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Google speakers are listening to more than just voice commands

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Re: Google speakers are listening to more than just voice commands

#51

Post by BoiledCabbage »

casefields wrote: post #48
pickledcods wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

5. "Your kids are having sex, Shall I ask if they are using a condom?"

That would be pretty funny and creepy. Similar to a father being told his teen daughter was pregnant by Target. https://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2012/02/16/how-targ... Awkward.

That was a great article.

And for me it was the moment I realized that society had entered new territory it would never return from.

Yet with today's eyes it seems almost quaint.

Edit: I should add, it was the original nytimes article that I remember being profound, not the forbes summary that is linked above.

https://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/19/magazine/shopping-habits....

Re: Google speakers are listening to more than just voice commands

#52

Post by acidburnNSA »

est31 wrote: post #10
JoBrad wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find a security system that only lets me know when it’s been triggered useless. My wife set off our alarm the other day. I used an external webcam to verify that it was my wife, and disabled the alarm before she could put her things down and disable it herself. You can’t do that with a system that isn’t connected externally.

External connection != external control. Although with home security services, it's one of the areas where I think external control is advantageous because the best cameras don't help you when the thieves take the device that keeps the recordings with them.

> External connection != external control.

Exactly this. Even in security contexts, my Home Assistant-based security system is running fully-local object detection and runs automations when "Person" shows up in an unexpected place at an unexpected time. It emails me the offending image (thereby offloading from the camera) and records video locally. If it happens at night while I'm asleep it runs a sequence of turning lights on to scare them off and then wakes me up if it didn't work.

This is kind of a combo of local-only with a few pings to the outer world.

Re: Google speakers are listening to more than just voice commands

#54

Post by oauea »

JoBrad wrote: post #9
popeathlete wrote: post #7

One company controlling all these electronics in my house. How do people not find that disturbing?

I find a security system that only lets me know when it’s been triggered useless. My wife set off our alarm the other day. I used an external webcam to verify that it was my wife, and disabled the alarm before she could put her things down and disable it herself. You can’t do that with a system that isn’t connected externally.

Is there any reason the manufacturer couldn't have simply supplied an additional box you put in your home, that has all the storage and processing to do all that? The only thing the manufacturer would have to do is provide a dyndns-like service.

Re: Google speakers are listening to more than just voice commands

#55

Post by beardedwizard »

paulcole wrote: post #24
beardedwizard wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

you can't imagine the problem of having your private conversations recorded, then a business compelled to release them without a warrant? You can't imagine what inferences might be made about your personal conversations and sold to others? I do not think you are giving the words you say enough credit.

Of course I can imagine those problems! Those problems are brought up literally every time I mention that in-home speakers are not the end-of-the-world-nightmare-scenario so many people treat them as. I just don’t particularly care. Also if someone wants to cut out the middleman and buy my personal conversations directly, feel free to reach out. Great value! Last night I talked about weed and Top Chef!

And if weed became illegal again? Hmmmmmmmmm

Re: Google speakers are listening to more than just voice commands

#56

Post by oauea »

acidburnNSA wrote: post #52
est31 wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

External connection != external control. Although with home security services, it's one of the areas where I think external control is advantageous because the best cameras don't help you when the thieves take the device that keeps the recordings with them.

> External connection != external control. Exactly this. Even in security contexts, my Home Assistant-based security system is running fully-local object detection and runs automations when "Person" shows up in an unexpected place at an unexpected time. It emails me the offending image (thereby offloading from the camera) and records video locally. If it happens at night while I'm asleep it runs a sequence of turning…

What software are you using for object detection? I'd like to extend my Home Assistant setup.

Re: Google speakers are listening to more than just voice commands

#57

Post by dragonwriter »

beardedwizard wrote: post #55
paulcole wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course I can imagine those problems! Those problems are brought up literally every time I mention that in-home speakers are not the end-of-the-world-nightmare-scenario so many people treat them as. I just don’t particularly care. Also if someone wants to cut out the middleman and buy my personal conversations directly, feel free to reach out. Great value! Last night I talked about weed and Top Chef!

And if weed became illegal again? Hmmmmmmmmm

> And if weed became illegal again?

“became...again”? When did the federal prohibition of weed end?

Re: Google speakers are listening to more than just voice commands

#58

Post by criley2 »

I can't even get Google Assistant to reliably work for commands they claimed to have rolled out years and years ago https://i.imgur.com/ucmKl5l.png. I would literally never trust Google Assistant with anything remotely near my safety or security.

"Google, call the police!!!" Playing the Police on Living Room TV

"Google, lock my doors" The Doors were a psychedelic rock band formed in 1965...

Re: Google speakers are listening to more than just voice commands

#59

Post by acidburnNSA »

oauea wrote: post #56
acidburnNSA wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> External connection != external control. Exactly this. Even in security contexts, my Home Assistant-based security system is running fully-local object detection and runs automations when "Person" shows up in an unexpected place at an unexpected time. It emails me the offending image (thereby offloading from the camera) and records video locally. If it happens at night while I'm asleep it runs a sequence of turning…

What software are you using for object detection? I'd like to extend my Home Assistant setup.

I made a custom component to integrate this object detection lib with pytorch.

https://github.com/ultralytics/yolov5

The tensorflow one it comes with didn't work on python 3.8 or on my gpu.

I should blog about it.

Re: Google speakers are listening to more than just voice commands

#60

Post by marricks »

Waterluvian wrote: post #39
paul_f wrote: post #16

There is a big difference between smoke alarm detection built into the wake-up-word circuitry, versus every sound sent to Google's servers for analysis. I am not bothered by the former, but would be aghast at the latter. Does anyone know for sure?

What does it matter? The bottom line is that once there’s microphones in your home, Google just has to wait out the normalization of deviance until nobody’s surprised or upset that they transfer everything to their servers for analysis. If they don’t today, they will one day. They don’t have a choice on the matter because it’s a money maker.

Google did this with “we don’t scan your emails for ads”. Initially, 2009 ish, that was a big line a lot of people cared about but years later here we are, Google scanning emails for targeted ads and that fight is over.

EDIT:

Thanks for the reply exittheone, I see GMail actually stopped this ad scanning practice in 2017[1], likely with google sign in on chrome and so many places it’s very possibly they just don’t that extra info. They still can let third party extensions read your email so I wouldn’t say we’re exactly in a better world...[2]

1. https://variety.com/2017/digital/news/google-gmail-ads-email...

2. https://mashable.com/article/google-reading-your-emails-resp...

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