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Google employees are listening to Google Home conversations

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Re: Google employees are listening to Google Home conversations

#441

Post by TeMPOraL »

tzs wrote: post #429
pdonis wrote: post #380

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Theres a mute button on the echo. Which defeats the whole purpose of having it, namely, to respond to voice commands. > You can turn voice off just the same as you can on a phone. I don't have to turn off voice altogether on my phone, I just have to turn off the apps that I don't trust. On an Echo, either I turn it off and might as well not have it, or I turn it on and it's recording everything. There's no middle g…

> On an Echo, either I turn it off and might as well not have it, or I turn it on and it's recording everything. There's no middle ground where I get some basic functionality without being spied on. I'd guess that most people could effectively find a middle ground by treating the Echo as if it were someone in a cordial but not really friends relationship with a family member, such as a classmate of one of you kids ov…

The analogy you make is helpful, but it immediately brings attention to one thing: you generally don' invite "someone in a cordial but not really friends relationship with a family member" to stay with you all the time, day and night. People you do let stay with you are people whom you either trust, or expect to trust as the relationship develops. There's no relationship development with an Echo - it's forever an agent of a faceless corporation that's indifferent to you.

Re: Google employees are listening to Google Home conversations

#442

Post by blueboo »

electrograv wrote: post #15

So Google’s response is (paraphrased as fairly as I can while removing the sugar-coating): ’Yes, we hire people to listen in to and transcribe some conversations from the private homes of our customers (so as improve our speech recognition engines); but the recordings aren’t linked to personally identifiable information.’ Even assuming they have only the purest intentions here, I still don’t understand how they can p…

Without the metadata PII, there’s no evidence adversarial utterances like that are true.

It’s hard not to feel like this outrage is trumped-up anti-Google FUD. So many more worthy fronts to assail Google et al. on!

After all, they let you upload photos and video that are, per various policies and with some non-zero frequency, reviewed by humans — and users are begging them to do it more often.

Re: Google employees are listening to Google Home conversations

#443

Post by panpanna »

stickfigure wrote: post #411
bscphil wrote: post #377

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Similar functionality to an Echo / Google Home / Apple whatever. They'll be listening for "hey siri" or "ok google" This seems to be a pretty big assumption, without which your whole argument falls apart. In my case, at least, I have no such functionality enabled. You could argue that the manufacturer of my phone could push a software update that enables it without my knowledge (in fact, they likely couldn't, becau…

because I don't have automatic updates turned on ...the malicious entity already pushed it out silently in the last update you did accept... You really have to trust the entity building the software on these devices. These little half-measures are purely psychological protection.

Not really.

There is a huge difference between "we listened to your conversation, but hey didn't you accept our EULA?" and " let's spy on some random people".

Re: Google employees are listening to Google Home conversations

#444

Post by candiodari »

verall wrote: post #413
agentphil wrote: post #388

Earlier quoted context omitted.

EU governments and telcos spy on you by law. 10 years ago there was a law across entire EU that forced telecom companies to store the position and call numbers of users for the past 6 months. Germany got even fined because it did not implement the law.

And in US all SMS are stored for not less than one year, also required by law.

And time and time again we hear that this data is used for every tiniest detail of a crime, because it's cheaper than actual policework.

https://www.techspot.com/news/73776-google-receiving-police-...

https://www.propublica.org/article/no-warrant-no-problem-how...

https://www.csoonline.com/article/2222749/mobile-phone-surve...

And of course, the police have been caught abusing this data. Data acquired this way is likely to get to you in another type of cases: divorce proceedings often use this sort of data as well, and it's been used in trade disputes too.

Given that all that already happens with cellphone data, what's the point of doing anything about it at this point ?

Re: Google employees are listening to Google Home conversations

#445

Post by gdy »

LocalH wrote: post #390
WalterBright wrote: post #354

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Imagine 20 years from now you decide to run for political office. Do you want someone "ethically" going through all your old recorded conversations looking for statements that will be politically incorrect 20 years from now?

Not only you, but your kids. People have lost sponsorships and contracts because of things one of their parents said before the person in question was even born . Look at last year's incident where Eli Lilly pulled their NASCAR sponsorship of Conor Daly over something his father had said a decade before Conor existed. https://www.indystar.com/story/sports/motor/2018/08/24/eli-l...

That's nuts. Things like this should cost company its reputation.

Re: Google employees are listening to Google Home conversations

#446

Post by bogwog »

skybrian wrote: post #322
bogwog wrote: post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Identity theft, regular theft, harassment, stalking, sexual assault, discrimination, reputational harm, etc. Example scenario: I tell a friend that I voted for Trump, my Google home hears it, a Google employee eavesdrops, leaks on twitter that I voted for Trump along with my home address, the likely times I'll be in my home, and even the pin to disable my alarm, etc. Then a group of left-wing extremists uses that inf…

Whether these threats are realistic depends on how good Google's internal controls are. It's likely that there are Internet companies where internal controls are very weak (random Internet of things companies) and others where they are stronger. Stalking cases have happened, so you can say it's "possible," but to assess risk we need to do better than making a binary distinction between possible versus impossible. In…

I don't get your point here. You start off by questioning if the threats are realistic, then questioning if they're even possible, then you end by saying it's not that bad because waitresses can overhear your conversations too.

1) Those threats are 100% possible and realistic. If you think they're not just because the guy in this article is a contractor, then you're being incredibly naive and shortsighted.

2) Google employees have complete access to this data, and to think that they don't means you've decided to trust their word. Maybe you like Google, and that's fine, but it's not smart to trust them on this whether you're a fan or not. If their internal security policies for this type of data are terrible, they're never going to admit it and will definitely lie about it.

3) What people say in a restaurant and what they say in the privacy of their own homes are completely different. Can't believe I have to explain that.

> but they'd be foolish to basically give employees remote root on Google Home devices, and I don't think Google security is that foolish.

Why would you need remote root access when Google Home already uploads conversations to Google servers by default? That's the only part that matters.

Re: Google employees are listening to Google Home conversations

#447

Post by skybrian »

bogwog wrote: post #446
skybrian wrote: post #322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whether these threats are realistic depends on how good Google's internal controls are. It's likely that there are Internet companies where internal controls are very weak (random Internet of things companies) and others where they are stronger. Stalking cases have happened, so you can say it's "possible," but to assess risk we need to do better than making a binary distinction between possible versus impossible. In…

I don't get your point here. You start off by questioning if the threats are realistic, then questioning if they're even possible, then you end by saying it's not that bad because waitresses can overhear your conversations too. 1) Those threats are 100% possible and realistic. If you think they're not just because the guy in this article is a contractor, then you're being incredibly naive and shortsighted. 2) Google…

Why do you think "Google employees have full access to this data?"

It seems strange that they would have permission, unless there were some reason it was necessary for the job.

This is sort of like assuming telephone company employees can listen to whatever conversations they want. Wiretaps exist, but it's not like just anyone gets to use them.

Re: Google employees are listening to Google Home conversations

#448

Post by viklove »

clebio wrote: post #362
viklove wrote: post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have a smartphone? Why would you bring that listening device (the smartphone) into your own house out of your own volition? Please explain, because I am very perplexed.

This is such a specious argument and yet repeated ad nauseam. Please stop. For one, it doesn't make the listening and harvesting of data ok, just because it may already be happening. Also, it's just condescending. You don't think the parent or other people of reasonable intelligence and valid concern haven't thought about that? Then, it also just misses the point anyway -- no, I'm not OK with my cell phone harvesting…

Right, I'm not saying it makes it ok, I'm saying OP is a hypocrite or doesn't understand what technology is capable of. But of course if you believe any device capable of listening is listening, then you have to forfeit your smartphone along with your home automation device.

Re: Google employees are listening to Google Home conversations

#449

Post by Markoff »

next time you will tell me they listen to voice input data from assistant...

just joking, I had actually access to them when working on Google project, if you use gboard, voice input and Google assistant, Google has basically anything you input on your phone "for research purposes"

Re: Google employees are listening to Google Home conversations

#450

Post by okmokmz »

okmokmz wrote: post #272
joshuamorton wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What constant security breaches? There are two major examples of security breaches I can think of that happened recently at amagoofaceoft: mis-stored passwords (fb/insta, and google for a short period earlier this year), and variants of the Cambridge analytics attacks, which steal public information but at scale. While those certainly aren't good, I wouldn't classify either as a security breach. The first was a loss…

Breaches was probably the wrong term to use in my example, as it brings attention to the wrong issue. The point I am trying to make is not that we shouldn't trust large companies to be secure as you say (although based on my experience with enterprise infosec I wouldn't be surprised if a majority of companies handling/storing personal data don't have appropriate security controls enforced). The point I am making is t…

I find it funny that I often get defensive questions from Google and Facebook engineers about their technologies/organizations when I post initial pro-privacy comments on HN, but after being called out and explaining in more detail I never get a response. I guess there's no point for them to argue it further as they're aware of the negative impact, but have made a conscious decision to choose money over morals
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