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

businessinsider.com

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

#251

Post by adossi »

porpoisely wrote: post #120
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 an…

I agree with you that Google, an advertising company, would benefit greatly from secretly including a microphone (a-la Facebook giving you ads for stuff you've only spoken about out loud) however I disagree with your insinuation that the person you're replying to is a pro-government or pro-Google shill. I think Occam's razor in this scenario can lead you to two different conclusions.

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

#252

Post by pbhjpbhj »

sonnyblarney wrote: post #189
userbinator wrote: post #110

Having worked at large companies before, I'm almost certain that more than one person working on the product raised the point "this has a microphone, why isn't it documented?" or "this has privacy implications", but was silenced. (Or it could be that everyone working at Google has been carefully chosen to not have such concerns; I do get that feeling sometimes too.)

Product Marketing does not 'document' they position, and write about features. If the 'mic' isn't part of feature or proposition, why would it even be in their radar? The '1st order' response of marketing doing their job is 'who cares?'. Few people care about tech tidbits that are not user oriented. There's already tons of things to worry about and address - and every single bit of copy takes up valuable space. The i…

>`"this has privacy implications" - no - it only has the perception of privacy implications. Because Google is not actually [intruding] on people's privacy [...]`

I've got to disagree here: it has privacy implications because at Google's end they can issue a software update and now be monitoring all audio, and the T&C no doubt say they can be unilaterally varied without notification. That all means that Google think I accept Google snooping on me; of course I don't but in court Google lawyers would say I did, and them being in a position to do that is important.

Also, if Google can enable the mic at some point then it's likely that's a possibility for a third party (crackers), OR that Google could do it in response to a legal demand from a government.

There seems no good reason to me that the specification summary can't say "microphone - not in use yet, reserved for future applications"; with a sentence somewhere expanding on that explaining they want the ability to improve the device later and do shipped a mic because it could be useful to expand the products capabilities.

Some of us actually do read instruction books; it would no doubt get some column-inches in a positive way ("what changes might Google make").

Google know everything they make is going to get a tear-down and that mics are going to be discovered in short-shrift: it's ignorant to not anticipate that. In fact one really has to assume they knew this "issue" would come up.

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

#253

Post by criddell »

AlexandrB wrote: post #245
criddell wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it worse than a smartphone which is a far more personal device with a lot more sensors?

At it's core, this is just "whataboutism". Yes, phones have a lot more sensors. Phones also give you some control around what gets recorded when. Even if phones were just as bad , doesn't mean the solution is capitulating completely and putting listening devices all over my house. Quite the opposite actually. As an aside, this is why I would never use an Android phone. At least Apple, for all their faults, allows me…

I reached for "what about phones" because these devices seem very similar except they have a better speaker and fewer sensors. The Google one even runs Android IIRC. If I say "OK Google, who does Hunter Pence play for?" and my Google Home answers the query rather than my phone, what's the difference?

Frankly, they seem like less of a privacy concern to me than a smartphone because they don't also track my movements.

> I would love to hear your argument for why corporate or government abuse of data from always-online, always-listening devices like Alexa and Google Home is not a real concern.

It is a concern, just not a big one. I use an Android phone (and an iPad) so I figure that horse have left the barn. I'm willing to accept some risk if there are benefits. For example, I risk my life every time I drive my car. If I'm willing to take on that very real risk, why would a hypothetical about an internet connected device doing much less harm scare me?

Your point about using Apple exclusively is a good one. If I were more worried about it I would do the same.

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

#254

Post by criddell »

decebalus1 wrote: post #247
criddell wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it worse than a smartphone which is a far more personal device with a lot more sensors?

I believe there's either a trigger somewhere in Amazon's or Google's PR to post the classic 'but what about ur phone' whenever someone is pushing back against IOT recording devices or we've become so brainwashed that we do their job without even realizing it. I don't know which of the two is sadder.

What's the difference between a Google Home and a Pixel phone sitting side-by-side on the table, which one is the bigger threat to my privacy? What about when I leave the home and take my GPS-capable phone and leave the Google Home on that table? Which is a bigger threat now?

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

#255

Post by dpark »

vegardx wrote: post #248
dpark wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The sound check takes literally a couple of seconds. How did you even have time to try to silence it?

It tells you in advance and you get a push to your phone if you're on the same network. "This is a test. The alarm will sounds. The alarm is loud." (or something like that)

I assumed you didn't get the push notification since your alarms weren't connected to the network properly.

Do you have a 1st gen? I wonder if they're louder. Mine (2nd gen) test pretty quietly. It's not the full-on alarm shriek. It a a medium-volume beeping and only happens for a couple of seconds.

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

#256

Post by pbhjpbhj »

dnbgfher wrote: post #29
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…

For Google, I'm not sure how option 2 is supposed to be acceptable either. It is perfectly reasonable to be concerned about introducing an internet-connected microphone into your house. It doesn't even require assuming a malicious Google to see potential problems with this. You're one decent security flaw (in an IoT device no less) from anybody having a microphone in your house.

I'm sure (this is not sarcasm) that the people behind the leak of recordings of confidential doctor-patient phone calls had no malicious intent.

So, I agree no malicious intent is needed to make things turn very bad.

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

#257

Post by mateo1 »

freeflight wrote: post #161
mateo1 wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

There's also the reality that they can simply change the components/layout without ever telling anybody about it. People just keep buying the same boxes without even being aware that the hardware inside these boxes might be completely different revisions. Who's to say that future batches of Nest won't have cameras added for "future use"? Who's gonna go through the effort of checking every fresh batch of Nests for rev…

Good point. I'd like to also mention that it is possible for companies like Amazon to "personalise" orders before they are shipped.

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

#258

Post by kjsbfkjbf »

m0zg wrote: post #211
maximente wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

is this the same company that's shilling Rekogition to police departments and governments? for some reason i'm thinking this point of view isn't held company wide.

>> shilling Rekogition to police departments and governments That's a rather poor choice of words. I prefer "helping police departments catch criminals", myself. 'cuz, you know, police departments exist for a reason.

Police departments exist to perpetuate the interests of the state and those in power. They exist to defend private property. I would strongly disagree with your assertion especially in America. :)

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

#260

Post by jhall1468 »

jancsika wrote: post #234
illumin8 wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Contrast this to Amazon: during design of the original Echo at Lab126, an engineering discussion took place where they determined that implementing the mute function in software would be less expensive in terms of component requirements than implementing a physical disconnect of the mic circuit. The engineering team refused to take the less expensive route, and insisted that the mute button physically disconnect the…

> The engineering team refused to take the less expensive route, and insisted that the mute button physically disconnect the circuit, so that no future engineering team could decide to stealth "unmute" the microphone through software. Who are these engineers? Have they ever spoken publicly about this stance?

That was a bit more dramatic than it should have been. The engineering team said a software mute button would be a security issue due to back door enabling, so they implemented it as hardware. This wasn't really dramatic, engineers said no and the higher-ups respected their expertise.
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