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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

#401

Post by userbinator »

gringoDan wrote: post #95

I think the responses to this can be broken down into a 2x2 matrix: level of concern vs. understanding of technology. 1) Don't understand ML; not concerned - "I have nothing to hide." 2) Don't understand ML; concerned - "I bought this device and now people are spying on me!" 3) Understand ML; not concerned - "Of course, Google needs to label its training data." 4) Understand ML; concerned - "How can we train models/c…

I'd consider myself something like "4b": Understand ML; concerned - "DO NOT WANT!"

The more I see of this tech, the more disturbed I am about its existence.

In some ways, dystopia and utopia really are the same thing.

Re: Google employees are listening to Google Home conversations

#402

Post by jrochkind1 »

outworlder wrote: post #397
bscphil wrote: post #377

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Similar functionality to an Echo / Google Home / Apple whatever. They'll be listening for "hey siri" or "ok google" This seems to be a pretty big assumption, without which your whole argument falls apart. In my case, at least, I have no such functionality enabled. You could argue that the manufacturer of my phone could push a software update that enables it without my knowledge (in fact, they likely couldn't, becau…

> In my case, at least, I have no such functionality enabled How do you know? Is your device _incapable_ of performing that task, or did you just click a checkbox somewhere? Because if you just politely _asked_ the OS to disable it, it doesn't really matter, does it? We are back to the matter of trusting the vendor. > (in fact, they likely couldn't, because I don't have automatic updates turned on) So you say. The so…

Yes, but there's still a difference from what we are worried might be doing with our smartphones, and what we KNOW they are doing with 'voice assistants'.

I turn off voice assistant on my smartphone and don't have any google home/alexa devices either. I have a TV with no voice activation. I won't use voice activation devices.

Is it possible my phone is listening to my anyway and sending recordings to someone? It's possible. If I were smart I would never say anything that would be 'dangerous' if someone heard it with my phone in the room, although Im sure I'm not that careful, it's probably not possible.

If I found out for sure my phone was listening to me surreptitiously, rather than just knowing that it's not impossible -- I'd do something about it.

One affect of arguing "it's all the same, your phone COULD be spying on your voice conversations anyway" is, perhaps ironically, to make people care LESS about it. If it's doing it anyway (or just if I can't prove it's not?), what do I care about Google Voice doing it too? But one disincentive for companies doing it is precisely that people will be upset if they find out. (And they're gonna find out eventually).

You don't need to go live in the woods to care about it. It's good to care about it. You don't need to either "draw the line" at living in the woods without electricity, or draw no lines. We can draw lines. They can move. If your argument is that since you can't be sure that nobody's spying on you, you shouldn't care about the people you DO know are spying on you and shouldn't get upset about it -- that's not how any of this works.

Insisting on all or nothing gets you nothing (cause it turns out 'all' isn't really an option), and who wants nothing?

Re: Google employees are listening to Google Home conversations

#403

Post by a3n »

blacksmith_tb wrote: post #334
a3n wrote: post #321

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I won't have one either. Well, I have my Android, which I guess is essentially the same. I was visiting my neighbor the other day. We were wondering something about special counsel mueller, and she decided to ask Alexa. This was new, and I was surprised she had this surveillance device, but I didn't say anything. There was some back and forth, then I said to her "I think you're ordering motor oil " "Alexa, stop! Alex…

Do they know it was you, specifically? I would say they know your neighbor was talking with someone else, and possibly that politics were being discussed (not really something they seem to have put a lot of effort into recognizing, since it doesn't lead to shopping...) If you're interacting with an Echo or gHome you can always ask it "who am I?" GOOG is sneaky enough to recognize you on any other device, Alexa, not s…

What WalterBright says below.

They can eventually know who I am by voice recognition, especially they can get corroboration by the fact that we live in the same building.

I imagine we probably said something that would suggest I live nearby (... "Checking database" ...) or that I'm a regular visitor (... "Checking database." ...).

They could be sending an inaudible tone, to be captured by an app on my phone. I don't have an Amazon app, but some other app might capture the tone and sell that fact to Amazon, so that they don't leave money on the table.

Re: Google employees are listening to Google Home conversations

#405

Post by pnutjam »

bscphil wrote: post #377
outworlder wrote: post #336

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Before I go further: do you own a smartphone? If not, you can ignore the rest. So, assuming you have a smartphone. That is a device which has: - Permanent network connection. Doesn't matter what you do on your Wifi, it has the cellular data network. Which is controlled by an independent processor with its own firmware - Excellent noise-cancellation microphones. They may not be able to pinpoint the sound source like a…

> Similar functionality to an Echo / Google Home / Apple whatever. They'll be listening for "hey siri" or "ok google" This seems to be a pretty big assumption, without which your whole argument falls apart. In my case, at least, I have no such functionality enabled. You could argue that the manufacturer of my phone could push a software update that enables it without my knowledge (in fact, they likely couldn't, becau…

He's just using a classic strawman, making the argument he could win.

Re: Google employees are listening to Google Home conversations

#406

Post by pnutjam »

michaelmrose wrote: post #361
basch wrote: post #356

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Theres a mute button on the echo. You can turn voice off just the same as you can on a phone.

Turns out the NSA has an implant for smart tvs that among its features is keeping the tv on and recording you while turning the indicator light that indicates its on status off. You don't own the device despite paying for it. It updates itself when it feels like it and does whatever its actual owner says including compromising itself if told to.

Not without internet.

Re: Google employees are listening to Google Home conversations

#407

Post by roenxi »

Godel_unicode wrote: post #182
okmokmz wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>To me, category 3 is the most dangerous. Tech workers have a responsibility not just understand the technologies that they work with, but also educate themselves on the societal implications of those technologies. And as others have pointed out, this extends beyond home speakers to any voice-enabled device in general. Yes I'm frequently amazed how many coworkers I have that are still completely plugged into Google,…

It sounds like you're hoping for this as evidence that you were right to be concerned; have you considered that you might be wrong? What if your coworkers are right, and the risk is actually extremely low? How would you determine that?

> It sounds like you're hoping for this as evidence that you were right to be concerned; have you considered that you might be wrong?

An alternate interpretation is that if a massive breach of trust is intentional then it would be better if it happened sooner rather than later.

> What if your coworkers are right...? How would you determine that?

That is a pretty classic appeal to popularity; what most co-workers believe is not evidence of anything in this case. If they are right, they are right. If they are wrong, they might be a self-selected group of the people who don't see a risk for what it is.

At any rate 'the risk' is a bit vague, but moral panics and witch hunts are things that happen. When the tech companies get involved in one, which will happen, it could be very nasty. There is clearly some sort of new risk here making it easier to quickly and accurately identify minorities. Even ignoring rogue employees finding creative ways to use data to enrich themselves.

Re: Google employees are listening to Google Home conversations

#408

Post by killjoywashere »

jrochkind1 wrote: post #402
outworlder wrote: post #397

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In my case, at least, I have no such functionality enabled How do you know? Is your device _incapable_ of performing that task, or did you just click a checkbox somewhere? Because if you just politely _asked_ the OS to disable it, it doesn't really matter, does it? We are back to the matter of trusting the vendor. > (in fact, they likely couldn't, because I don't have automatic updates turned on) So you say. The so…

Yes, but there's still a difference from what we are worried might be doing with our smartphones, and what we KNOW they are doing with 'voice assistants'. I turn off voice assistant on my smartphone and don't have any google home/alexa devices either. I have a TV with no voice activation. I won't use voice activation devices. Is it possible my phone is listening to my anyway and sending recordings to someone? It's po…

I'm just inserting a comment here in the hopes that it will come before a more deeply nested soon-to-be-written XKCD comic. Although I'm fairly confident XKCD has covered this in the past already.

Re: Google employees are listening to Google Home conversations

#409

Post by tzakrajs »

rurp wrote: post #297
tzakrajs wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tell the truth or remain silent. Try not to incriminate yourself.

Telling the truth about your religion or sexual orientation can get you beaten or killed in many parts of the world. That's not likely to happen in the present day US, but there are plenty of less dramatic but definitely undesirable things that can happen when your home audio gets passed around to a bunch of random contractors.

Sorry, I was being sarcastic but it really doesn't read like it in retrospect. Totally agree with everything you wrote.

Re: Google employees are listening to Google Home conversations

#410

Post by jpswain »

Dextro wrote: post #263
JoshTriplett wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ask people for permission to send in mis-heard commands Note that you also want the "correctly" heard commands, because some of them will have been incorrect. It's frustrating when an assistant gives the "I don't know how to do that", but it's even more frustrating to get "OK, doing (the wrong thing)". Also, another alternative: provide an actual bug reporting channel. "Hey Google, report that as a bug" "Would you…

To be fair the system already has something like that. If you complain to the Home it'll ask if you want to provide feedback and give you a few seconds to verbally explain what went wrong. I'm not sure if humans will then review that feedback of if it goes through a speech to text algorithm first but the mechanism for feedback is there.

iOS voicemail transcription has this.
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