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Siri records fights, doctor’s appointments, and sex, and contractors hear it

arstechnica.com

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Re: Siri records fights, doctor’s appointments, and sex, and contractors hear it

#21

Post by hermitdev »

identity0 wrote: post #15
droithomme wrote: post #8

If Siri reviewers encounter evidence of certain crimes such as murder, sex trafficking, pedophilia, or domestic abuse, it is obvious they have a basic moral duty to report the crime and turn over the evidence to investigators.

I disagree. There's a reason that evidence obtained illegally by the police can't be admitted in court, even if it proves some horrible crime. IMO the fair use of the law for the whole population is far more important than stopping one criminal.

Obligatory not a lawyer, but third party doctrine likely applies in the US, meaning that it would not be illegal for police to use such evidence if supplied by Apple. Not sure where the line is drawn if Apple itself violated it's own EULA, or violated local wire tapping laws, or if a service like Siri falls under such laws. I know California and Illinois are 2 party consent states. Not positive if it's only for phone calls or all voice recordings.

Re: Siri records fights, doctor’s appointments, and sex, and contractors hear it

#22

Post by anigbrowl »

droithomme wrote: post #8

If Siri reviewers encounter evidence of certain crimes such as murder, sex trafficking, pedophilia, or domestic abuse, it is obvious they have a basic moral duty to report the crime and turn over the evidence to investigators.

Your persistent trolling is becoming tiresome.

Re: Siri records fights, doctor’s appointments, and sex, and contractors hear it

#23

Post by itronitron »

hug wrote: post #6
rgovostes wrote: post #4

Apple has extensively annotated iOS with understandable information about how data is used. The user has the ability to review this info when they enable Hey Siri, or any time in the Siri & Search settings. It lists the data that is sent to Apple when you activate Siri. Personally, I’ve only ever seen Hey Siri falsely activate once, from something a character on TV said. (I could get Ok, Google to trigger on a friend…

Siri activates almost any time I say “are you serious?!”, which is a phrase I say with some regularity. I’ve definitely had it activated a number of times by the TV or when watching YouTube or Twitch.

Siri-usly?

Re: Siri records fights, doctor’s appointments, and sex, and contractors hear it

#24

Post by forgotmyhnacc »

Many HNers have a weird belief that Apple is somehow a privacy focused company, despite it actually being no more private than Facebook or Google.

The main concern people have (voice assistants beside) is data gathering for ads, which Apple does for their app search, among other places. Also, their data centers are in China, which gives Chinese authorities full access to their iCloud account.

If you want privacy, don't rely on corporations. Host everything yourself, and encrypt your data at rest and in flight.

Re: Siri records fights, doctor’s appointments, and sex, and contractors hear it

#26

Post by luckylion »

ocdtrekkie wrote: post #19
romwell wrote: post #2

> “These recordings are accompanied by user data showing location, contact details, and app data.” This should be in the title. Media was focusing on contractors listening to Google Assistant snippets not long ago — and those were anonymized . Private and identifying information was in the snippets, not metadata (the article mentioned this).

Note that while the Google recording data was arguably "anonymized", the reviewers of the leaked recordings were able to in many cases find enough personal information to contact the people recorded. Which means they were not, in fact, anonymized. "We let ordinary Flemish people hear some of their own recordings. ‘This is undeniably my own voice’, says one man, clearly surprised." "A couple from Waasmunster immediate…

It's largely impossible to anonymize data you don't understand, isn't it? They have somebody transcribe the recording because they don't know what it said, so they can't know whether PII is in there. I suppose they might try to split it into multiple parts and have different people work on each part, but that may lead to problems, as you need the full sentence as context in some cases.

Re: Siri records fights, doctor’s appointments, and sex, and contractors hear it

#27

Post by matt-attack »

droithomme wrote: post #8

If Siri reviewers encounter evidence of certain crimes such as murder, sex trafficking, pedophilia, or domestic abuse, it is obvious they have a basic moral duty to report the crime and turn over the evidence to investigators.

As an aside, it’s highly ignorant to refer to pedophilia as a “crime”. Please be aware that pedophilia is not in fact a crime at all. It in fact refers to the attraction one had toward pre-pubescent children. Be aware that this is entirely different than being a child rapist. I assume you meant to say “child rapists” in your statement.

In the same way it’s generally accepted that homosexuals and heterosexuals don’t choose their sexual identity, neither do pedophiles. One could say they’re “cursed” to be given that sexual preference they were born with. Since most are not both pedophiles and rapists, most are doomed to live a life of unfulfilled attraction. The majority of pedophiles recognize that rape is wrong and would never consider it. To equate pedophilia and rape is flawed as equating all neck-beards as obviously rapists (since presumably they’re so sexually repulsive they could never get a woman to agree to consensual sex). Obviously the majority of sexually repulsive males don’t just feel entitled to rape at will, neither do pedophiles.

Re: Siri records fights, doctor’s appointments, and sex, and contractors hear it

#28

Post by Aloha »

forgotmyhnacc wrote: post #24

Many HNers have a weird belief that Apple is somehow a privacy focused company, despite it actually being no more private than Facebook or Google. The main concern people have (voice assistants beside) is data gathering for ads, which Apple does for their app search, among other places. Also, their data centers are in China, which gives Chinese authorities full access to their iCloud account. If you want privacy, don…

Their datacenter for Chinese customers are in china.

I expect them to take reasonable precautions, mistakes do get made. I'm not a user of voice assistants, I'd rather use the device directly, its faster anyhow.

To quote from the article "Voice assistants appear to be yet another instance where a technology has been developed and adopted faster than its consequences have been fully thought-out."

Re: Siri records fights, doctor’s appointments, and sex, and contractors hear it

#29

Post by paulcarroty »

romwell wrote: post #2

> “These recordings are accompanied by user data showing location, contact details, and app data.” This should be in the title. Media was focusing on contractors listening to Google Assistant snippets not long ago — and those were anonymized . Private and identifying information was in the snippets, not metadata (the article mentioned this).

> and those were anonymized

Hard to believe for Google context. They always trying to get the max possible data.

Re: Siri records fights, doctor’s appointments, and sex, and contractors hear it

#30

Post by Aloha »

tshtf wrote: post #20
rgovostes wrote: post #4

Apple has extensively annotated iOS with understandable information about how data is used. The user has the ability to review this info when they enable Hey Siri, or any time in the Siri & Search settings. It lists the data that is sent to Apple when you activate Siri. Personally, I’ve only ever seen Hey Siri falsely activate once, from something a character on TV said. (I could get Ok, Google to trigger on a friend…

I once asked Siri "What city am I in?", to which she responded "Calling Ian." This was around 5am. I promptly disabled Siri and never looked back.

This was my experience, and took the same course of action.
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