Earlier quoted context omitted.
I always thought some three lettered agency must have encouraged MS to buy Skype from its foreign owners for precisely that reason. The first 10 years at least MS did absolutely nothing with the company, as if it never really wanted to buy it.
That’s pretty silly. For one thing, it was already owned domestically before MS bought it. Second, you think MS spends 8.5 billion plus untild engineering resources and overhead as a favor to the US government?
Microsoft Contractors Are Listening to Some Skype Calls
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Re: Microsoft Contractors Are Listening to Some Skype Calls
#22I think we have to assume at this point that all online communication tools owned by for-profit mega-corps are compromised and that they can and do listen/analyse everything. I have long assumed that with Whatsapp... I honestly don't believe that it's as secure as it used to be: Facebook'a raison d'etre is all about data gathering. Also, when I read a WhatsApp message on my phone, it's unencrypted as I see it on the…
Specifically, you should realize anything that companies say is done with "AI" is probably in some part done by poorly paid contractors. And not always on the analysis end, for example: https://www.forbes.com/sites/johanmoreno/2019/05/28/25-of-go... There's something incredibly dystopian by using humans as part of a process you literally tell people is entirely machines.
Haha, I never realised it was that immature.
As an aside: Being a tech I have been asked numerous times by non-techs "What actually is AI?"
I usually answer "a lot of if-statements" :)
Re: Microsoft Contractors Are Listening to Some Skype Calls
#23If it's not end to end encrypted--and by that I mean using audited, open source cryptography--you should assume that the full contents may be made public at any time. And you should basically assume that metadata will be made public no matter what you do.
Re: Microsoft Contractors Are Listening to Some Skype Calls
#24If only we had a network where end users could exchange data without a middleman.
Re: Microsoft Contractors Are Listening to Some Skype Calls
#25when oh when will enough be enough
never
Re: Microsoft Contractors Are Listening to Some Skype Calls
#26So the gist of this unsuprising discovery is that Microsoft's translator 'AI' is actually supervised by contractors who listen to users voice data to correct their requests.
I'm very skeptical of these privacy claims. The fact that my voice commands are being sent to a random person on one end listening to them at home makes me reconsider the real purpose of these 'Smart Assistants' in general. If Microsoft thinks that the contractor can only access it via a 'secure portal' means that they are respecting your privacy, then the security is as a good as it being compromised and contradicts their end-to-end encryption claims.
To these companies, 'privacy' is just another buzzword used to keep us using their services. I think it would take something far worse than this to break the social inertia around these services and for us to reconsider using them.
Re: Microsoft Contractors Are Listening to Some Skype Calls
#27I think we have to assume at this point that all online communication tools owned by for-profit mega-corps are compromised and that they can and do listen/analyse everything. I have long assumed that with Whatsapp... I honestly don't believe that it's as secure as it used to be: Facebook'a raison d'etre is all about data gathering. Also, when I read a WhatsApp message on my phone, it's unencrypted as I see it on the…
Compromised by what? Whom? Listening / analyzing for what?
These stories are really overblown. All these companies are doing it in order to make voice recognition better. It’s simply not possible to do with some QA... you have to know what people are actually saying vs what the system recognized.
Re: Microsoft Contractors Are Listening to Some Skype Calls
#28Earlier quoted context omitted.
I always thought some three lettered agency must have encouraged MS to buy Skype from its foreign owners for precisely that reason. The first 10 years at least MS did absolutely nothing with the company, as if it never really wanted to buy it.
That’s pretty silly. For one thing, it was already owned domestically before MS bought it. Second, you think MS spends 8.5 billion plus untild engineering resources and overhead as a favor to the US government?
Why not?
That was immediately before O365, and at that point BPOS/Exchange online was starting to get traction with some governments. Microsoft was also ramping their OCS/VoIP business.
Government is a huge market for O365, they were able to get ATOs and go conquer most states and federal agencies. They also bought a huge VoIP play, learned how to operationalize it, quickly spun it into a service component that serves >100M people.
Re: Microsoft Contractors Are Listening to Some Skype Calls
#29>Although Skype's website says that the company may analyze audio of phone calls that a user wants to translate in order to improve the chat platform's services, it does not say some of this analysis will be done by humans. I'm sorry, but isn't this just nitpicking? Just because they don't say how it's analyzed doesn't make this a scandal.
Yes. In fact, I think it would be hard to classify a totally automated mechanism as "analysis".
Re: Microsoft Contractors Are Listening to Some Skype Calls
#30Gotta love Big Corp poetry with their "some", "a few", "a small number" verses.