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Amazon Echo

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Re: Amazon Echo

#541

Post by pbhjpbhj »

grey-area wrote: post #509
pbhjpbhj wrote: post #486

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Cell phones are routinely used as listening devices // Citation? I'm really interested, presumably there's a hacker convention talk or somesuch where they install a hidden service on a standard phone and upload all voice input even when the phone is off? Clearly I use burner non-smart phones for my criminal activities (that's a joke!) so they're going to have to use other means. Obviously they can still sniff the d…

It's an interesting video for other reasons, but at 1:47 here Binney mentions it: http://www.nytimes.com/video/opinion/100000001733041/the-pro... Here's another article about real-world use: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/3522137.stm

Daniel Ellsberg [Pentagon Papers whistle-blower]: "Somebody told me that they can listen to what we're saying by my having this cellphone {waves what looks like iPhone} even though it's turned off."

William Binney [ex-NSA]: "Yes. [... goes off on a tangent about data analysis]

He doesn't really mention it. Indeed the vid is considering electronic communications and information which is put in to the public sphere. Other than that one question which Binney responds to only with "Yes" there's no other mention of private audio being covertly sniffed.

The BBC article is very sparse and jumps from being able to eavesdrop mobile->basestation and decrypt that to being able to listen in on all conversations within range of a phone. Clearly ludicrous.

I don't at all doubt that phones can be modified remotely to covertly listen and that some phones could enable this when switched off (though that seems unlikely to meet with normal design requirements, it seems that this covert listening would need to be designed in). I guess maybe you could make "off" only appear to be off whilst listening - my phone gets hot when doing anything extended like recording a talk or something and drains the battery quite a lot - even with the screen off. Seems that using this sort of surveillance on a widescale is highly unlikely.

>"all it takes is one secret order to the company concerned, with a warrant covering the entire country, and their entire product line is useful for surveillance on demand" [grey-area, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8569217]

Only, IMO, if it's already been designed in and you can hide the power usage (and data-store usage).

Anything better?

Re: Amazon Echo

#542

Post by joeblau »

jwallaceparker wrote: post #343

Watch the promo video again and pretend it's the first few minutes of a horror movie. A package arrives on the front porch. The family brings it in and opens it. It's Alexa. It's "for everyone," says Father. The next few days are blissful. Alexa integrates herself into the family. She is indispensable. How did they ever get by without her? Father rushes in from the backyard, "Alexa, how tall is Mt. Everest?" Alexa an…

LMFAO... this needs to be a short film on YouTube.

Re: Amazon Echo

#543

Post by pbhjpbhj »

charlie_vill wrote: post #72

... request an invitation? Please, who do they think they are, Google? Or maybe expecting super long lines at their upcoming retail stores in NY? Come on Amazon, do yourself a favour and come up with things that matter.

I logged in to request an invite, then it removed the option ... they know too much already!

Re: Amazon Echo

#545

Post by base698 »

anilshanbhag wrote: post #529
chatmasta wrote: post #87

This "internet-of-things" trend coincides unfortunately with the "dragnet surveillance" trend. With every new product launch from a "cloud company," I increasingly feel as if I'm reading the tombstone of modern society. The selling point behind these devices is convenience, but at the cost of security. I don't think I need to explain to HN why an always-on, internet connected voice recording device is something to ke…

I feel the general the fear about "dragnet surveillance" is misplaced and uncalled for. As long as you haven't done anything wrong, hearing your conversations should be a total waste of time for whoever made the effort to do so. There are 100 million+ people in America, don't think people from NSA will waste their time on going over family conversations of every family.

The whole basis of rights is to protect YOU if THEY are wrong.

http://chronicle.com/article/Why-Privacy-Matters-Even-if/127...

What if the government mistakenly determines that based on your pattern of activities, you're likely to engage in a criminal act? What if it denies you the right to fly? What if the government thinks your financial transactions look odd—even if you've done nothing wrong—and freezes your accounts? What if the government doesn't protect your information with adequate security, and an identity thief obtains it and uses it to defraud you? Even if you have nothing to hide, the government can cause you a lot of harm.

Re: Amazon Echo

#546

Post by csarva »

FWIW, you can experience some of this right now. Connect a plugged-in iPhone to a bluetooth speaker and enable "Hey Siri." I did this the other day and it's pretty neat. Of course in my case, my phone was across the room and once I started playing some music I lost control over it... Seems echo fixes that problem though I'd be curious to see how well that works.

Re: Amazon Echo

#547

Post by woobar »

dandroid1 wrote: post #345
readerrrr wrote: post #323

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are trading your so far rarely touched privacy for solving minor first world annoyances.

This is no more invasive than Ok Google and Hey Siri.

I think both of them don't need to send any data to the mothership and can process this phrase on device.

For instance, in airplane mode with no network access iPhone response to 'Hey Siri' is 'Siri is not available. Connect to internet'

Re: Amazon Echo

#548

Post by mike-cardwell »

anilshanbhag wrote: post #529
chatmasta wrote: post #87

This "internet-of-things" trend coincides unfortunately with the "dragnet surveillance" trend. With every new product launch from a "cloud company," I increasingly feel as if I'm reading the tombstone of modern society. The selling point behind these devices is convenience, but at the cost of security. I don't think I need to explain to HN why an always-on, internet connected voice recording device is something to ke…

I feel the general the fear about "dragnet surveillance" is misplaced and uncalled for. As long as you haven't done anything wrong, hearing your conversations should be a total waste of time for whoever made the effort to do so. There are 100 million+ people in America, don't think people from NSA will waste their time on going over family conversations of every family.

It doesn't matter if you have nothing to hide. Other people do. Many of those people represent you in various official capacities, and you don't want them being coerced. Maybe some of your friends and family members have something to hide.

Also, I find it very difficult to relate to the whole, "I have nothing to hide, so fuck all the other people who do," attitude that many people seem to have.

Re: Amazon Echo

#549

Post by jrochkind1 »

chatmasta wrote: post #87

This "internet-of-things" trend coincides unfortunately with the "dragnet surveillance" trend. With every new product launch from a "cloud company," I increasingly feel as if I'm reading the tombstone of modern society. The selling point behind these devices is convenience, but at the cost of security. I don't think I need to explain to HN why an always-on, internet connected voice recording device is something to ke…

Do they coincide unfortunately, or are they actually kind of the _same thing_? I'm not sure.

Re: Amazon Echo

#550

Post by grey-area »

leeber wrote: post #535
grey-area wrote: post #366

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the government's paranoia a fear of alleged domestic and foreign threats to our safety, well-being, way of life, etc. Ostensibly. In real life these powers have been used for all sorts of activities outside this sort of apparently existential threat - for example spying on lawyers in civil rights cases. It's not clear they are useful against well-organised terror, that terror is actually the existential threat you se…

Well you might as well go off the grid completely then, don't use anything that could be used to track you like phones, tablets, laptops, stay away from people in general because you never know who the spies are that are trying to catch you. Don't use credit cards, debit cards, etc. Don't keep your money in banks. In fact probably don't even keep currency, buy gold instead. But you won't need that either because the…

If I might suggest an alternative strategy - use tech while being cognisant of its potential for tracking individual lives retrospectively down to a microscopic quotidian level, and oppose the misuse of tech to track populations en masse, by corporations or governments, it's not very hard and it doesn't mean becoming a hermit. As an example of how this device might be misused -

Amazon, get me all the queries from the leeber household for the last 25 years containing the word 'drugs' or 'taxes' - perhaps you are the ex-girlfriend or potential partner of someone at the NSA, perhaps you just annoyed someone with access or got in the way of a project they think is vital for their org.

Amazon, please commence recording all audio activity on the leeber household device, using this handy secret global warrant from the FISA court, you don't need to know why, just that I ticked the box saying it is necessary for an ongoing investigation.

As for Amazon the corporation, this device would put you very much in their hands when you want to know anything about the world, be it about media, products or news, in the same way that relying exclusively on google search does for google. I imagine their motivation is having a huge amount of customer data about trending devices/brands/news etc in order to sell things to you better. Perhaps you'd be happy in the warm, smothering embrace of Amazon corp, but I prefer to limit my exposure to corps to small doses, and ideally not to ones which want to sell me everything I ever wanted, along with a few things I didn't know I wanted.

As for NOT everyone is...trying to enslave all humanity etc, your arguments would have more force if you resisted wrestling with tinfoil men of your own invention and talked about what is government agencies and corps actually do in the real world, instead of credulously repeating their excuses for working towards global realtime surveillance of all communications.

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