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Google employees are listening to Google Home conversations

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Re: Google employees are listening to Google Home conversations

#21

Post by MassiveOwl »

electrograv wrote: post #15

So Google’s response is (paraphrased as fairly as I can while removing the sugar-coating): ’Yes, we hire people to listen in to and transcribe some conversations from the private homes of our customers (so as improve our speech recognition engines); but the recordings aren’t linked to personally identifiable information.’ Even assuming they have only the purest intentions here, I still don’t understand how they can p…

This is a good point, one of the reasons to use it is for reminders "Hey Google, remind me to visit x at place y"

Re: Google employees are listening to Google Home conversations

#25

Post by burkaman »

astrea wrote: post #9
TheAdamist wrote: post #3

"The man, who wants to remain anonymous, works for an international company hired by Google. " So not a Google employee at all, a probably low paid contractor who is in possession of thousands of audio files. Your privacy matters, except when the bottom line is involved.

Sounds like he was a Turker: "For each fragment that he listens, he will receive a few cents."

Probably a company like https://scale.ai/, although I don't think they do audio.

Re: Google employees are listening to Google Home conversations

#26

Post by DanHulton »

r00fus wrote: post #13

My biggest frustration is going to a friends house which is blanketed with Echo/Google coverage and realizing that all my words could be used against me at a later time. How does one approach this situation?

I mean, it's roughly the same level of exposure you run into literally every minute you're out in public anyway - all those phones around you have microphones, and more and more, they're always listening in exactly the same fashion. This is how always-on "Hey Siri" or "Okay Google" works.

Which isn't to say it isn't frustrating, just that your frustration at your friend is misplaced - they're not exposing you to anything which you aren't already exposed. If your fear is that these tech companies are going to misuse casually-overheard conversations from these devices, they're just as likely to use it from all the phones you're near.

If your fear is that your friend is going to use this tech, however, maybe you need better friends. There's nothing stopping an unscrupulous friend from putting plain-old audio recorders through their house anyway.

Re: Google employees are listening to Google Home conversations

#27

Post by rwc »

inerte wrote: post #16

Home, Siri, Alexa, M, they all do. I have friends that work on this field transcribing the audio, and measuring its accuracy. Sometimes it's multiple layers of contractors: An employee hands the task to a contractor, another contractor verifies the speech to text, and they're all managed by a contractor. Search for languages like Portuguese, Swedish, Chinese, etc on LinkedIn and you'll find the jobs posts https://www…

"They all do" ... my understanding is that this expressly does not happen with HomePod conversations.

Re: Google employees are listening to Google Home conversations

#28

Post by SmirkingRevenge »

The one thing about these stories that keep coming out about the home assistants... they kind of create the impression that this is an issue specific to home speakers, and you can avoid it, by simply not buying them.

That's misleading.

Any voice command you use to operate any internet connected tech gadget, from phones to smart TV's, is potentially stored and flagged for human review.

You really have to avoid using voice commands at all, on all of your devices. Even that is probably insufficient. You probably have to go even further and actively disable voice command features on all of your devices, assuming they actually support such a setting. Otherwise here's still the possibility of an accidental recording taking a journey through the clouds, to a stranger's ears.

Re: Google employees are listening to Google Home conversations

#29

Post by noir_lord »

duxup wrote: post #6
chance_state wrote: post #4

"What Orwell failed to predict is that we'd buy the cameras ourselves, and that our biggest fear would be that nobody was watching."

I think Frank Herbert hit it a bit more on the nose: “Once men turned their thinking over to machines in the hope that this would set them free. But that only permitted other men with machines to enslave them.” Frank captures the motivation, the fact that it is desirable is the scary part. Akin to the genetic engineering scene from Gattaca.

Aldous Huxley got there earlier with A Brave New World as well.

Speculative Fiction was ahead of the curve in that era.

Re: Google employees are listening to Google Home conversations

#30

Post by numbsafari »

TheAdamist wrote: post #3

"The man, who wants to remain anonymous, works for an international company hired by Google. " So not a Google employee at all, a probably low paid contractor who is in possession of thousands of audio files. Your privacy matters, except when the bottom line is involved.

What is doubly concerning here is that the contractor was in a position to demonstrate how the system worked to the reporters. That would seem to indicate they have access to that data in a non-secured environment.

I'm not familiar with EU law around these things, but I would imagine there is some kind of whistleblower mechanism available, and a right for authorities to audit/inspect such activities?

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