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She was chatting with friends in a Lyft. Then someone texted her what they said

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Re: She was chatting with friends in a Lyft. Then someone texted her what they said

#31

Post by bhouston »

belter wrote: post #28
bhouston wrote: post #22

I hope what is happening in the US right now, with people getting deported for writing Op-Eds criticizing US foreign policy, is a temporarily thing and not the direction we are heading into. But if it isn't temporarily, we should expect surveillance like discussed in this article to grow and our opinions to be monitored in a more pervasive fashion. It is a relatively trivial matter from a technology standpoint to fee…

> Could see a nightmare scenario where companies like Palantir create such a system for domestic usage in the US. I can guarantee you such a system already exists.

> I can guarantee you such a system already exists.

There is a limited one the US has built just to deport pro-Palestinian students from the US on visas: https://www.reuters.com/technology/artificial-intelligence/u...

The history of such "technology innovations" is that they generally do not stop at the initial scope, and likely will greatly expand its applicability to other groups, other opinions and for other purposes.

Re: She was chatting with friends in a Lyft. Then someone texted her what they said

#32

Post by mirekrusin »

ghaff wrote: post #5
pm90 wrote: post #2

This seems a bit of an overreaction. If im entering a gas station, I assume Im being recorded. Same should be true for a cab or rideshare.

Respectfully disagree. I’m not going to hold highly sensitive conversations anywhere that someone could hear. And I assume a lot of presentations people work on in planes are at least somewhat sensitive if the wrong person were to see. But I do assume some modicum of privacy.

But there is driver you don't know that hears everything already, no?

Re: She was chatting with friends in a Lyft. Then someone texted her what they said

#33

Post by pjc50 »

belter wrote: post #28
bhouston wrote: post #22

I hope what is happening in the US right now, with people getting deported for writing Op-Eds criticizing US foreign policy, is a temporarily thing and not the direction we are heading into. But if it isn't temporarily, we should expect surveillance like discussed in this article to grow and our opinions to be monitored in a more pervasive fashion. It is a relatively trivial matter from a technology standpoint to fee…

> Could see a nightmare scenario where companies like Palantir create such a system for domestic usage in the US. I can guarantee you such a system already exists.

This sort of thing has been talked about since Echelon and Cointelpro. The missing bit is the final one, which is now arriving: enforcement. Which is why the Abrego Garcia case is so important.

(as always, I think people have underestimated the extent to which some people want the awesome power of an authoritarian state to be wielded against other people.)

Re: She was chatting with friends in a Lyft. Then someone texted her what they said

#35

Post by [deleted] »

bhouston wrote: post #22

I hope what is happening in the US right now, with people getting deported for writing Op-Eds criticizing US foreign policy, is a temporarily thing and not the direction we are heading into. But if it isn't temporarily, we should expect surveillance like discussed in this article to grow and our opinions to be monitored in a more pervasive fashion. It is a relatively trivial matter from a technology standpoint to fee…

[deleted]

Re: She was chatting with friends in a Lyft. Then someone texted her what they said

#36

Post by jmb99 »

davweb wrote: post #10

It's easy to accidentally hit the microphone button that appears for any text field in almost all smartphone apps. The phone then transcribes any speech it hears and enters it into the field. I've done this. It's not hard to imagine a scenario where the driver had the message passenger view open in the Lyft app and accidentally recorded the conversation this way. This probably happens a lot but this time the driver a…

I was in an uber (in Canada) yesterday, and the app had a tiny message in the top right corner that “this ride is being recorded” (or something to that effect), which was only displayed after the driver picked me up. When tapped, it showed a screen that the ride was being recorded for passenger and driver safety, and that recordings were only available to uber support of the driver chose to send them.

So clearly it’s not out of the question for something like this to happen.

Re: She was chatting with friends in a Lyft. Then someone texted her what they said

#37

Post by pjc50 »

pm90 wrote: post #2

This seems a bit of an overreaction. If im entering a gas station, I assume Im being recorded. Same should be true for a cab or rideshare.

UK here: cabs and buses now come with little notifications of video recording (not sure whether audio is included, but presumably) for the usual reason, crime prevention. But there's slightly more protection offered by GDPR.

Re: She was chatting with friends in a Lyft. Then someone texted her what they said

#39

Post by [deleted] »

pjc50 wrote: post #33
belter wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Could see a nightmare scenario where companies like Palantir create such a system for domestic usage in the US. I can guarantee you such a system already exists.

This sort of thing has been talked about since Echelon and Cointelpro. The missing bit is the final one, which is now arriving: enforcement. Which is why the Abrego Garcia case is so important. (as always, I think people have underestimated the extent to which some people want the awesome power of an authoritarian state to be wielded against other people .)

[deleted]

Re: She was chatting with friends in a Lyft. Then someone texted her what they said

#40

Post by janice1999 »

mystraline wrote: post #21

So, the only defense is either "stfu", or make an ultrasonic transducer device to fill the area with ultrasonic static. Or, better, don't use lyft.

Or have sane privacy laws that are actually enforced? You can't solve issues like this with technology on a local scale.

Companies generally comply with legalisation. GDPR is far from perfect but EU companies adjusted since it is just the price of doing business.

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