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

Re: Google admits listening to some smart speaker recordings

#71

Post by thfuran » Thu, Jul 11, 2019, 6:43 PM UTC

stefan_ wrote: post #45

dev_dull wrote: post #35

Is this honestly surprising to any developer? How can you develop a product like Siri/OK Google without being able look closely at edge cases? And if you have to record conversations to troubleshoot even extremely rare edge cases, you still end up with a system that allows this eavesdropping.

You recruit people for testing and obtain their informed consent? What do people here think how say medicine or research is developed?!

I think medical software works on pretty much exactly model the parent comment describes, where software developers commonly have access to (anonymized) patient data and less commonly and less readily to unanonymized patient data.

Re: Google admits listening to some smart speaker recordings

#72

Post by smattiso » Thu, Jul 11, 2019, 6:43 PM UTC

malvosenior wrote: post #11

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…

> On second thought, there's a faster way to the goal. Just make smartphones listen all the time. The good thing about trying this is people would definitely notice the increased bandwidth usage of their phone streaming audio in real time, all the time.

Not necessarily, speech to text engines are pretty decent so it's conceivable a listening device could just send the transcript.

Re: Google admits listening to some smart speaker recordings

#73

Post by newsbinator » Thu, Jul 11, 2019, 6:44 PM UTC

Slartie wrote: post #61

slg wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>On second thought, there's a faster way to the goal. Just make smartphones listen all the time. Which is why all the complaints about these smart speakers have always seemed a little silly to me. Tapping into the audio of the phone we all carry with us everywhere is infinitely more valuable than tapping into a stationary speaker that is probably sitting in a room alone 90% of the time. It is also much easier to hide…

> It is also much easier to hide all the bandwidth associated with capturing all that extra audio since it has access to a network that the user doesn't completely control. However, it is pretty hard to hide the large drain on the battery if your phone constantly streams audio to someone via cell network. And I'd say, since most people are on a volume limited data plan, streaming gigabytes of data will not go unnotic…

If the mobile network is in on it, one's only flag is the battery drain.

Apple could add a "microphone actively/recently in use" icon to the top of the phone.

Re: Google admits listening to some smart speaker recordings

#74

Post by nocturnial » Thu, Jul 11, 2019, 6:44 PM UTC

scarejunba wrote: post #65

nocturnial wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you want raw data: out of the 1000 audio recordings the journalists could get their hands on, 153 were recorded without the trigger word. Google provided those audio recordings to language experts for transcription without account information. The journalists managed to track down several people using only the audio and confronted those people with the audio. They confirmed it was indeed their voices.

Like for the context-keeping? I know it’ll record post-response without an additional trigger phrase instance and that’s fine.

It mentioned it was probably due to misinterpreting some words as the trigger phrase. They formulated it as "any word that remotely sounds like google could trigger it"

Re: Google admits listening to some smart speaker recordings

#75

Post by slg » Thu, Jul 11, 2019, 6:45 PM UTC

Slartie wrote: post #61

slg wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>On second thought, there's a faster way to the goal. Just make smartphones listen all the time. Which is why all the complaints about these smart speakers have always seemed a little silly to me. Tapping into the audio of the phone we all carry with us everywhere is infinitely more valuable than tapping into a stationary speaker that is probably sitting in a room alone 90% of the time. It is also much easier to hide…

> It is also much easier to hide all the bandwidth associated with capturing all that extra audio since it has access to a network that the user doesn't completely control. However, it is pretty hard to hide the large drain on the battery if your phone constantly streams audio to someone via cell network. And I'd say, since most people are on a volume limited data plan, streaming gigabytes of data will not go unnotic…

The whole premise of the original line of thinking is that corporations are lying to you and/or they are compromised by the government or some other malicious entity. All bets are off once that is accepted as a possibility. Who's to say that the bandwidth used by the compromised phone will show up on your account? Furthermore why should we trust the battery percentage displayed on the phone? If the phone is lying to you about the microphone being on, maybe it is lying to you about the current battery percentage or what specifically is draining your battery.

The phone also doesn't need to constantly be listening and streaming audio 24/7. Phones generally have a lot more processing power available to them than smart speakers. Maybe some of the audio processing is done on the device. Maybe the phone is only recording and waits to process and upload the data once it is charging and the battery drain is easier to hide. There are countless ways to try to mask this type of activity.

Re: Google admits listening to some smart speaker recordings

#76

Post by bluGill » Thu, Jul 11, 2019, 6:50 PM UTC

smattiso wrote: post #72

malvosenior wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> On second thought, there's a faster way to the goal. Just make smartphones listen all the time. The good thing about trying this is people would definitely notice the increased bandwidth usage of their phone streaming audio in real time, all the time.

Not necessarily, speech to text engines are pretty decent so it's conceivable a listening device could just send the transcript.

People would notice the battery drain though.

Re: Google admits listening to some smart speaker recordings

#77

Post by UncleMeat » Thu, Jul 11, 2019, 6:50 PM UTC

reaperducer wrote: post #67

yongjik wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As an ex-Googler, I'd like to say that "ordinary people" still won't understand what privacy they're giving up. Before the news, they underestimated it; not they overestimate it, but still without clear understanding of what's happening. A group of researchers listening to a random sample of audio clip with no way to identify actual speakers is very different from someone being able to look up your name and address a…

How else would they improve their search algorithm? There are lots of ways. Ways that other industries test and refine without violating privacy. One example: Having a group of people who sign up to be part of your testing. That way there's informed consent.

That's what happens now. You you check the "use my data to improve xyz services" box.

Re: Google admits listening to some smart speaker recordings

#78

Post by okmokmz » Thu, Jul 11, 2019, 6:51 PM UTC

cblades wrote: post #29

okmokmz wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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.

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

Yes, so it recorded and sent audio when the user did not want it to. That's not any better. It'd be like if your gun went off while holstered, and you said that it was prompted to fire because the hammer hit the bullet despite the trigger not being pulled. It's very clearly not the intended functionality, so to trying to argue that that conversation recording/sending was prompted when there was no intent from the user to activate the device is a major stretch

Re: Google admits listening to some smart speaker recordings

#79

Post by watwut » Thu, Jul 11, 2019, 6:52 PM UTC

dev_dull wrote: post #35

Is this honestly surprising to any developer? How can you develop a product like Siri/OK Google without being able look closely at edge cases? And if you have to record conversations to troubleshoot even extremely rare edge cases, you still end up with a system that allows this eavesdropping.

I work on software without having access to customers data. Where I can access them, it is with their consent and NDA signed.

Wtf. Of course software can be made without listening to private data of customers.

Re: Google admits listening to some smart speaker recordings

#80

Post by safog » Thu, Jul 11, 2019, 6:53 PM UTC

ben_jones wrote: post #51

danShumway wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In some ways, this is missing the point. To people working in machine learning, this isn't a revelation. To ordinary people, it is. A common refrain that comes up in discussions about privacy is that ordinary consumers don't care about stuff like Google Home. They don't care about privacy, only weird tech people care about privacy. However, the fact that articles like this get traction shows that a substantial portio…

Or to put it a little simpler: Way fewer units would've been sold if consumers knew third world contractors would be listening to their private home conversations. If the way you make your meat is messy, you have an obligation to share that at the dinner table if you are a good actor.

Why does it matter if it's Americans listening to it vs third world contractors?

Also Google and Amazon are a large American companies that mostly try to do the right thing in terms of user privacy. I'd be more concerned about the random IoT microwaves and fridges made by a small company in China or Japan with their own assistant features built in sending audio to god knows where. Atleast I can reasonably trust the wakeword implementations for Alexa and Home, you can't even trust than with other h/w.

It again comes back to, yes, researchers listen to a carefully chosen random selection of audio clips and they're not really targeting a single user. It's impossible to explain that nuance in marketing material.