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Amazon Echo

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Re: Amazon Echo

#611

Post by randyrand »

anigbrowl wrote: post #248
chatmasta wrote: post #87

This "internet-of-things" trend coincides unfortunately with the "dragnet surveillance" trend. With every new product launch from a "cloud company," I increasingly feel as if I'm reading the tombstone of modern society. The selling point behind these devices is convenience, but at the cost of security. I don't think I need to explain to HN why an always-on, internet connected voice recording device is something to ke…

Most people don't care because they're not culpable enough to feel paranoid. Some percentage of people will be unjustly exploited, but probably not enough to offset the economic benefits that technology like this brings to its users. I think your focus on 'the people vs the government' is misplaced, because government is just a sort of social technology which can be used and abused like any other technology depending…

Privacy is different than culpability.

Just because I can legally have sex with my wife doesn't mean I want the government to have a recording of it. Some things are meant to stay private.

Re: Amazon Echo

#613

Post by bduerst »

hackuser wrote: post #263
tindrlabs wrote: post #3

I'm a little frustrated at the moment -- The future is arriving with voice controlled devices, yet I don't trust any of these companies with my words.

> I'm a little frustrated at the moment -- The future is arriving with voice controlled devices, yet I don't trust any of these companies with my words. The public doesn't understand the technology or its implications well enough for consumer demand to have an effect. I think regulation likely is needed. In terms of confidentiality these are dangerous products. For example, the confidentiality of health and financial…

The Terms of Service should cover how your voice data is being used, who it is shared with, and the purpose for both.

Re: Amazon Echo

#614

Post by randyrand »

api wrote: post #338
anigbrowl wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most people don't care because they're not culpable enough to feel paranoid. Some percentage of people will be unjustly exploited, but probably not enough to offset the economic benefits that technology like this brings to its users. I think your focus on 'the people vs the government' is misplaced, because government is just a sort of social technology which can be used and abused like any other technology depending…

> Most people don't care because they're not culpable enough to feel paranoid. It's going to take a high-profile case to show people how wrong this is. Wait for it. Here's some potential scenarios: * An author who is researching dangerous-sounding stuff and discussing it with his friends for a book is SWAT teamed and shot dead. Later investigation reveals overzealous "parallel construction." * Someone at one of these…

Why can't privacy be enough reason by itself? There are plenty of legal things I want to keep private. The government does not need to have record of every little thing about me. Some things are personal.

Re: Amazon Echo

#615

Post by mikenike192 »

incision wrote: post #353

Privacy questions aside. What I'd really like to know is whether this thing will have some form of speaker recognition - identifying who is speaking, not just what is being said and further whether the learning functions will make that same distinction. I have a family, including a small child. That's at least three people who would conceivably use this device. Tech companies and Amazon in particular have been awful…

You need to check out the Fire Tablet series again, they've made a big push in multiple profiles support. Household sharing allows you to share your digital purchases across your family. There is also FreeTime which is a special sandboxed kids profile.

Re: Amazon Echo

#616

Post by jsmeaton »

jsmeaton wrote: post #603
paul wrote: post #563

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Too late. You probably already have a cell phone and probably already carry it with you most of the time.

But that's not constantly transmitting my voice to the internet without my knowledge unless I'm being specifically targetted . I wouldn't put something like the Echo in my house. Similarly, my Smart TV isn't connected to the internet. But I'm not afraid of carrying a smart phone with me wherever I go. Two completely different things in my opinion. One requires specific targeting (which I'm OK with to a point), and th…

Sorry, the "wake word" makes the Echo a little less suspicious in my opinion, but it's still something I'd avoid.

Re: Amazon Echo

#617

Post by r00fus »

Throwaway12928 wrote: post #390
aragot wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Eiffel tower (...) southern France (...) Italy You have an excellent comment, but you fail at ponting at how this info may be used against you and providing usecases. Should sound like: "On Feb 1st your car is recorded on the leftish party's parking lot" "On Feb 2nd you are arrested in person at a friend's place for the speed excess of Jan 26th. Police automatically suponead your network's Echos".

I'm not concerned about it being used against me. Like most people, I'm not going around committing crimes on a daily basis or trying to hide nuclear launch codes. I just like to have a right to some privacy in my daily life, and I don't think every detail needs to be logged and available to the world.

How about all those bizarre or misapplied laws you could be violating if just someone knew you had done it. With pervasive monitoring, the uncommon-but-horrifying could become more commonplace: http://kottke.org/13/06/you-commit-three-felonies-a-day

What you do can be construed as criminal if the prosecutor is interested enough.

Re: Amazon Echo

#618

Post by mrottenkolber »

walden42 wrote: post #247
rdrey wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the only solution is to develop "personal AI" that runs on personal hardware... or an anonymous AI running 'in the cloud' but paid with cryptocurrency. Hopefully we'll be able to control what runs locally and what gets farmed out to the cloud on a more granular level one day.

Are there open-source voice recognition projects in the works that could replace the likes of Google Now and the others? If not, there should be.

AFAIK we don't even have good voice synthesizers. We're way back on this stuff.

Re: Amazon Echo

#619

Post by r00fus »

jedmeyers wrote: post #268
13 wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, Siri only takes commands when you activate it. There's an "always listening" feature, but this is off by default and only works when you are plugged into external power.

How do you know that it's actually off?

Unless you expect random or targeted surveillance, if it generally listened and sent packets all the time back to Apple, even if you didn't tell it to, that someone would have discovered this by now.

Re: Amazon Echo

#620

Post by TheSoftwareGuy »

acangiano wrote: post #391
TheSoftwareGuy wrote: post #137

God damnit, why is the wake word "Alexa"? my girlfriends name is alexa.

The solution is simple and obvious. You need a new girlfriend. (Hint: You can actually change the wake word to whatever you like.)

You can? Cool, that fixes everything. But still, I feel like its pretty annoying that they made it the default, simply because it will be annoying for so many people.
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