surely no one is surprised by this? why would you put a device in your home that is constantly listening to you? crazy.
Google admits listening to some smart speaker recordings
41–50 of 138 posts
Re: Google admits listening to some smart speaker recordings
#42If Google and it's outsourced partner can listen to the recordings, 3 lettered agencies can too. Even if they currently can't, they'll soon make a law to grant them access to Google's and Amazon's. After this, a hijacking, explosion, or terrorist attack would occur. They would argue that it could have been prevented if place X had a listening device installed. And that's all it would take to push a law mandating the…
If the 3 letter agencies need a terror event to justify installing microphones throughout the country, then they will instigate the terror event themselves. There are already cameras. They didn't need announcements or justification. The cameras just went up, and they continue going up. If any justification was needed to blanket the country in cameras, it was "terror". Would they not have already installed microphones? Of course there are microphones, at least in portions of cities. We simply don't know the extent. They are probably being actively installed. Cameras are everywhere, why not microphones? Up next (now): 5G! A tool of surveillance being pushed by the FCC (because Ajit cares about streaming video) to install (more) spy devices on street corners, in addition to all the cameras and bluetooth. Did anyone ask for it? If the agencies haven't already infiltrated every hardware manufacturer (or strong-armed them, or compelled them by law), then they are certainly in a race to compromise every currently-uncompromised device on the market. People know, or at least suspect, that their phones are listening to them, through whatever apps they've carelessly downloaded under the illusion that the apps must be "safe" because they must be "vetted" because they are from "respectable companies". Regular people suspect their phones are spying on them (there are countless accounts and videos and articles to this end), and do they curb their behavior in any way? Do they turn their phones off, ever? No. "It's creepy" is about as far as it goes before that wall of cognitive dissonance. Why? Because they are addicted to the blinking lights, the egoist mentality that social media has driven into them, or whatever "fix" they think they need by constantly inspecting the tiny box they carry, which incidentally broadcasts their location everywhere they go. The agencies don't need justification because they sell us on fear so that we self-report and link our doorbells to police stations, and they convince us that this is what we want, or that this is what we need - that this is just the way things are. It's only when we need convincing that they resort to real terror. The rest is just talking about it.
Re: Google admits listening to some smart speaker recordings
#43If Google and it's outsourced partner can listen to the recordings, 3 lettered agencies can too. Even if they currently can't, they'll soon make a law to grant them access to Google's and Amazon's. After this, a hijacking, explosion, or terrorist attack would occur. They would argue that it could have been prevented if place X had a listening device installed. And that's all it would take to push a law mandating the…
> On second thought, there's a faster way to the goal. Just make smartphones listen all the time. The good thing about trying this is people would definitely notice the increased bandwidth usage of their phone streaming audio in real time, all the time.
By this, if you mean the carriers reported data usage: I can think of a way a 3 letter agency could get around this. If you mean running a RAN analyser: I doubt it.
Re: Google admits listening to some smart speaker recordings
#44Earlier quoted context omitted.
People. Like 15% of hn users and the like
Between the larger phone bill and the decreased performance and battery life I feel like most people would notice. Not to mention most phones heat up when they stream anything.
It's a shame this doesn't happen when people's IoT devices become botnet nodes on their "unlimited" wifi. It would totally change the DDoS market and IoT security for the better.
"0/5 stars. This product doubled my bandwidth bill."
Re: Google admits listening to some smart speaker recordings
#45Is this honestly surprising to any developer? How can you develop a product like Siri/OK Google without being able look closely at edge cases? And if you have to record conversations to troubleshoot even extremely rare edge cases, you still end up with a system that allows this eavesdropping.
You recruit people for testing and obtain their informed consent?
What do people here think how say medicine or research is developed?!
Re: Google admits listening to some smart speaker recordings
#46If Google and it's outsourced partner can listen to the recordings, 3 lettered agencies can too. Even if they currently can't, they'll soon make a law to grant them access to Google's and Amazon's. After this, a hijacking, explosion, or terrorist attack would occur. They would argue that it could have been prevented if place X had a listening device installed. And that's all it would take to push a law mandating the…
> Just make smartphones listen all the time.
Pixel phones already do that. The excuse is music recognition and ok Google.
Re: Google admits listening to some smart speaker recordings
#47Doesn't seem much different than the disclaimer given when calling into a company that the conversation is being recorded for "QA and training" purposes(more like performance and CYA haha).
I wonder how sensationalized people will get with the headlines for click-bait purposes. While "recordings" is technically correct, "interactions" may be a slightly more precise word to use in the headline. I'm imagining a ton of headlines designed to make people believe Google Home is making random recordings of home conversations and letting people listen to them.
Re: Google admits listening to some smart speaker recordings
#48If Google and it's outsourced partner can listen to the recordings, 3 lettered agencies can too. Even if they currently can't, they'll soon make a law to grant them access to Google's and Amazon's. After this, a hijacking, explosion, or terrorist attack would occur. They would argue that it could have been prevented if place X had a listening device installed. And that's all it would take to push a law mandating the…
>On second thought, there's a faster way to the goal. Just make smartphones listen all the time. Which is why all the complaints about these smart speakers have always seemed a little silly to me. Tapping into the audio of the phone we all carry with us everywhere is infinitely more valuable than tapping into a stationary speaker that is probably sitting in a room alone 90% of the time. It is also much easier to hide…
There is still such a thing as physics: having a continuous audio stream would deplete the targets phone battery in short order potentially alerting the target that "something's fishy". A plugged in device would not have such problems.
Re: Google admits listening to some smart speaker recordings
#49Is this honestly surprising to any developer? How can you develop a product like Siri/OK Google without being able look closely at edge cases? And if you have to record conversations to troubleshoot even extremely rare edge cases, you still end up with a system that allows this eavesdropping.
You recruit people for testing and obtain their informed consent? What do people here think how say medicine or research is developed?!
thats because medical research has real effects on people, someone listening to you ask google to the turn the lights on doesn't matter. at all. (save the omg well they might hear something important - no they wont, and no the person on the other end doesn't give a shit even if they do)
Re: Google admits listening to some smart speaker recordings
#50I have a Google Home in every room of my home. This only records after the trigger word, right? And it isn’t tied to my account? Well, then, I’m fine with it.
As long as you don’t enable that Google Home can listen for some seconds after you are finished. This is for follow up questions without the trigger, but then other voice are also recorded a while after.
Hope they don’ listen without the trigger word. Easy to check with Wireshark (or similar) if they are sending enough data to equal sound transfer. Anybody checked this?