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Amazon Sends 1,700 Alexa Voice Recordings to a Random Person

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Re: Amazon Sends 1,700 Alexa Voice Recordings to a Random Person

#61

Post by sevensor »

isostatic wrote: post #28
rdtsc wrote: post #17

I am baffled by how many people have no problems adding always listening and recording Google and Facebook devices to their living rooms. Some are considered tech people who should know stuff like this could happen, but they just don't care or don't think it will happen to them. Somewhere there is an ex-Stasi officer who is thinking "I wish we were that good and had people fooled to voluntarily install listening devi…

"He thought of Alexa with its never-sleeping ear. They could spy upon you night and day, but if you kept your head you could still outwit them." The irony is the ability for mass survelence (by unelected corporations) is far more than they had in 1984

We've settled the 1984 versus Brave New World debate with the answer "yes, please."

Re: Amazon Sends 1,700 Alexa Voice Recordings to a Random Person

#62

Post by TAForObvReasons »

meritt wrote: post #53
rdtsc wrote: post #17

I am baffled by how many people have no problems adding always listening and recording Google and Facebook devices to their living rooms. Some are considered tech people who should know stuff like this could happen, but they just don't care or don't think it will happen to them. Somewhere there is an ex-Stasi officer who is thinking "I wish we were that good and had people fooled to voluntarily install listening devi…

A number of years ago, The Onion did a great parody piece [1] on how Facebook is ran by the CIA [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eiPaTy2iJTM

https://www.marketwatch.com/investing/stock/fb the title for the stock is: "Facebook Inc. Cl A". With the particular font they use, the lowercase "l" and uppercase "I" look the same.

Re: Amazon Sends 1,700 Alexa Voice Recordings to a Random Person

#63

Post by LinuxBender »

ryanmercer wrote: post #60
LinuxBender wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1) Nobody can prove that. It's always listening and you have to assume always recording and transmitting. 2) My phone is a $12 throw away that speaks voice and sms (text). 3) Loose lips sink ships.

> Nobody can prove that. It's always listening and you have to assume always recording and transmitting Uh... packet analyzers, IP logs, bandwidth monitoring tools etc... If instead of transmitting occasional bursts of data when you say the wake word it's been sending back tens of megabytes an hour, or tens to hundreds of megabytes a day, you can go "hey, it's probably transmitting everything it hears". There are peo…

Which nobody can do. It is encrypted and unless the device accept invalid certs, they can queue up, compress, batch upload any data they want. They control the security, not the end-luser.

Re: Amazon Sends 1,700 Alexa Voice Recordings to a Random Person

#64

Post by zantana »

randyrand wrote: post #23

Is there a good non-internet connected device for turning on lights with your voice?

There are a couple that I know. There is snips https://snips.ai/ which I haven't used and I have a Mycroft Mark I https://mycroft.ai/product/mycroft-mark-1/ .

Mycroft does most of the Alexa parlor tricks such as weather and wikipedia lookups out of the box. If you use the plugins you can integrate it with Home Assistant, Kodi but I've had mixed luck.

They send the voice to Google for speech to text, but I believe that is configurable and they are working on a personal server which theoretically could operate entirely locally.

Re: Amazon Sends 1,700 Alexa Voice Recordings to a Random Person

#65

Post by melling »

LinuxBender wrote: post #50
melling wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why are you baffled? They’re great little devices. I have two Amazon echoes. Now that I can use my Apple Music, they are used constantly. Voice-first devices are long overdue.

This is just my opinion, based on my experience and personality. Voice first running entirely on prem with no internet connectivity, sure I would go for that. Talking to the internet? No way. Not even if I had root on the device with the source code to the OS, firmware and applications.

I guess you’ll have to wait another decade or two.

In the meantime, I’m “feeding” my devices every day.

Hopefully voice-first becomes a solved problem, and you’ll get your device sooner.

Re: Amazon Sends 1,700 Alexa Voice Recordings to a Random Person

#66

Post by cheeze »

accnumnplus1 wrote: post #12

This is just facebook all over again. Why can't people see trouble-tech? I never used facebook and won't ever use an alexa, nor whatever google's thing is.

I disagree. Amazon seems to actually care about privacy and takes things like this pretty seriously. One could certainly criticize AMZN data collection, but I think Amazon has shown that it does care about privacy of this data. Mistakes do happen which is unfortunate, and I think there is a good argument for no company, no matter their intentions to record this much data.

On the other hand, this is Facebook's business model.

Re: Amazon Sends 1,700 Alexa Voice Recordings to a Random Person

#68

Post by jakeogh »

ryanmercer wrote: post #60
LinuxBender wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1) Nobody can prove that. It's always listening and you have to assume always recording and transmitting. 2) My phone is a $12 throw away that speaks voice and sms (text). 3) Loose lips sink ships.

> Nobody can prove that. It's always listening and you have to assume always recording and transmitting Uh... packet analyzers, IP logs, bandwidth monitoring tools etc... If instead of transmitting occasional bursts of data when you say the wake word it's been sending back tens of megabytes an hour, or tens to hundreds of megabytes a day, you can go "hey, it's probably transmitting everything it hears". There are peo…

Can you MITM SSL the conversations to Amazon? It has memory. There is no requirement that it transmits in real time.

Re: Amazon Sends 1,700 Alexa Voice Recordings to a Random Person

#69

Post by samstave »

thfuran wrote: post #32
melling wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why are you baffled? They’re great little devices. I have two Amazon echoes. Now that I can use my Apple Music, they are used constantly. Voice-first devices are long overdue.

>Voice-first devices are long overdue. Sure, that's not really anything that anyone disagrees with. It's the acceptance of data collection and exfiltration that is odd.

Has anyone on HN put their phones into Airplane mode with WiFi on and then had wireshark tracking all outgoing packets from the wifi devices in their home?

To see exactly what outbound connections were made by which device and which app when either device was being actively used, or laying dormant?

This is how it was discovered in the UK that SmartTVs were sending viewing data....

Re: Amazon Sends 1,700 Alexa Voice Recordings to a Random Person

#70

Post by jakeogh »

TAForObvReasons wrote: post #62
meritt wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A number of years ago, The Onion did a great parody piece [1] on how Facebook is ran by the CIA [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eiPaTy2iJTM

https://www.marketwatch.com/investing/stock/fb the title for the stock is: "Facebook Inc. Cl A". With the particular font they use, the lowercase "l" and uppercase "I" look the same.

They get a kick out of the whole revelation of the method thing.
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