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Smart Home Surveillance: Governments Tell Google's Nest Hand Over Data

forbes.com

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Re: Smart Home Surveillance: Governments Tell Google's Nest Hand Over Data

#71

Post by stephengillie »

neumann wrote: post #47

Reading the article, wtf is a rap crew? And why do half of these sentences not make sense? Back in my day, journalism in forbes was still shitty but at least with coherent sentences. edit: A link in the article does inform me of 'rap crew' "O n a June day last year, a skinny, dreadlocked 29-year-old rapper known as Tony Da Boss lay in bed in a redbrick apartment on a tree-lined street in Charlotte, North Carolina. It…

I didn't see any mention of the rap crew in the article... That blurb mentioning the rap crew was really an advertising blurb for another article. It just happens to be strategically placed between paragraphs of this article.

Re: Smart Home Surveillance: Governments Tell Google's Nest Hand Over Data

#72

Post by imglorp »

imglorp wrote: post #63
Forge36 wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a Synology NAS (I wanted an always on network backup for 3 PCs) it came with 2 free security camera licenses. The standard I found is ONVIF, my first camera arrives tomorrow (the software looks good, online support looks promising). Depending on features cameras are ~$25-$50 with the heavier duty hardware being ~$100 (there is also commerical grear you could easily spend $500 a camera) Here are the questions I…

Synology has been getting wierd, also, with privacy. A few updates ago, my private fileserver asked me to agree to a privacy terms of service. I'm considering airgapping it and ending updates.

I'm providing a source to above claim since it appears someone is skeptical. Reddit thought to take a screenshot.

https://www.reddit.com/r/synology/comments/8mdioc/device_ana...

Re: Smart Home Surveillance: Governments Tell Google's Nest Hand Over Data

#73

Post by Johnny555 »

randyrand wrote: post #7

I'm a little surprised google does not use the user's password for encryption. Seems like they are inviting a very bad data breach in the future.

If this surprises you, you must not understand Google's business model at all.

They give you services for "free" (or cheap) so they can use your data for marketing analysis. The thermostat tells Google when you're home and when you're not, tells them when you go to bed and when you wake up. Tells them when you go on vacation, and with the Nest Mobile App, where you went for vacation. Tells them how frugal you are with energy.

This is a lot of valuable data to a marketing company, so of course they aren't going to lock themselves out of it.

Re: Smart Home Surveillance: Governments Tell Google's Nest Hand Over Data

#74

Post by pjmlp »

jliptzin wrote: post #70
wstrange wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We tend to view this as a technology problem. The real question: Why do we let governments get away with this kind of behavior? Fighting a technology arms race with the government is a losing battle. They can ask for private keys to be handed over - on threat of jail time if you don't comply. We need to start at the ballot box.

I'm curious at what point people decide that the government spying on them begins to be ok? How does the average person feel about the following: 1. A spouse going through your cell phone without your knowledge 2. A landlord requiring cameras in all rooms of your house to catch potential property destruction 3. A boss logging all computer activity at all times I'd imagine the average person would be pretty pissed abo…

As someone from the first generation to live in democracy after 41 years of dictatorship, I would say people ignore the signs and when they finally decide to start taking action is too late.

Re: Smart Home Surveillance: Governments Tell Google's Nest Hand Over Data

#75

Post by dewiz »

oulipo wrote: post #10
ChuckMcM wrote: post #8

My hope is that this is another push toward on-prem data management. One of the things that the "computer revolution" spawned in the 90's was that there were a lot of "extra" computers around because everyone upgraded every 18 - 24 months. After a couple of rounds of upgrades, if you had kept the old parts, you had enough parts around to make another computer. In my house this typically became the "kids" computer and…

This is exactly why we are building on-device private AI at Snips ( https://snips.ai , disclaimer: I'm a co-founder) We believe that the only way to have people trust AI is when we will make it possible to have privacy-respecting AI, we believe it is not only feasible, but it is our duty to build AI which respects people and is able to scale without presenting a danger to our societies

unless I misunderstand your web site implementation, you might want to fix the web site to respect also the user choice about storing cookies ;-) I clicked "Deny" when asked to accept cookies (and analytics), but the cookie stored on my machine says {"cookie":true,"analytics":false}

Re: Smart Home Surveillance: Governments Tell Google's Nest Hand Over Data

#76

Post by TeMPOraL »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #26
brian_herman__ wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry man your site lost me at the token based app store...

> lost me at the token based app store Same. Got excited, then saw it's shilling a coin [1]. From a branding perspective, this undoes the goodwill won by the privacy message. [1] https://token.snips.ai

Thirded.

I know about Snips.ai for some time now, I was planning to play around with it soon, and then I learned about the token thing. I mentally put the project into the trashcan at that very moment, it only got out of there due to being repeatedly mentioned on HN as something legit.

Re: Smart Home Surveillance: Governments Tell Google's Nest Hand Over Data

#77

Post by TeMPOraL »

stephengillie wrote: post #71
neumann wrote: post #47

Reading the article, wtf is a rap crew? And why do half of these sentences not make sense? Back in my day, journalism in forbes was still shitty but at least with coherent sentences. edit: A link in the article does inform me of 'rap crew' "O n a June day last year, a skinny, dreadlocked 29-year-old rapper known as Tony Da Boss lay in bed in a redbrick apartment on a tree-lined street in Charlotte, North Carolina. It…

I didn't see any mention of the rap crew in the article... That blurb mentioning the rap crew was really an advertising blurb for another article. It just happens to be strategically placed between paragraphs of this article.

Between this and sites where scrolling past the end of an article loads the next one, media companies are really fucking with people's ability to understand what they're reading.

Re: Smart Home Surveillance: Governments Tell Google's Nest Hand Over Data

#78

Post by zby »

drasticmeasures wrote: post #32
zby wrote: post #2

I am surprised that it is only 300 times - but this is probably because these devices are now bought by wealthy people who don't commit too many crimes or felonies.

You don't have to commit a crime to be targeted, spied on, harassed and have your life destroyed by the government. When the government spies on innocent people en masse -- because they say they should have nothing to hide --, the government is the one doing harm to an innocent person, and it's the government who has something to hide. Without accountability, and given the secret and anonymous nature of their interfe…

I agree - it starts with criminals - because it is an obvious target, but once the capabilities are built then they are used in whatever way the government likes.

Re: Smart Home Surveillance: Governments Tell Google's Nest Hand Over Data

#79

Post by janvidar »

SquareWheel wrote: post #34
yters wrote: post #20

It's interesting how many hardware and software services are "in the cloud" now. For example Slack monitors the conversations of thousands of businesses, and there's no telling what they do with the data behind the scenes.

People who are concerned about privacy should read the policies which are designed specifically for them. https://slack.com/privacy-policy

Without being too cynical: There is what they say they do, and what they actually do.

I'm not picking on Slack specifically here, but this is just healthy skepticism when dealing with cloud services all in all.

All bets are off with governments involved. There are lots of compelling reasons for secretly disregarding the already set privacy policy. Including but not limited to patriotism, anti-terrorism, child abuse, human rights, crime or flat out regime criticism, political reasons such as opposition.

Pick your providers carefully. You trust them more than you think.

Re: Smart Home Surveillance: Governments Tell Google's Nest Hand Over Data

#80

Post by Qwertious »

jliptzin wrote: post #70
wstrange wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We tend to view this as a technology problem. The real question: Why do we let governments get away with this kind of behavior? Fighting a technology arms race with the government is a losing battle. They can ask for private keys to be handed over - on threat of jail time if you don't comply. We need to start at the ballot box.

I'm curious at what point people decide that the government spying on them begins to be ok? How does the average person feel about the following: 1. A spouse going through your cell phone without your knowledge 2. A landlord requiring cameras in all rooms of your house to catch potential property destruction 3. A boss logging all computer activity at all times I'd imagine the average person would be pretty pissed abo…

All three of those examples are one person asking for themselves to be granted access to your private info. They're not really any less personal. To some extent, I'm just describing separation of powers, but there's also a difference between an individual with motives, and an organisation.

A better example might be an exec passing a policy requiring HR to have permission to see your X.

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