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Amazon device recorded private conversation, sent it out to random contact

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Re: Amazon device recorded private conversation, sent it out to random contact

#641

Post by vidarh »

jwandborg wrote: post #398
edwhitesell wrote: post #369

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed, but I think vocal biometrics is a significantly more difficult problem to solve when even the best speech recognition still has issues like this. Phonetics is hard. Especially with ambient noise, echo and such. I had a conversation with one of the speech engineers when I worked at a speech recognition company and the level of detailed problems to solve was impressive. Totally made sense after talking about it…

And once you've managed to achieve perfect biometrics your next task is to prevent replay attacks. An alternative, "wireless" approach to near-perfect security would be to invent-plement some kind of vocal, human-executable GPG/TLS.

You don't really need perfect biometrics for it to be useful, or even biometrics at all. A "my human just spoke in this room, and here's a signature of what the fleshbag said" broadcast from a microphone to let devices within a very short range to get confirmation of which person spoke if they picked up a command, coupled with pairing your speaker to your devices to give the notification from your mic more authority would already help substantially with most of the issues people have. It wouldn't stop a determined adversary, but for most people it's not a determined adversary that is the problem.

It doesn't even need to get good audio - just enough to give a bit of an indication that what the device picked up was me talking and not random noise and ideally some way to somewhat correlate it to the audio the device picked up to give it an indication it was me it heard. It'd also give you the option of setting the devices to require confirmation for certain types of orders if they were not confirmed by an authorised device, or if they were not confirmed by a device (so you could let people present give instructions but not some random joker on voice chat in your online game for example).

If we could get support for that into e.g. a watch, it'd be very much useful.

Re: Amazon device recorded private conversation, sent it out to random contact

#642

Post by faitswulff »

2T1Qka0rEiPr wrote: post #639

Question - how can these potentially nefarious acts be mitigated, where I plug a device into my home network which listens/watches "periodically". I guess naively I'm thinking some sort of light/display which says "Amazon is sending/retrieving data" - it would need to be from a third party to have integrity, and I suppose in order to actually allay the fears of the masses it would need to be plug-and-playable. Does s…

You could always set up a dedicated router for your smart home devices if you really wanted.

Re: Amazon device recorded private conversation, sent it out to random contact

#643

Post by vidarh »

pishpash wrote: post #452
edwhitesell wrote: post #337

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most phone now have some kind of lock screen, which makes it pretty difficult to get to the butt dialing stage. Will speech command recognition get to that stage? The main reason I won't have any of those products in my house is because of that. I'd much rather have a confirmation of some kind before the system takes action. "...random talking..." Assistant "I am recording" Me: "Stop recording"

Yeah, a digital assistant could (should) verbalize "uh huh, yes, i'm listening, interesting, hmm" like a real, nosy human. Then you get a chance to say, "go away, alexa".

The Echo devices will light up when listening, and can also given audible warning.

But it'd certainly be good with more feedback.

Re: Amazon device recorded private conversation, sent it out to random contact

#644

Post by vidarh »

cookiecaper wrote: post #383
edwhitesell wrote: post #337

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most phone now have some kind of lock screen, which makes it pretty difficult to get to the butt dialing stage. Will speech command recognition get to that stage? The main reason I won't have any of those products in my house is because of that. I'd much rather have a confirmation of some kind before the system takes action. "...random talking..." Assistant "I am recording" Me: "Stop recording"

On the Echo at least, there's an option to have the device make a thump-type sound when it's activated. There's also a light ring that activates out of the box and shows where it believes the audio is coming from.

I tested mine right now, and I can't see any correlation between the light ring and my location relative to it.

Re: Amazon device recorded private conversation, sent it out to random contact

#645

Post by spurgu »

Mandatum wrote: post #528
chias wrote: post #516

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mine will sometimes / often go off when I say "ok, cool". It's simultaneously amusing and annoying.

"Cocaine poodle"

Haha nice, I've used "Okay poodle" a lot before.

Re: Amazon device recorded private conversation, sent it out to random contact

#646

Post by amelius »

yason wrote: post #297

I am oversimplifying here but: * install device that is designed to listen to speech in the house * the device is connected to internet * the device is capable of contacting other internet peers/services/hosts * the device knows a bit about its owner's internet presence such as contacts * the device is equipped with simple conversational user interface based on fuzzy human speech-command detection These basically bou…

That's almost the description of a smartphone.

Re: Amazon device recorded private conversation, sent it out to random contact

#647

Post by pbhjpbhj »

komali2 wrote: post #603
scottmf wrote: post #586

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah it’s incredibly irresponsible and not really funny at all.

Why is it irresponsible?

If that person does make it on to a watchlist it's wasting resources and causing them 'harm' (eg always stopped at border checks).

Re: Amazon device recorded private conversation, sent it out to random contact

#648

Post by mieseratte »

mikeash wrote: post #129
mieseratte wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That pocket computer also has all the same potential threats to privacy. Somehow nobody cares about them, though. This is just whataboutism. We can complain about Amazon in a thread about Amazon without having to tackle a whole different issue.

It’s not “whataboutism” to point out that (almost all of) the people who can’t conprehend why anyone would ever have one of these devices have, in fact, already had one for years.

There's a big difference between a device that occasionally listens and can easily be powered off or muffled and a device that is actively listening at all times and can easily "accidentally" capture your conversations.

Re: Amazon device recorded private conversation, sent it out to random contact

#649

Post by pbhjpbhj »

reaperducer wrote: post #504
BeetleB wrote: post #497

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Do you think if everyone knew what was going to happen with the Facebook scandal before it happened they would have signed up for Facebook? That's why it's called a "scandal." Yes. I also noticed how they haven't left once the scandal came to light.

>I also noticed how they haven't left once the scandal came to light. You and I must read different news sources. From what I've read, Facebook is down over a billion visits in the last quarter.

Half of Facebook's users visited one less time in a 3 month period? I think they'll survive.

I've visited less in the last month, but because they've changed the algo on my feed and it's not as interesting ... though that could be a network effect, but I'm getting quite different stuff.

Re: Amazon device recorded private conversation, sent it out to random contact

#650

Post by pbhjpbhj »

reaperducer wrote: post #503
BeetleB wrote: post #445

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Completely agree with you. I've seen this over and over and over with people I know. They always want something badly enough that they'll find any excuse to dismiss any downsides to it. "Amazon/Google/Apple/Facebook/X have very smart people who will not allow this to happen." "I have nothing to hide." "People who want to listen to our boring conversations are losers. Let them waste their time doing so." And the list…

"I have nothing to hide." Response: "Cool. What's your e-mail password?"

Because emails only have info about the recipient; and email isn't used for access to anything of worth, like bank accounts. /s
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