Google admits listening to some smart speaker recordings • Hacker News Board

Re: Google admits listening to some smart speaker recordings

#21

Post by okmokmz » Thu, Jul 11, 2019, 5:46 PM UTC

smallgovt wrote: post #16

vezycash wrote: post #8

If Google and it's outsourced partner can listen to the recordings, 3 lettered agencies can too. Even if they currently can't, they'll soon make a law to grant them access to Google's and Amazon's. After this, a hijacking, explosion, or terrorist attack would occur. They would argue that it could have been prevented if place X had a listening device installed. And that's all it would take to push a law mandating the…

>> After this, a hijacking, explosion, or terrorist attack would occur. They would argue that it could have been prevented if place X had a listening device installed. And that's all it would take to push a law mandating the installation of such devices in open spaces, eventually private ones. I agree that this hypothetical is an accurate depiction of the future, but I think eventually we'll see this as the better of…

The irony of an account named smallgovt making this comment.... Personally, I'd rather risk get nuked by a crazy guy in his garage, as you say, than live in more of a police/surveillance state than we already do now

Re: Google admits listening to some smart speaker recordings

#22

Post by ehsankia » Thu, Jul 11, 2019, 5:46 PM UTC

vezycash wrote: post #8

If Google and it's outsourced partner can listen to the recordings, 3 lettered agencies can too. Even if they currently can't, they'll soon make a law to grant them access to Google's and Amazon's. After this, a hijacking, explosion, or terrorist attack would occur. They would argue that it could have been prevented if place X had a listening device installed. And that's all it would take to push a law mandating the…

> If Google and it's outsourced partner can listen to the recordings, 3 lettered agencies can too.

Just to be clear, if this were true, it would only apply to specific queries you make, not all audio data in your house. There is no evidence of any of these devices recording/sending voice data outside of when a query is going on.

Re: Google admits listening to some smart speaker recordings

#23

Post by dvaun » Thu, Jul 11, 2019, 5:49 PM UTC

The posted article did cite their sources; the original report was made by vrtNWS [1]. I recommend reading the discussion which occurred yesterday for an array of arguments [2]. ----- One thing I personally believe — and find apparent about these discussions revolving around data privacy — is that the general public (at least in the USA) doesn't understand the capabilities of modern apps and other tech they use. Sure, there's news coverage of tech giants and adtech firms mining/utilizing user data for profit — the picture painted, though, seems to only show a black box to most people who aren't involved with the tech industry, and who don't have the background to really understand certain concepts (eg networking, ML, etc). There are definitely growing concerns about personal privacy [3][4]; continuing forward, however, the availability of user data and the growth with social media will probably rise and have an even larger impact on society as my generation (and younger ones) has already been tied into using these platforms [5].

I'm hopeful that this can be changed with changes to the education system. I would love to see computer education added as a general topic covered (ie it would be a very clear example of how useful math is...it would help others understand why they should learn beyond add/sub/div etc).

There is already a push to modernize schools and prepare students for the adult world; chromebooks are very common in schools that receive grants and funding for tech initiatives. Home econ, carpentry, and other courses used to be common (maybe still common in some places?) in highschool. How about computer education, specifically?

[1]: https://outline.com/2PmPtH [2]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20402070 [3]: https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/03/27/americans-c... [4]: https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/09/05/americans-a... [5]: https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/04/10/share-of-u-...

Re: Google admits listening to some smart speaker recordings

#24

Post by okmokmz » Thu, Jul 11, 2019, 5:51 PM UTC

ehsankia wrote: post #22

vezycash wrote: post #8

If Google and it's outsourced partner can listen to the recordings, 3 lettered agencies can too. Even if they currently can't, they'll soon make a law to grant them access to Google's and Amazon's. After this, a hijacking, explosion, or terrorist attack would occur. They would argue that it could have been prevented if place X had a listening device installed. And that's all it would take to push a law mandating the…

> If Google and it's outsourced partner can listen to the recordings, 3 lettered agencies can too. Just to be clear, if this were true, it would only apply to specific queries you make, not all audio data in your house. There is no evidence of any of these devices recording/sending voice data outside of when a query is going on.

>There is no evidence of any of these devices recording/sending voice data outside of when a query is going on.

This isn't an example of a google device doing so, but there have been multiple cases of these "smart" home devices recording and/or sending audio when not prompted

https://techcrunch.com/2018/05/24/family-claims-their-echo-s...

Re: Google admits listening to some smart speaker recordings

#25

Post by jstarfish » Thu, Jul 11, 2019, 5:53 PM UTC

malvosenior wrote: post #17

flattone wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People. Like 15% of hn users and the like

I think everyone would notice the much higher data usage bill.

More and more carriers are moving to "unlimited"/throttled plans. The days of worrying about data usage will soon join the days of worrying about how many minutes you have left.

Re: Google admits listening to some smart speaker recordings

#26

Post by vokep » Thu, Jul 11, 2019, 5:53 PM UTC

azinman2 wrote: post #4

jhayward wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They have the security and response team activated because someone disclosed that they do this, not to investigate the fact that they do it. They're there to plug the leak.

Except the privacy policy always warned about this. Everyone doing speech recognition is doing this — you have to in order to get any kind of QA. The caveat is that it should be both anonymizes as well as only in respond to the wake up command. It seems to be both, so I don’t see the problem. Actually I do — the editorializing of these headlines makes it seem nefarious when it’s not.

If the privacy policy was written in a language I could read (just because its english doesn't mean its readable english) then maybe I would have known that

Re: Google admits listening to some smart speaker recordings

#27

Post by windexh8er » Thu, Jul 11, 2019, 5:53 PM UTC

carlosdp wrote: post #19

I like to imagine sometimes how these kinds of "revelations" happen in tech newsrooms. Reporter: Tell it to me straight, do you listen to the recordings? Google: Well yea, that's how we train the... Reporter: WE GOT 'EM! It's like the "Apple admits throttling CPU when battery starts dying" story all over again. It wasn't a secret, you just didn't ask before.

There are three types of lies: lies of commission, lies of omission and lies of influence.

Just because nobody "asked" Google (your example) doesn't mean Google didn't lie (and/ or mislead) about it (lie of omission). Most people assume machines are doing the voice processing. The game changes when there's a human with a, potentially, subjective thought process to what they're hearing.

Re: Google admits listening to some smart speaker recordings

#28

Post by cblades » Thu, Jul 11, 2019, 6:00 PM UTC

windexh8er wrote: post #27

carlosdp wrote: post #19

I like to imagine sometimes how these kinds of "revelations" happen in tech newsrooms. Reporter: Tell it to me straight, do you listen to the recordings? Google: Well yea, that's how we train the... Reporter: WE GOT 'EM! It's like the "Apple admits throttling CPU when battery starts dying" story all over again. It wasn't a secret, you just didn't ask before.

There are three types of lies: lies of commission, lies of omission and lies of influence. Just because nobody "asked" Google (your example) doesn't mean Google didn't lie (and/ or mislead) about it (lie of omission). Most people assume machines are doing the voice processing. The game changes when there's a human with a, potentially, subjective thought process to what they're hearing.

No one that gives it more than a passing thought could fail to realize that there has to be some human interaction. Someone has to do manual transcription to check against output for some portion of the data.

Re: Google admits listening to some smart speaker recordings

#29

Post by cblades » Thu, Jul 11, 2019, 6:01 PM UTC

okmokmz wrote: post #24

ehsankia wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If Google and it's outsourced partner can listen to the recordings, 3 lettered agencies can too. Just to be clear, if this were true, it would only apply to specific queries you make, not all audio data in your house. There is no evidence of any of these devices recording/sending voice data outside of when a query is going on.

>There is no evidence of any of these devices recording/sending voice data outside of when a query is going on. This isn't an example of a google device doing so, but there have been multiple cases of these "smart" home devices recording and/or sending audio when not prompted https://techcrunch.com/2018/05/24/family-claims-their-echo-s...

It was prompted, it's just that the match for the activation phrase was incorrectly identified.

That's not the same thing as the near-universally believed internet truism that these devices are always listening and sending recordings home.

Re: Google admits listening to some smart speaker recordings

#30

Post by throwaway2048 » Thu, Jul 11, 2019, 6:02 PM UTC

windexh8er wrote: post #27

carlosdp wrote: post #19

I like to imagine sometimes how these kinds of "revelations" happen in tech newsrooms. Reporter: Tell it to me straight, do you listen to the recordings? Google: Well yea, that's how we train the... Reporter: WE GOT 'EM! It's like the "Apple admits throttling CPU when battery starts dying" story all over again. It wasn't a secret, you just didn't ask before.

There are three types of lies: lies of commission, lies of omission and lies of influence. Just because nobody "asked" Google (your example) doesn't mean Google didn't lie (and/ or mislead) about it (lie of omission). Most people assume machines are doing the voice processing. The game changes when there's a human with a, potentially, subjective thought process to what they're hearing.

The biggest self deception the industry has about computer algos and especially machine learning is that it is somehow objective.