses an array of microphones so your wake word would either be unreliable or drive costs up further as you duplicate the entire array. Hardly a net win.

The reality is that if you don’t trust amazon to do the right thing you shouldn’t install their listening device in your home. (Likewise for your phone.)

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

#560

Post by daveFNbuck »

econochoice wrote: post #394
daveFNbuck wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This assumes you don't leave your phone in the charger as you wander around your house.

It doesn't. There are methods that do not require a person to be carrying a WiFi-enabled device for location tracking.

Don't those require more equipment than just access points?
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