How can a device activate 1.5 times a day? Does it have to activate right before midnight then deactivate the same amount of time after midnight? Technically that's still activating on a whole day. Or can some devices half-activate?
Locked-down lawyers warned Alexa is hearing confidential calls
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Re: Locked-down lawyers warned Alexa is hearing confidential calls
#172Earlier quoted context omitted.
Supposedly they use on-device AI to recognize "OK, Google," "Hey, Alexa," etc., then send the following command over the internet. Supposedly.
The wake-word spotting for "Alexa," "Computer," and "Echo" is done on-device. I wouldn't call it AI in any meaningful sense of the word. Source: worked on project for ~3 years.
Re: Locked-down lawyers warned Alexa is hearing confidential calls
#173I 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, they could. I get some scepticism when I say my businesses have declined to move to Windows 10, mostly because we don't trust the security and privacy aspects. However, we deal with personal data, and we also deal with various types of information that are protected by statute and/or contract. It would be very obviously against the spirit and quite possibly against the letter of several different laws for us to knowingly store and use that kind of data on a system that sends information we can't control up to the mothership and/or that could be updated without us agreeing to it. Indeed, there are multiple ongoing investigations into Windows 10 because of exactly those kinds of concerns across the EU right now.
It's a good thing that non-technical people who do take privacy seriously, such as lawyers, are starting to notice the glaring problem with these modern technologies and advise against using them. With a bit of luck, we'll then get statutory regulation requiring disclosure in advance of exactly what these devices are doing and the security and privacy implications including when they don't work properly or if they get compromised. Again, there had been much discussion in Europe recently, at least up until the world was more concerned with another kind of virus over the past few weeks, of requiring much stronger standards for security in IoT devices, and those sorts of laws really can't arrive soon enough. Mandating controls to physically isolate all cameras, microphones, transmitters and receivers at the hardware level might not be a bad idea, either.
Re: Locked-down lawyers warned Alexa is hearing confidential calls
#174Earlier quoted context omitted.
My iPhone has activated “hey Siri” before by accident too. It just doesn’t have a website where i can see all the times it was activated by accident AFAIK.
If you turn Siri off, it doesn't activate by accident, and the iPhone still works as intended. If you turn off Alexa, the home assistant doesn't activate by accident because it doesn't work at all.
Re: Locked-down lawyers warned Alexa is hearing confidential calls
#175Earlier quoted context omitted.
The wake-word spotting for "Alexa," "Computer," and "Echo" is done on-device. I wouldn't call it AI in any meaningful sense of the word. Source: worked on project for ~3 years.
Wonder if the whole voice recognition could be done on device? No voice sent over the net, firmware updates to improve recognition. Then just call the needed APIs to activate services etc.
Re: Locked-down lawyers warned Alexa is hearing confidential calls
#176>Amazon and Google say their devices are designed to record and store audio only after they detect a word to wake them up. The companies say such instances are rare, but recent testing by Northeastern University and Imperial College London found that the devices can activate inadvertently between 1.5 and 19 times a day. How can a device activate 1.5 times a day? Does it have to activate right before midnight then dea…
Re: Locked-down lawyers warned Alexa is hearing confidential calls
#177>Amazon and Google say their devices are designed to record and store audio only after they detect a word to wake them up. The companies say such instances are rare, but recent testing by Northeastern University and Imperial College London found that the devices can activate inadvertently between 1.5 and 19 times a day. How can a device activate 1.5 times a day? Does it have to activate right before midnight then dea…
Re: Locked-down lawyers warned Alexa is hearing confidential calls
#178Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not sure if you are being snarky. Do you have anything to add ?
We seem to agree about the level of risk. It's no more my place to tell you how comfortable you should feel with that risk, than it would be for me to tell you what genre of music should be your favorite. That's just personal preference.
Re: Locked-down lawyers warned Alexa is hearing confidential calls
#179Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
>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 your neighbor's apartment. It has not been normal until the last few years for people to typically have an Alexa-like device that is always listening for the "I'm about to make a request" signal, which frequently gets turned on by accident. It's not ridiculous that someone mig…
Re: Locked-down lawyers warned Alexa is hearing confidential calls
#180I grew up in a communist dictatorship, where illegal wiretapping by the government is still an open wound in society's culture. Given that, I cannot understand who willingly buys this crap and puts it in their house. A couple of days ago, I lost all respect for a coworker when we were in a meeting and somebody said something which woke up the Echo he had on his desk.
Do you carry a smart phone? Does it not have a microphone designed to have hands free conversations and pick up audio from a distance? Does it have the ability to constantly track your location? Does it contain most of your private, electronic communication? If we're talking about illegal wiretapping, a smart phone is significantly more risky and problematic than a smart speaker.