71–80 of 215 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Macbooks since 2018 physically disable microphones and webcams when the lid is closed: https://www.businessinsider.com/apple-macbook-air-and-2018-m...
How does a chip "physically disconnects" a device?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Macbooks since 2018 physically disable microphones and webcams when the lid is closed: https://www.businessinsider.com/apple-macbook-air-and-2018-m...
How does a chip "physically disconnects" a device?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Many Android phones have always-on "Ok Google" hotword detection that works exactly like the standalone devices. Source: Mine does, very useful!
You'll note that "OK, Google" works when your phone is on flight mode. Google aren't constantly sending your microphone data to their servers, the recognition of that phrase happens on your device.
Alexa et al are also normalizing "always on microphone that sends audio to a remote business over the internet" technology . According to the bright-line rule from Kyllo v United States [1], when a technology is "in general public use"[2], police no longer need a warrant when they use their own devices based on that technology to see the "details of a private home that would previously have been unknowable without ph…
How so? The ruling is about agents using thermal imaging technology to bust a marijuana plantation, performed from a car on a public street. The court stated that this does not constitute a search, since any random citizen could've done the same thing using commodity equipment. Always on microphones that transmit via the internet (i.e. bugs) have been a commodity for... a few decades? But you still cannot legally bug…
Alexa et al are also normalizing "always on microphone that sends audio to a remote business over the internet" technology . According to the bright-line rule from Kyllo v United States [1], when a technology is "in general public use"[2], police no longer need a warrant when they use their own devices based on that technology to see the "details of a private home that would previously have been unknowable without ph…
The thing in your pocket is always listening too.
Note: intent and expectations matter. A cellphone by itself (without any type of "voice assistant" app or feature) is only intended to record audio when it's being used to make a call. Yes, malicious actors or buggy software could enable the microphone, but that's not the expected behavior of the device. Kyllo v United States is all about what the public understands and expects about a technology.
[1] https://www.cdw.com/product/att-trimline-210-corded-phone/30...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The thing in your pocket is always listening too.
Supposedly your smart phone and smart TV are not passively listening to your offline conversations. That's only done on a targeted basis to people who are being monitored. Your location history however is being passively tracked. Not defending it, but your smart phone is not quite as bad as Alexa. At least for the moment.
The only additional danger from an Alexa device is that you are trusting amazon as well, but the core functionality of an Alexa device to always listen for the wake word and communicate to a server if it thinks it heard the wake word locally is the same as what most smartphones have.
I have no doubt they are able to hear anything happening in the room they happen to be installed in. But I doubt they listen for anything but their keyword, and I seriously doubt they listen, record and send off to their overlords what they hear on a massive basis. However, they clearly CAN, and while they almost certainly don't on any massive scale, if they by their overlord or a security hack, did on a targeted bas…
>However, they clearly CAN, and while they almost certainly don't on any massive scale, if they by their overlord or a security hack, did on a targeted basis listen, record and send conversations on, that would be very possible, and very harmful for whoever was targeted. Besides the fact that they have better antennas, this is true for pretty much any device with a microphone and a processor with audio processing cap…
Yes, that's why automatic updates was seen with a lot of skepticism at first. And the reason automatic updates are winning is because everything is so full of holes that disabling automatic updates is even less secure than enabling it.
I don’t entirely get the cognitive dissonance of worrying about a microphone+speaker sitting on your table when you probably have a microphone+speaker+camera+face-scanner etc... in your pocket. Same story for most laptops.
Wrong threat model. Those devices only record maliciously if they're hacked. Smart speakers/home assistants inadvertenly record during normal operation. See: all the news stories about their owners discovering their recordings on their google/amazon account.
It just doesn’t have a website where i can see all the times it was activated by accident AFAIK.
I want and expected it to listen to everything. Sure it can be used to harm me but it won't be a good business decision, on the other hand they can use the data improve the product and service for me.
> Sure it can be used to harm me but it won't be a good business decision In the advertising industry harming you is often a great business decision. Dissatisfaction breeds demand.
Alexa et al are also normalizing "always on microphone that sends audio to a remote business over the internet" technology . According to the bright-line rule from Kyllo v United States [1], when a technology is "in general public use"[2], police no longer need a warrant when they use their own devices based on that technology to see the "details of a private home that would previously have been unknowable without ph…
How so? The ruling is about agents using thermal imaging technology to bust a marijuana plantation, performed from a car on a public street. The court stated that this does not constitute a search, since any random citizen could've done the same thing using commodity equipment. Always on microphones that transmit via the internet (i.e. bugs) have been a commodity for... a few decades? But you still cannot legally bug…
From the court's opinion (the above [1]):
>> ... obtaining by sense-enhancing technology any information regarding the home's interior that could not otherwise have been obtained without physical "intrusion into a constitutionally protected area," constitutes a search--at least where (as here) the technology in question is not in general public use.
>> Based on this criterion, the information obtained by the thermal imager in this case was the product of a search.
>> the imaging in this case was an unlawful search