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Locked-down lawyers warned Alexa is hearing confidential calls

bloomberg.com

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Re: Locked-down lawyers warned Alexa is hearing confidential calls

#4

Post by jrockway »

snvzz wrote: post #2

I find the title biased against Amazon to begin with. As if having assistants from other companies listening in was any safer. Why namedrop Amazon's own?

They mention Google in the first sentence.

I think it's important to not overly freak out about these home assistants. Your phone company or video conferencing company is already listening to your confidential client calls. Your email provider is reading your email. Your internal applications run on Amazon's servers. Your upstairs neighbor has their ear to the floor. I think lawyers are used to thinking "as long as it's not in writing, we're okay", but with speech recognition getting better and better, your phone calls / VCs are going to show up in court someday.

Re: Locked-down lawyers warned Alexa is hearing confidential calls

#6

Post by S_A_P »

snvzz wrote: post #2

I find the title biased against Amazon to begin with. As if having assistants from other companies listening in was any safer. Why namedrop Amazon's own?

The snarky answer is that Jeff Bezos looks like he is morphing into a Bond villain.

The correct answer is that yep you should consider what is in the room if you need a private conversation because devices are listening.

The title is also incredibly niche and alarmist. Only locked down lawyers need to worry about Alexa??

Re: Locked-down lawyers warned Alexa is hearing confidential calls

#7

Post by zie »

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 basis listen, record and send conversations on, that would be very possible, and very harmful for whoever was targeted.

I can't imagine the NSA and other covert organizations not drooling at the chance to do just that. I'm also fairly certain those devices are not secure as by and large the tech industry has a complete failure rate at making anything computing related secure.

Re: Locked-down lawyers warned Alexa is hearing confidential calls

#8

Post by take_a_breath »

jrockway wrote: post #4
snvzz wrote: post #2

I find the title biased against Amazon to begin with. As if having assistants from other companies listening in was any safer. Why namedrop Amazon's own?

They mention Google in the first sentence. I think it's important to not overly freak out about these home assistants. Your phone company or video conferencing company is already listening to your confidential client calls. Your email provider is reading your email. Your internal applications run on Amazon's servers. Your upstairs neighbor has their ear to the floor. I think lawyers are used to thinking "as long as i…

Your phone or video conference company is providing the platform that allows you to have the conversation in the first place. Same with your email provider, same with applications running on the cloud. Those are the infrastructure We pay monthly to support business and communication.

If my neighbor was listening to my conversations AND running the third largest ad platform on the internet, it would alarm me.

These aren’t apples-to-apples comparisons.

Re: Locked-down lawyers warned Alexa is hearing confidential calls

#9

Post by jrockway »

take_a_breath wrote: post #8
jrockway wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They mention Google in the first sentence. I think it's important to not overly freak out about these home assistants. Your phone company or video conferencing company is already listening to your confidential client calls. Your email provider is reading your email. Your internal applications run on Amazon's servers. Your upstairs neighbor has their ear to the floor. I think lawyers are used to thinking "as long as i…

Your phone or video conference company is providing the platform that allows you to have the conversation in the first place. Same with your email provider, same with applications running on the cloud. Those are the infrastructure We pay monthly to support business and communication. If my neighbor was listening to my conversations AND running the third largest ad platform on the internet, it would alarm me. These ar…

I think in all cases the service provider has a pretty strong incentive to not violate your trust. You'll cancel your Zoom subscription if they start feeding your meetings to the person that sues. You'll stop buying from Amazon if Alexa starts feeding your meetings to the entity you're engaged in litigation with. In both cases, the incentive exists to keep your confidential meetings confidential.

But, incentives are not crypto. There is probably nothing nefarious going on, but if you use open-source software with strong cryptography, a service provider that wants to be nefarious is simply unable to do so. That is what lawyers should be aiming for; freaking out about Alexa is a feel-good stopgap at best.

Re: Locked-down lawyers warned Alexa is hearing confidential calls

#10

Post by mrfusion »

zie wrote: post #7

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…

Also what’s stopping them processing advertising relevant keywords locally and then just sending a list of keywords to amazon.
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