Apple suspends Siri response grading in response to privacy concerns • Hacker News Board

Re: Apple suspends Siri response grading in response to privacy concerns

#101

Post by joshuamorton » Fri, Aug 02, 2019, 9:44 AM UTC

raxxorrax wrote: post #99

joshuamorton wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> One could argue that's a good thing. Then you should make that argument. If you think it's a good thing, put in the effort of saying why. Don't force me to imagine why it might be so. > That's not a claim, that's a fact. Sure. But asking for explicit consent for the innocuous thing: logging a bit and nothing else, doesn't change the fact that the company could be lying. Nothing is gained. If they're lying about log…

> Making people expend mental energy on otherwise unimportant/irrelevant decisions is anti-user. Then don't ask them and let them explicitly toggle the option to share information. That isn't anti-user. Your privacy invasions are anti-user.

> Then don't ask them and let them explicitly toggle the option to share information.

Is incrementing a counter if an app crashes a privacy invasion?

Re: Apple suspends Siri response grading in response to privacy concerns

#102

Post by IfOnlyYouKnew » Fri, Aug 02, 2019, 9:51 AM UTC

ekianjo wrote: post #78

IfOnlyYouKnew wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tangentially related: The Technical University of Berlin is considered to have one of Germany's best departments of philosophy. The reason: after World War 2, the university was located in the British-controlled sector, and their administration made philosophy mandatory for all students. Because never again should young people be given the power of an engineering/science education without any regard to the ethical im…

> have one of Germany's best departments of philosophy. So what? Philosophy has barely anything to do with ethics. You can study philosophers that can argue for complete opposite sides of the same point at hand, so it does not give you any indication as to what is right or wrong. And Germany has a pretty poor record so far in terms of privacy protections/provisions, so I am not sure there is any indication that post-…

Ethics is one of major branches within philosophy. You can, obviously, dismiss the modern practice of philosophy if their results go over your head. But it's really difficult to argue the terminology, because ethics is part of philosophy more or less by definition.

As to your objection: differences of opinion do not render the discussion worthless. Otherwise, non-philosophers would have just as little legitimisation to argue ethics as they do, considering religion, politics, and kindergarten kids similarly have people arguing opposing points of view.

The argument is also selling philosophy somewhat short: Because while there are completely different paradigms of how to investigate ethics, they happen to agree on a surprisingly large canon, i. e. "don't kill too many innocents" (and, to incorporate the Greeks: "...and try looking good while doing so").

Many ideas of moral philosophy have become so widely accepted that we no longer notice them, sort of like the fish that don't have a concept of "water". "All men are created equal" came from those ivory tower talking heads at a time where it was a rather radical idea and got about as much ridicule as animal rights or the trolley problem are getting today in some quarters.

Re: Apple suspends Siri response grading in response to privacy concerns

#103

Post by tedeh » Fri, Aug 02, 2019, 9:51 AM UTC

jacobwilliamroy wrote: post #90

probably_wrong wrote: post #19

So far, most of the comments here are a good example of both why this happened and why it will happen again. When people complained that putting microphones in your home 24/7 was creepy, the response was "that's nonsense, Siri is not sending anything unless you specifically ask for it". When it turned out that it does send things you didn't intend, the response was "well, it's not like anyone is listening anyway". No…

I was a prototype for Echelon IV. My instructions are to amuse visitors with information about themselves I don't see anything amusing about spying on people. Human beings feel pleasure when they are watched. I have recorded their smiles as I tell them who they are Some people just don't understand the dangers of indiscriminate surveillance. The need to be observed and understood was once satisfied by God. Now we can…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1b-bijO3uEw

Re: Apple suspends Siri response grading in response to privacy concerns

#104

Post by raxxorrax » Fri, Aug 02, 2019, 9:52 AM UTC

pluma wrote: post #44

shalmanese wrote: post #5

People have really bad intuitions around privacy. The predominant mental model is that there is a single, motivated adversary who is uniquely interested in attacking them. In reality, privacy almost always involves large, impersonal systems ingesting masses of data to either increase profits or commit crimes. It may sound bad that some random person is hearing your sex sounds but that person has heard a thousand othe…

Sure, corporate privacy abuse is a different beast and bad for different reasons but your mistake is thinking of this as an either-or scenario. Yes, you may not care about whose audio you're listening to. But someone might. They may not even know the person prior to listening to that audio and still pose a threat. Stalking is an obvious problem. But what if they think they recognise a voice and then act on that infor…

There already have been cases where FBI-employees stalked their love interests. If you allow the access, it will be abused.

> People in tech generally seem to have an extremely hard time to grasp a basic premise: consent.

It is not necessarily people in tech since those had a very tight grasp around the topic, at least historically. But the field has widened a lot.

Re: Apple suspends Siri response grading in response to privacy concerns

#105

Post by arien » Fri, Aug 02, 2019, 9:56 AM UTC

tinus_hn wrote: post #100

probably_wrong wrote: post #19

So far, most of the comments here are a good example of both why this happened and why it will happen again. When people complained that putting microphones in your home 24/7 was creepy, the response was "that's nonsense, Siri is not sending anything unless you specifically ask for it". When it turned out that it does send things you didn't intend, the response was "well, it's not like anyone is listening anyway". No…

All Apple devices that support Hi Siri play a notification and display lights or a UI when it activates and starts sending data outside of the device. I don’t see what more they can do. Of course a device that listens for an activation phrase is going to listen. And it’s never going to be 100% accurate. If you can’t accept that, just set it up so it only starts listening when you press the button.

The explicit consent request is what they can do. It should have been there from the start, but better late than never.

Re: Apple suspends Siri response grading in response to privacy concerns

#106

Post by [deleted] » Fri, Aug 02, 2019, 9:57 AM UTC

izacus wrote: post #37

noodlesUK wrote: post #2

I’m genuinely concerned about data privacy, but I’m kinda surprised about the outcry about all of this. I guess it’s relatively common knowledge for hacker news readers that all of these systems need to have human intervention to improve, but I feel like all this could have been avoided by just explaining that this was how the service was able to improve... I’m sure more steps could be taken to anonymise data from th…

I think the outcry is mostly: 1.) Apple literally plastered "What happens on your iPhone stays on your iPhone" ads around CES to make fun of competitors. - https://www.macworld.com/article/3331597/apple-privacy-billb... 2.) Apple always slams competitors over their lack of privacy on every keynote. I think the outcry is more than warranted when the company is blatantly lying to your face in their marketing.

[deleted]

Re: Apple suspends Siri response grading in response to privacy concerns

#107

Post by icebraining » Fri, Aug 02, 2019, 9:58 AM UTC

joshuamorton wrote: post #101

raxxorrax wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Making people expend mental energy on otherwise unimportant/irrelevant decisions is anti-user. Then don't ask them and let them explicitly toggle the option to share information. That isn't anti-user. Your privacy invasions are anti-user.

> Then don't ask them and let them explicitly toggle the option to share information. Is incrementing a counter if an app crashes a privacy invasion?

Probably not. The method by which it communicates that increment can be, though.

Re: Apple suspends Siri response grading in response to privacy concerns

#108

Post by dfcmt » Fri, Aug 02, 2019, 9:58 AM UTC

izacus wrote: post #37

noodlesUK wrote: post #2

I’m genuinely concerned about data privacy, but I’m kinda surprised about the outcry about all of this. I guess it’s relatively common knowledge for hacker news readers that all of these systems need to have human intervention to improve, but I feel like all this could have been avoided by just explaining that this was how the service was able to improve... I’m sure more steps could be taken to anonymise data from th…

I think the outcry is mostly: 1.) Apple literally plastered "What happens on your iPhone stays on your iPhone" ads around CES to make fun of competitors. - https://www.macworld.com/article/3331597/apple-privacy-billb... 2.) Apple always slams competitors over their lack of privacy on every keynote. I think the outcry is more than warranted when the company is blatantly lying to your face in their marketing.

Only that Siri doesn't happen on the iPhone, and it's easy to prove: try using Siri with aeroplane mode on.

Re: Apple suspends Siri response grading in response to privacy concerns

#109

Post by Michielvv » Fri, Aug 02, 2019, 9:58 AM UTC

donkeyd wrote: post #7

noodlesUK wrote: post #2

I’m genuinely concerned about data privacy, but I’m kinda surprised about the outcry about all of this. I guess it’s relatively common knowledge for hacker news readers that all of these systems need to have human intervention to improve, but I feel like all this could have been avoided by just explaining that this was how the service was able to improve... I’m sure more steps could be taken to anonymise data from th…

I mostly agree, however, there are some issues I'm foreseeing. I've done some NLP work myself and have had access to very private information because of it. The team we were working with were all highly educated and well paid. Because of this, we were aware of the implications of the data we were working with, so at one point, in one of our randomly selected data sets, we found data that was from a public figure and…

Educated or not you can't 'unhear' something. What if the conversation is political or financial and has major implications on someone you know? Will you still be able to remain professional and not act on the information?

I feel like devices like this should at least give the user the opportunity to play back whatever is sent for manual evaluation. e.g. it could send you an email at the end of the month listing the recordings it would like to use.

Re: Apple suspends Siri response grading in response to privacy concerns

#110

Post by raxxorrax » Fri, Aug 02, 2019, 10:02 AM UTC

joshuamorton wrote: post #101

raxxorrax wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Making people expend mental energy on otherwise unimportant/irrelevant decisions is anti-user. Then don't ask them and let them explicitly toggle the option to share information. That isn't anti-user. Your privacy invasions are anti-user.

> Then don't ask them and let them explicitly toggle the option to share information. Is incrementing a counter if an app crashes a privacy invasion?

Yes, because you get a bunch of meta information when any device of mine uses my internet connection to connect to your servers to increase that counter. If you save that information or not, you created a trail.

I expect from any app that it doesn't establish any connections per default to be honest. You can have that as an option that I can enable if I feel like it.