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Yes, Amazon Is Tracking People

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Re: Yes, Amazon Is Tracking People

#151

Post by ams6110 »

ma2rten wrote: post #131
CoolGuySteve wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Emo Phillips once made this joke: The other day a woman came up to me and said, "Didn't I see you on television?" I said, "I don't know. You can't see out the other way." Evidently Amazon has made that joke obsolete. Like Stallman, I'm so uncomfortable installing a listening device in my home like OK Google, Alexa, Siri, etc. It creeps me out on a visceral level unlike any other kind of snooping.

I don't understand why so many tech-literate people have an issue with that. As I am sure you know, those devices only record your voice and send it to the server when they hear their hotword. The hotword detection has to be done on the device itself for technical reasons (battery and data usage). Theoretically it's possible that the companies that build those devices lie and actually record you other times. But the…

It's not that I think Amazon et al are listening. It's that that could, or someone who seizes control in an "emergency" could, or someone with "legal authority" could order it.

Re: Yes, Amazon Is Tracking People

#152

Post by ams6110 »

pasta wrote: post #147
ma2rten wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand why so many tech-literate people have an issue with that. As I am sure you know, those devices only record your voice and send it to the server when they hear their hotword. The hotword detection has to be done on the device itself for technical reasons (battery and data usage). Theoretically it's possible that the companies that build those devices lie and actually record you other times. But the…

Because it can easily be misused. For example: Trump is one of those people that can change the US into something you would not imagine a year ago. It's very easy to say that this wont happen but I also thought Trump would never become a president...

Your first sentence was a good observation. Dragging the specific example of Trump in polarizes the comment. Trump has already been President for over a year and the country has by no stretch seen changes that I could "not imagine."

The biggest lasting impact a president can have is appointment of judges. Congress pretty much has to do the rest, and they even have to approve the judicial appointments.

Re: Yes, Amazon Is Tracking People

#153

Post by ams6110 »

wavefunction wrote: post #135
sedachv wrote: post #116

> When most people think of the tech giant Amazon, they think of an innovative, consumer-friendly company responsible for affordable deliveries. This is one of those instances where I say to myself, "I wish I had listened to Richard Stallman X years ago": https://stallman.org/amazon.html

I definitely don't think that silly simplistic take on Amazon. Jeff Bezos sounds like a psychopath from his public profiles. He has the right to run his firm as he sees fit of course but never have I considered Amazon to be 'benign.'

Most CEOs are somewhere above average on the psychopath/sociopath spectrum.

Re: Yes, Amazon Is Tracking People

#154

Post by touristtam »

justboxing wrote: post #2

> Amazon’s facial recognition service, Rekognition, is designed to identify and track people going about their daily business. This isn’t hyperbole - a Rekognition spokesperson explicitly mentioned real-time tracking and identification at an Amazon Web Services summit earlier this year. The same spokesperson went on to call Orlando a “smart city,” with cameras everywhere that allow authorities to track persons of int…

Funny how there is a debate in France about the exact same topic: https://www.lemonde.fr/pixels/article/2018/03/22/la-cnil-def... (FR)

Re: Yes, Amazon Is Tracking People

#155

Post by ams6110 »

candiodari wrote: post #149
alexandercrohde wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Facial recognition services are incredibly close to neutral technologies in my opinion. If we truly want to stop abuse of them, it should be done with legislation. You're entitled to that opinion. But it's just your opinion. What I like to ask myself is: given that we know we had a corrupt individual in the highest office of the US government in the last 50 years (i.e. Nixon), how might that have turned out with ea…

Can we please, for once, make this not a "Trump is evil" thread ? Besides, yes, Trump is evil, but among the general US population there are far worse people than him, and despite what you probably think, together they have far, far more control over your life than Trump does. Private individuals are already implementing something worse than China's social credit score all over America. [1] Currently they're limited…

My local Kroger is now taking video of the faces of every customer as they check out. To their credit they make it obvious by having a display screen at each register where you can see what they are recording, but I stopped shopping there for that reason.

Re: Yes, Amazon Is Tracking People

#157

Post by ploxiln »

ma2rten wrote: post #131
CoolGuySteve wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Emo Phillips once made this joke: The other day a woman came up to me and said, "Didn't I see you on television?" I said, "I don't know. You can't see out the other way." Evidently Amazon has made that joke obsolete. Like Stallman, I'm so uncomfortable installing a listening device in my home like OK Google, Alexa, Siri, etc. It creeps me out on a visceral level unlike any other kind of snooping.

I don't understand why so many tech-literate people have an issue with that. As I am sure you know, those devices only record your voice and send it to the server when they hear their hotword. The hotword detection has to be done on the device itself for technical reasons (battery and data usage). Theoretically it's possible that the companies that build those devices lie and actually record you other times. But the…

Software engineers are right to be scared of these voice assistants.

The problem is that typical sloppy, glitchy software (and hardware) is poised to record your voice and send it somewhere at any time, and that somewhere will play or record this, because that's what all this stuff more-or-less setup to do. It's already happened! Alexas have already "butt dialed" other people (not just amazon's servers)!

Think a bit broader than that. Things can play out of various speakers in your house and influence these voice assistants. Again, advertisements have already triggered voice assistants. Research has shown how it is possible to play voice assistant commands that humans can't hear. These devices are poised and ready to record anything anytime and send it anywhere, or just use your credentials to do anything.

My laptop is different. It does have a webcam and a microphone, and straight-up locally installed malware could take advantage. But it's not quite the boulder-atop-cliff situation of the voice assistants. I've never enabled Siri, I've disabled it everywhere possible, I don't install junk software, I often check on things in Activity Manager because freakin web apps use so much memory/cpu/network these days, so I would notice. The webcam has a light which is hack-able but it's pretty hard. My phone has Bixby but I've never enabled it, I've never clicked "I agree", I've disabled the button and the swipe activation and the background services which I am able to without rooting the device. It's in reasonable shape.

Re: Yes, Amazon Is Tracking People

#158

Post by birksherty »

ma2rten wrote: post #131
CoolGuySteve wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Emo Phillips once made this joke: The other day a woman came up to me and said, "Didn't I see you on television?" I said, "I don't know. You can't see out the other way." Evidently Amazon has made that joke obsolete. Like Stallman, I'm so uncomfortable installing a listening device in my home like OK Google, Alexa, Siri, etc. It creeps me out on a visceral level unlike any other kind of snooping.

I don't understand why so many tech-literate people have an issue with that. As I am sure you know, those devices only record your voice and send it to the server when they hear their hotword. The hotword detection has to be done on the device itself for technical reasons (battery and data usage). Theoretically it's possible that the companies that build those devices lie and actually record you other times. But the…

Those two categories are not same. Their main goal is listening 24x7.

Re: Yes, Amazon Is Tracking People

#159

Post by danShumway »

darawk wrote: post #134
danShumway wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anonymity doesn't stand on its own. The right to anonymity is only important because it protects other rights. If we're not trying to preserve people's ability to express ideas that the government dislikes, then who cares if their identity is public? Anonymity is a tool to shield people from otherwise unpreventable consequences. Separating them is like saying, "you have a right to privacy, not a right to encryption."…

> Anonymity doesn't stand on its own. The right to anonymity is only important because it protects other rights. If we're not trying to preserve people's ability to express ideas that the government dislikes, then who cares if their identity is public? The same is true of speech. It is a right that exists to protect other rights. Speaking, in and of itself is nice, but the function that right serves is the circumscri…

Again, I don't think that anonymity is a fundamental right - although if it was, you would be correct and I would agree with you. In fact, that theoretical right I don't believe in would be so distinct from freedom of speech that it might even be in opposition to it (cough right to be forgotten cough) ;).

Anonymity is an implementation detail. At the moment, it is an implementation detail that is essential. If your point is that it's not literally equivalent to free speech, then sure, definitely. We're on the same page and I agree with you.

But for all its warts and problems, if anyone wants to get rid of anonymity, then it's their job to come up with an alternative implementation. Part of supporting free speech is figuring out how to practically guarantee it in the real world, the rest is just wishful thinking.

> Speaking, in and of itself is nice, but the function that right serves is the circumscription of state power.

Quick side note, but this is a very narrow reading of free speech that I expect many people would disagree with. The function of free speech is to facilitate a person's fundamental right to share and explore ideas. Limiting the power of the government is a means to that end, not the other way around.

The idea behind a fundamental right is that it is... well, fundamental. Government doesn't give it to you, it respects that you already have it. Imagine how silly it would sound to say that freedom of religion, or racial equality, or the right to discover your own gender identity existed just so we could keep a government running smoothly :)

Re: Yes, Amazon Is Tracking People

#160

Post by wwweston »

all_blue_chucks wrote: post #112

Facial recognition software isn't particularly new and isn't specific to Amazon. Cato is just trying to sling manufactured mud at Bezos to further a political agenda because that's what they do.

Isn't Cato about "a political agenda" here in the same way the same way the EFF has political agendas?

This issue is political in the sense that it's very much about social policy... and it's just possible that it's bad social policy to let people perform/offer surveillance-at-scale as a service.

(It is kindof funny to see Cato discover one significant limit of a general philosophy of private market freedoms, though.)

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