Google says Nest’s built-in mic not listed in specs was not meant to be secret • Hacker News Board

Re: Google says Nest’s built-in mic not listed in specs was not meant to be secret

#111

Post by jve » Wed, Feb 20, 2019, 12:59 PM UTC

xyzzy123 wrote: post #93

jve wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hope you all know that Nest fire alarm aka Nest Protect v2 features microphone for automatic sound (health) checks.

Yeah so the nest protect is, when you look at it objectively, a ceiling mounted general purpose remote sensing package. It’s basically only lacking a wide angle camera and I suspect that’s because they figured it would cross too far into “creepy” for it to be saleable. It seems to me like a team sat for a while, looked at all the possible ways they could get people to mount a package like this in every room and settl…

Are there any alternatives to nest protect that would: Sense Carbon Monoxyde AND smoke AND fire off some event to mobile phone via wifi/sms/whatever?

Re: Google says Nest’s built-in mic not listed in specs was not meant to be secret

#112

Post by cesarb » Wed, Feb 20, 2019, 1:00 PM UTC

jannes wrote: post #74

skookumchuck wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The smartphone requires a battery, which drains away noticeably if it is sending all your conversations. The Nest is connected to the house power, so it can stream audio non-stop.

Are you sure about that battery drain? A malicious actor could easily conceal their activity by making 24-hour-long recordings and sending them in the night (or whenever connected to WiFi and plugged into power).

The main trick smartphones use to have their battery last long enough, is to power off every piece of hardware that's not in use, for as long as possible. Doing a 24-hour-long recording would require the main CPU to be awake far more often than usual (and in fact, I would suspect it would have to be pretty much constantly awake, unless the phone had a large dedicated hardware buffer for the recorded audio samples).

Re: Google says Nest’s built-in mic not listed in specs was not meant to be secret

#113

Post by mateo1 » Wed, Feb 20, 2019, 1:06 PM UTC

vetler wrote: post #69

So no one opened up one of these and looked at the components?

Just like many physical and non-physical (software) products, very often, literally nobody reviews/verifies/checks them.

Google will learn from this mistake, and next time they'll use a fancy MEMS microphone or a similar technology and place it inside a semiconductor package.

When do you think such a feat will be discovered by independent researchers? Probably never.

Re: Google says Nest’s built-in mic not listed in specs was not meant to be secret

#114

Post by taneq » Wed, Feb 20, 2019, 1:10 PM UTC

kalleboo wrote: post #106

taneq wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 2. They had future plans for the mic, but it was disabled, so it wasn't mentioned by the marketing department If you design in something which is later not used, you don't populate that part of the circuit board. Not unless you're intending to use it later, anyway. Components cost money. A software equivalent would be "we had plans to offer an integrated backup system but that didn't happen, although we still uploa…

You can add hardware features in order to support features you want to support in the future, but not advertise them in case those features for some reason don't come to fruition. If they had advertised "contains a microphone" there could be users who claim false advertising if they can't use the microphone. It's stupid but I can see a lawyer making the argument. As long as the microphone never recorded anything, the…

An extra co-processor or something, sure. A device which the capacity to invade the user's privacy and/or compromise their security? Not so much. It'd be like having a 3G connection hidden in a security camera and not telling anyone.

Re: Google says Nest’s built-in mic not listed in specs was not meant to be secret

#115

Post by uberman » Wed, Feb 20, 2019, 1:11 PM UTC

Will they recall the product or offer a replacement without the mic? If not, they are not sorry, the breaking glass claim is false and this invasion of privacy was always the intent.

Re: Google says Nest’s built-in mic not listed in specs was not meant to be secret

#116

Post by vegardx » Wed, Feb 20, 2019, 1:12 PM UTC

xyzzy123 wrote: post #93

jve wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hope you all know that Nest fire alarm aka Nest Protect v2 features microphone for automatic sound (health) checks.

Yeah so the nest protect is, when you look at it objectively, a ceiling mounted general purpose remote sensing package. It’s basically only lacking a wide angle camera and I suspect that’s because they figured it would cross too far into “creepy” for it to be saleable. It seems to me like a team sat for a while, looked at all the possible ways they could get people to mount a package like this in every room and settl…

They don't have to be connected to a network in order to work. The will even happily do self-check without network access - something I realized when I wanted to mute a self-check only to find out that I had done some network changes. Had to use a schtick, like in the old days.

Given that these devices are battery powered and meant to last for years on a single charge you can imagine how often they actually connect to the wireless network. And how much traffic they send.

And again, they work perfectly fine without Internet access. Or network access for that matter. I love them, and as someone with an irrational fear of being in a fire they have helped a lot. They're much more sensitive (without being an issue, due to pre-alarm) than the alternatives.

Re: Google says Nest’s built-in mic not listed in specs was not meant to be secret

#117

Post by sametmax » Wed, Feb 20, 2019, 1:13 PM UTC

strictnein wrote: post #11

sametmax wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's sad is that those companies accept. I have been offeredd job interviews at google and facebook and politely refused. Yes, millions are a much bigger temptation, but you still have a choice. In the hand, either they decided those companies where matching their ethics, or they gave up on ethics for money. Given our entreprenarial culture, is that surprising ?

A job interview is just a smidge different than a life changing $3.2 billion for a company that only raised $80 million.

No doubt. I don't pretend I would have made a different choice.

Yet it is still a choice. It's just a question of how much your values are worth.

Re: Google says Nest’s built-in mic not listed in specs was not meant to be secret

#118

Post by sametmax » Wed, Feb 20, 2019, 1:14 PM UTC

thrav wrote: post #9

sametmax wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's sad is that those companies accept. I have been offeredd job interviews at google and facebook and politely refused. Yes, millions are a much bigger temptation, but you still have a choice. In the hand, either they decided those companies where matching their ethics, or they gave up on ethics for money. Given our entreprenarial culture, is that surprising ?

In the case of Eero, I think they just knew it was surrender or be killed in another year or two. They were already starting to face heavy competition.

I agree, and I'm not saying they should have done otherwise.

I'm saying it's still a choice.

We, sadly, prefer one option to the other.

Or maybe there is a third option we don't see.

Re: Google says Nest’s built-in mic not listed in specs was not meant to be secret

#119

Post by vegardx » Wed, Feb 20, 2019, 1:18 PM UTC

est31 wrote: post #25

Oh wow, this is amazing. There's been a lawsuit in court about someone in Germany who sued their landlord because the landlord has put a Google Nest fire alarm into their flat against their will, ignoring offers by the renter to put in a non-google-non-iot fire alarm at the renter's expense. The landlord won because apparently the court was not convinced that the fire alarm could spy on conversations [1]... What woul…

The microphone / motion sensor issues aside I would never sleep in an apartment where someone could remotely silent an alarm.

Re: Google says Nest’s built-in mic not listed in specs was not meant to be secret

#120

Post by porpoisely » Wed, Feb 20, 2019, 1:18 PM UTC

strictnein wrote: post #10

Infosec dramas are getting more and more tiresome. Between this and the Singapore Airlines story, it just seems like people need to ratchet everything up to 11. You have two options, choose one: - 1. Google wants to spy on you with a hidden mic - 2. They had future plans for the mic, but it was disabled, so it wasn't mentioned by the marketing department For the Singapore Airlines story, you have two options, choose…

Infosec dramas are getting more tiresome? Are you really saying this on hacker news in an environment where we know governments, corporations, etc are actively trying to spy more and more on everyone?

It's strange how you think the latter options are the pretty obvious explanations. "Google wants to spy on you with hidden mic" seems to be the fairly obvious one to me.

What's strange is the amount of pro-government and pro-google comments on hacker news the past few years. I wonder what the two options for why that is?

Also, you are offering a false dichotomy. This isn't an either-or situation. There could be other reasons. Could be that "google wants to spy on you with a hidden mic AND they planned it for the future". Another option is "The mic was put there by mistake". Another is that "the supplier screwed up". Or another is that the "supplier intentionally put it there".