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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

#151

Post by aervaertaera »

ryanmercer wrote: post #57
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…

>I am baffled by how many people have no problems adding always listening and recording Google and Facebook devices to their living rooms. I am baffled by people that think anyone cares about their conversation about Jeff at work or what Monica and Ross just did on the 75th viewing of an episode of friends, or that they talk to their stuffed rabbit named Bun that they've had since about a week after they were born ab…

"Arguing that you don't care about the right to privacy because you have nothing to hide is no different than saying you don't care about free speech because you have nothing to say."

What's baffling is how many times this same conversation has played out and people like you still don't get it.

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

#152

Post by asdkhadsj »

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…

> I am baffled by how many people have no problems adding always listening and recording Google and Facebook devices to their living rooms.

To be less baffled, think about how many of us have those devices under a different name: Our phone.

Functionally I do not see the decides any differently. Yet, I think everyone I know has an Ok Google, Hey Siri, or Ok Bigsbi (however you spell it lol).

I'm not going to lie, for some reason Alexa makes me more concerned than my phone. Yet, the logical part of me fails to see a meaningful difference between my phone and an Alexa.

Disclaimer: I own an iPhone, I do not own an Alex/HomePod/etc.

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

#153

Post by [deleted] »

falcolas wrote: post #140
stevecalifornia wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1) It's always listening for a keyword, and then it starts recording. It's a voice interface for a computer. 2) Your phone is doing the same thing except for it follows you around everywhere you go and records your map location, what apps you use, who you are talking to and what your web searches are. Your phone isn't recording just what you say...its recording what you do and where you do it and when you do it. It's…

Point 1: Keyword triggers and is actually said are miles apart, as shown by the Alexa creepy laugh episode. There is no practical way of knowing when Alexa has heard a keyword and recorded content around it. Not to mention the Google play incident where a poor wiring job made the devices think the "enable assistant" button was constantly being pressed. Point 2: My phone, an iPhone, offers a way to turn off the keywor…

[deleted]

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

#154

Post by pizza »

falcolas wrote: post #140
stevecalifornia wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1) It's always listening for a keyword, and then it starts recording. It's a voice interface for a computer. 2) Your phone is doing the same thing except for it follows you around everywhere you go and records your map location, what apps you use, who you are talking to and what your web searches are. Your phone isn't recording just what you say...its recording what you do and where you do it and when you do it. It's…

Point 1: Keyword triggers and is actually said are miles apart, as shown by the Alexa creepy laugh episode. There is no practical way of knowing when Alexa has heard a keyword and recorded content around it. Not to mention the Google play incident where a poor wiring job made the devices think the "enable assistant" button was constantly being pressed. Point 2: My phone, an iPhone, offers a way to turn off the keywor…

Re: point 3, I was reading Kevin Murphy's book on Machine Learning recently and in it he says that roughly 20% of Google search queries that come in everyday have never been seen before. Reminds me of that report about Russian election interference campaigns that included the tidbit about Google being able to pinpoint the exact search queries that members of some GRU unit (Fancy Bear, maybe? idk) made.

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

#155

Post by LinuxBender »

vinkelhake wrote: post #133
LinuxBender wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If they batch compress and upload, it wont be a stream. It could be aes-256 lzma2 compressed chunks. Using the right codec, they could likely upload a hour of audio in a few hundred kbytes. I have seen some demos of highly bw optimized codecs. Here are some staring points. [1] I would go with Opus. My voice chat server uses that. [1] - https://stackoverflow.com/questions/167533/best-voice-compre...

> Using the right codec, they could likely upload a hour of audio in a few hundred kbytes. But at the same time, you're convinced that you would notice if your phone was slipping out these kilobytes as part of its usual communication? It seems to me that you've just arbitrarily picked a level of paranoia where you've decided that this can definitely happen with the Alexa, but won't happen with your phone. Your proud…

I am not convinced of anything.

The risk of the throw away device uploading my audio is significantly lower than a device powered in my home, with dedicated fast internet.

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

#156

Post by LinuxBender »

michaelcampbell wrote: post #119
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.

Steve Gibson did a wireshark investigation of an Alexa, it is NOT always transmitting. Your assertion that "nobody can prove that" is rather absurd.

Steve was not thinking this through. I can batch compress chunks of audio and lazy upload them when I think nobody is around. A listening device could probably even guess when you are not going to be using your internet connection.

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

#157

Post by citilife »

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…

I wrote this a little bit ago:

https://austingwalters.com/the-last-free-generation/

It's amazing to me that people are actively seeking to erode society as greatly as they are. The fact is, it's not better to have these systems long term. So what if it saves you even 10 minutes a day (which I highly doubt), if eventually someone comes to power that will decide to kill you and your families based on your prior beliefs.

Today we are seeing a more subtle manipulation of politics using all the data these large companies collect. I can't imagine what would happen if there was a concerted effort to "weed out" bad eggs.

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

#158

Post by bzbarsky »

matte_black wrote: post #103
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.

The thing is that for most people avoiding this kind of tech and platforms is unlikely to have any kind of payoff for them. Life is too short. Most peoples lives are as simple as going to school and work, raising a family, taking vacations, paying bills, and then passing away. There will never be a moment where they can say “ Yes! My avoidance of Facebook and Alexa for all my life has finally paid off! Hahaha! ” The…

Your list is missing "pro-democracy advocates", "Muslims", "Christians", "Jews", "atheists", "women who want an abortion", "people trying to escape an abusive relationship", "people with interesting medical conditions", etc, depending on location.

Please don't pretend that both "only criminals have something to hide" and "criminals are by definition bad people" are true statements. Neither is true.

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

#160

Post by emilsedgh »

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…

Saf thing is, some current officers are thinking “oh nice. Lets find ways if exploiting this opportunity, by finding security issues on these devices, paying these corporations to allow us to sneak in their devices it any other means necessary to use these amazing machines.”
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