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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

#581

Post by kerng »

BonesJustice wrote: post #235
amzn_engineer1 wrote: post #66

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…

What is this alleged 'conspiracy' story? An Amazon device recorded a private conversation and transmitted it to someone else, and it did so without the user's knowledge or intent. That actually happened. How it happened is only relevant to the engineers who build and maintain the thing. I, on the other hand, could not care less how it happened, and the fact that it did happen is reason enough never to buy one of thos…

Yes. The fact that the capability exists is the issue. We need system design that mitigates these core privacy violations.

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

#582

Post by kerng »

merinowool wrote: post #206
amzn_engineer1 wrote: post #66

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…

> 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. And then builds exactly that...

Thought the same thing. They actually built exactly that!

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

#585

Post by bisby »

RyanShook wrote: post #576
gnicholas wrote: post #536

Amazon's response, from Ars' article: > Echo woke up due to a word in background conversation sounding like "Alexa." Then, the subsequent conversation was heard as a "send message" request. At which point, Alexa said out loud "To whom?" At which point, the background conversation was interpreted as a name in the customers contact list. Alexa then asked out loud, "[contact name], right?" Alexa then interpreted backgro…

Seems like a pretty big stretch...

I mean, if this was a one in a million chance of happening, and there have been billions of conversations happening near devices like these, I'm surprised this hasn't happened more often.

If you have an echo and it kicks on unexpectedly, you can go to the app to see what it thought you said, along with a recording of you saying it.

I've had "alright, uhh..." trigger it. and on the grainy bad across the room recording, I could see how the computer thought it was "Alexa". So I could see how if the computer is purposefully listening for "right" or "yes" that it could mistake any number of other words for that.

I would much prefer an open source + open hardware alternative that works reliably, but I received an Echo dot as a gift, so after a few months of debating, I plugged it in.

Having an always listening internet connected device that has access to your contact list is a pretty big stretch. But somehow we go along with that just fine.

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

#586

Post by scottmf »

freeflight wrote: post #548
scottmf wrote: post #533

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why?

Because it supposedly puts people on some kind of watch list? Tho pranking with stuff like that ain't exactly the coolest thing to do: "Haha I framed you for terrorism, gotcha!"

Yeah it’s incredibly irresponsible and not really funny at all.

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

#587

Post by ehavener »

bschwindHN wrote: post #566
pocketstar wrote: post #551

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

FLIR for turning off a light in a room seems like a ridiculous amount of overkill. I don't know numbers off the top of my head but I feel like at that point you're using more energy for FLIR than the light itself. Not to mention the cost of a single FLIR sensor is probably pretty high.

I think clever placement of traditional IR sensors is the answer here.

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

#588

Post by andreyk »

The explanation for this is fairly unremarkable (https://techcrunch.com/2018/05/24/family-claims-their-echo-s...):

Echo woke up due to a word in background conversation sounding like “Alexa.” Then, the subsequent conversation was heard as a “send message” request. At which point, Alexa said out loud “To whom?” At which point, the background conversation was interpreted as a name in the customers contact list. Alexa then asked out loud, “[contact name], right?” Alexa then interpreted background conversation as “right”. As unlikely as this string of events is, we are evaluating options to make this case even less likely.

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

#589

Post by jwalton »

edwhitesell wrote: post #337
tj-teej wrote: post #317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you replace "fuzzy human speech-command detection" with "buttons which can accidentally be pressed" - how is this different from butt-dialing?

Most phone now have some kind of lock screen, which makes it pretty difficult to get to the butt dialing stage. Will speech command recognition get to that stage? The main reason I won't have any of those products in my house is because of that. I'd much rather have a confirmation of some kind before the system takes action. "...random talking..." Assistant "I am recording" Me: "Stop recording"

I will have one of these in my house when it doesn't send recordings of me to the Internet in the first place. It can do the voice recognition locally. I'm actually really interested in having one of these in my home, I'm also actually really not interested in it being cloud based at all.

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

#590

Post by oehpr »

AnaniasAnanas wrote: post #565
harryh wrote: post #525

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

> What are you giving your mom? A Mac running OSX or a PC running Linux? I gave my 60 year old mother my old PC running Debian with dwm as its WM. She likes it. > The idea that if these devices ran free software they would be more humane than the proprietary software they currently run is ridiculous. Is it though? I am pretty sure that Amazon already gathers free data from its users, such a thing would not exist in a…

that... is an ironic example.

To be fair, the community came down on Ubuntu like a ton of bricks for the whole... Amazon search thing.

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