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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

#261

Post by cortesoft »

sbov wrote: post #189
madrox wrote: post #104

I've never seen a demographic breakdown of HN, but I'm 37 years old. I'm definitely not the oldest guy here, but I see history repeat itself regularly. I remember when people used location tracking as a reason to not own a cell phone. I'm talking about flip phones, mind you, not even iPhones with GPS receivers. I recall the bulk of complaints in that vein died down around the time Google Maps for phones came out. If…

New technology is scary, old is not. With the third party doctrine the only way to really protect yourself is to not participate in modern society in any way.

Or at least don't do anything that would be considered 'suspicious' within that modern society. Of course, it is hard to know what will be considered suspicious....

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

#262

Post by mynameisvlad »

danso wrote: post #173
mynameisvlad wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, they made an active decision to buy a device specifically meant to record them and provide responses to said recording. It would be another thing to find out a phone records every conversation passively, but these devices are literally made for the purposes of recording you. That kind of sounds like a self inflicted wound if they actually cared about privacy. This is all said with the presumption that the devic…

OK, by your definition of "recording", a laptop contains several I/O devices that "record" my input, not just webcam and microphone, but keyboard as well. I guess I should just shrug at the revelation that it comes with a keylogger. Because hey, if I didn't want my written thoughts to be recorded, why did I buy a memory-enabled Internet-connected device to do actually that?

Don't put words into my mouth, I never said that.

I even used the example of a phone recording you being bad because that wasn't the primary purpose of the device when bought. That argument obviously applies to laptops for the same reason.

But if you as a consumer decide to buy a device who's literal only purpose is to record you, then you don't also get to cry out about it recording you. That's the very definition of a self inflicted wound.

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

#263

Post by applecrazy »

flukus wrote: post #248
amai wrote: post #204

There is an alternative to the spying devices of Amazon, Apple, Google and Microsoft: https://snips.ai/technology/ "Our technology runs on-device, works offline and guarantees Privacy by Design"

I can't believe that so many people, especially the ones on tech sites like this, bought into the idea that speech recognition is such a hard job that it needs to be run on the supercomputers of tech giants. We had somewhat decent voice dictation software on desktops 20 years ago, when 100Mhz processors and 32MB of RAM were top of the line, yet now it's impossible with an order of magnitude more resources.

The main reason this kind of thing is outsourced to the cloud nowadays is because of deep neural network voice recognition technologies we have. Most of these models are too hefty to run inference on-device. Also, online learning allows for STT to get better as it’s used more if it’s centralized in a place like the cloud.

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

#264

Post by lisper »

saulrh wrote: post #252
dlandis wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Getting a voice assistant was life-changing for me Can you expand on that? In what way?

Compare the workflows for leaving a reminder or note. Before: * Find phone/computer * Unlock * Locate self in interface and navigate to application selector * Invoke note-taking or reminder app * Type in note or reminder * Navigate through tagging/scheduling interface * Commit note/reminder Or: * Locate notebook * Locate writing utensil * Open notebook to current page * Write note * Remember to check notebook every t…

    * Find phone/computer
    * Unlock
    * Locate self in interface and navigate to application selector
    * Invoke note-taking or reminder app
    * Type in note or reminder
    * Navigate through tagging/scheduling interface
    * Commit note/reminder
I just now took a stopwatch to time how long it took me to do all of this: 30 seconds, and 20 of those were walking to my office. That is not a negligible amount of time, but it's not a huge cost either. But...

    * Be in shouting distance of phone or assistant base station
    * "Okay Google/Alexa, note to self/set a reminder for eight pm: "
That's what happens when everything goes right. But based on observing friends who have Alexa, things only go right about two times in three. The rest of the time Alexa gets something wrong, often with comical results. The time it takes to recover from those situations can be a lot longer than 30 seconds. Often my friends just give up and drag out a laptop, or, more often, just decide that whatever it was they were trying to do really wasn't that important after all and give up.

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

#265

Post by cortesoft »

bzbarsky wrote: post #158
matte_black wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I get what you are saying, and agree with you in principle... but the problem is, I am none of those things. I have none of the qualities that I need to hide from anyone, rather neighbors or the government. While it kinda feels creepy to imagine myself being listened to, I can't imagine any real consequences to my private conversations being heard.

However, I know that there are lots of people who do have those things they need to hide, and if only the people who need to keep things private work to keep things private, than the very fact that they are keeping things private becomes a risk factor.

Just like how part of the value of https everywhere is to prevent encrypted traffic from standing out, everyone maintaining privacy helps prevent people who NEED privacy from standing out.

Of course, as an individual, there is a cost for demanding that privacy - I lose out on the benefits of things like the echo and facebook. And since I am not an individual who needs privacy, there is no individual incentive to maintain it. It is a bit of a collective action problem.

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

#266

Post by cortesoft »

aervaertaera wrote: post #151
ryanmercer wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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.

There is a difference, though. I agree privacy is important as a principle, and we need to protect the right to it. But privacy is also not important to me, so I can use services that require me to give up some of it. I want people to be able to maintain privacy if they want to or need to, but I might not care about giving up my own.

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

#267

Post by justinclift »

matte_black wrote: post #258
bzbarsky wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If you live under a government where those examples are a reason to hide, then in the eyes of that government you are technically a criminal. Doesn’t describe my government. Even under the most oppressive governments though, there will still be a sizable majority that doesn’t have anything to hide and can feel secure using most technology, and they’ll be fine.

> Doesn’t describe my government.

... yet? :)

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

#269

Post by tjoff »

closetohome wrote: post #231
tjoff wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not when the device is locked and screen is off.

Wouldn't be much point to Hey Siri if it didn't work with the screen off :)

Sure, it seems apple does listen even while screen is off.

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

#270

Post by avip »

dlandis wrote: post #219
Kiro wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You totally underestimate the utility. Getting a voice assistant was life-changing for me. GPS comes nowhere close.

> Getting a voice assistant was life-changing for me Can you expand on that? In what way?

The simple fact I can call people while my hands are on the wheel is a non-trivial improvement in my life.
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