151–160 of 185 posts
I still don't understand why this is possible. I've frequently seen the claim that an Echo only records brief snippets, looking for the wake word. If that's so, there's next to nothing for Amazon to hand over.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Alexa, call the police! #### is here, and he's trying to hurt me! Seems like a pretty good use for a voice-activated service. "Alexa, lock the doors!" also sounds useful in this context.
Attacker: Alexa unlock the door for me.
I know that this article itself doesn’t have much content but I’m interested in what the police are actually requesting, and what they end up getting. Do they assume/suspect that Echo/Amazon continuously records and logs audio, akin to a security camera? Or do they have evidence that Echo was actually activated around the time of the murders, or afterwards by the suspect himself? I was also interested in this quote:…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
You are mistaken. The utility of Alexa/Google Home is worth any privacy intrusion for me. I simply don't care. Convince me otherwise.
What will you do if a friend who does care and does not want the privacy intrusion comes over to visit? Do you at least give people the courtesy to inform them and ask their permission to have recordings of their voice sent to a third party service? If enough of these devices are installed, having every utterance recorded will become a fact of life. You might not care, but when people believe they are being recorded…
I know that this article itself doesn’t have much content but I’m interested in what the police are actually requesting, and what they end up getting. Do they assume/suspect that Echo/Amazon continuously records and logs audio, akin to a security camera? Or do they have evidence that Echo was actually activated around the time of the murders, or afterwards by the suspect himself? I was also interested in this quote:…
> Though I’m sure most users don’t realize that when Alexa does trigger, she sends the audio to the Amazon mothership, which are then stored/analyzed for an indefinite time. Additionally, Amazon receives several seconds of audio _before_ the trigger word was used Edit: I can't find a source for this, but IIRC this was part of the initial Echo roll out, and one of the reasons I decided not to purchase. Perhaps Amazon…
I know that this article itself doesn’t have much content but I’m interested in what the police are actually requesting, and what they end up getting. Do they assume/suspect that Echo/Amazon continuously records and logs audio, akin to a security camera? Or do they have evidence that Echo was actually activated around the time of the murders, or afterwards by the suspect himself? I was also interested in this quote:…
I don't know why people will happily carry a cell phone (which is a microphone attached to a transmitter, with location tracking to boot) but recoil at an Echo device in their home. Both are equally capable of surveillance, but the phone certainly more so as it's not limited to Wifi (which I could also monitor if I was worried about Echo sending a constant data stream).
Earlier quoted context omitted.
That does not demonstrate anything. It could "buffer" the data it wants to send and only send it after the trigger word is detected, precisely to trick such naive analysis.
That would result in a much larger payload, and a payload size that is variable depending on how long it has been, and how much audio was record-able between requests. But if instead we observe a small payload of constant size given the same request, regardless of how long between requests, then we can reasonably be assured the device is not doing this.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Though the person is being a slight jerk with the last sentence in this comment, there's no reason to mass-downvote someone just because they don't value their privacy as much as anyone else. The poster is not telling people they should not value privacy, only that the poster does not in exchange for utility.
Even without that last sentence, the comment is not helpful. We’re not told what the user sees as the benefits of Alexa, and we don’t know what he sees as the privacy trade offs. It’s possible he uses Alexa for some lifesaving utility that far outweighs even if Amazon were illegally violating his privacy. Or maybe he’s ignorant tot he specifics of what Echo and Amazon do/don’t collect. And anyone who replies is force…
I know that this article itself doesn’t have much content but I’m interested in what the police are actually requesting, and what they end up getting. Do they assume/suspect that Echo/Amazon continuously records and logs audio, akin to a security camera? Or do they have evidence that Echo was actually activated around the time of the murders, or afterwards by the suspect himself? I was also interested in this quote:…
I don't know why people will happily carry a cell phone (which is a microphone attached to a transmitter, with location tracking to boot) but recoil at an Echo device in their home. Both are equally capable of surveillance, but the phone certainly more so as it's not limited to Wifi (which I could also monitor if I was worried about Echo sending a constant data stream).
The Echo is a completely new device from a company that has very few oversight and regulation, and laws and usages are not really up to date for these use cases.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I sincerely doubt people don't realise that anything after the trigger is sent home, since a "feature" of alexa is that the app let you see each request you made, how alexa answered, and let them know if she got it wrong. I think it's more a case of "don't care" / "don't realize the risks"
People perhaps assume all audio is processed locally and/or isn't stored except ephemerally. I'd imagine there's a default "we store your data for AI training purposes" that would allow them to keep all audio.
Is there info on this from Amazon? I'd assume they do what you mention, have the speech recognition in the Alexa and just send up the words, not the entire audio stream.
Interesting implication of that in this case: if the actual audio is gone and you just have the transcription, is that valid as evidence? Or is it something closer to hearsay