81–90 of 424 posts
I am baffled by how many people have no problems adding always listening and recording Google and Facebook devices to their living rooms. Some are considered tech people who should know stuff like this could happen, but they just don't care or don't think it will happen to them. Somewhere there is an ex-Stasi officer who is thinking "I wish we were that good and had people fooled to voluntarily install listening devi…
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1) It's always listening for a keyword, and then it starts recording. It's a voice interface for a computer. 2) Your phone is doing the same thing except for it follows you around everywhere you go and records your map location, what apps you use, who you are talking to and what your web searches are. Your phone isn't recording just what you say...its recording what you do and where you do it and when you do it. It's…
1) Nobody can prove that. It's always listening and you have to assume always recording and transmitting. 2) My phone is a $12 throw away that speaks voice and sms (text). 3) Loose lips sink ships.
You guys are way to paranoid. They're a public company and they are constantly under audit. They have explicitly stated in their white papers that the device has two computers, one that just listens for the "Alexa" keyword that activates the other one for signal processing.
Do you really think they would lie on those white papers? The government would be so far up their ass with fines it would be ridiculous. Not to mention people have actually done tear downs of the device and you can see the two computers and monitor the power input to each one as it runs. The "dumb" computer with minimal memory would be having to store hours of speech data until you say the keyword so it can transmit to the other computer.
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It's an always on microphone (as opposed to an always on device) if hacked or if Google/Apple change something fundamental, but only then. Echo/Dot have an always on microphone by design.
This is key. Yes the CIA or Apple or whoever could conceivably hack/change my phone or laptop to turn on the microphone and camera on, but there's not much you can really do about that as hardware switches seem to have gone out of vogue (I've got tape over my laptop camera like most sane people, but microphone?) However I suspect the majority of iphones have "Hey Siri" enabled, and probably the same with whatever and…
IIRC, there's been a lot of coverage here about how Apple put in hardware to detect the "hey siri" phrase without having to go to software and bypass any security. That was it can always listen in "dumb" mode and switch to actively listening/recording and decoding request when the right phrase is heard. I'll see if I can find the discussion (and whether I'm correct or not) and update this comment with whatever the case is.
Edit: From what I've been able to find without doing a deep dive, is that in general Apple notes that only local pattern matching is done on the "hey siri" patter, and after triggered then it may utilize other resources (such as online maybe), but prior to that nothing is recorded.[1]
In conjunciton with their newer laptop hardware and the new T2 security chip, I think since the Chip handles the "hey siri" matching, it might not actually hit regular OS software processes until it does match. It's not entirely clear from what I skimmed.[2]
From the docs on the T2 chip, it looks to be in the newer laptop lineup only.[3] I'm not sure if there's an equivalent bit of hardware in the phones or not, or an older iteration that has the same features in question on older laptops.
1: https://techcrunch.com/2015/09/11/apple-addresses-privacy-qu...
2: https://www.idownloadblog.com/2018/07/12/apple-t2-hey-siri-m...
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If we are playing the "you can't prove that" game, then you also can't prove that your $12 throw away phone isn't always recording, or that you new kitchen countertop doesn't have a recording device embedded in it, or that the maker of whatever device you are using to type that comment isn't breaking a plethora of laws to record everything you type or say or do around that device at any time.
When my throw away phone is transmitting, it gets warm. I also set it next to an amplifier and I can actually hear it bleed into the amp when it chats with the cell site. I can even tell a couple of seconds ahead of time when I am getting a text or a phone call.
Maybe that's just what they want you to think so you don't dig any deeper.
Is there a good non-internet connected device for turning on lights with your voice?
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If we are playing the "you can't prove that" game, then you also can't prove that your $12 throw away phone isn't always recording, or that you new kitchen countertop doesn't have a recording device embedded in it, or that the maker of whatever device you are using to type that comment isn't breaking a plethora of laws to record everything you type or say or do around that device at any time.
When my throw away phone is transmitting, it gets warm. I also set it next to an amplifier and I can actually hear it bleed into the amp when it chats with the cell site. I can even tell a couple of seconds ahead of time when I am getting a text or a phone call.
Or not be sufficient in both cases.
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If we are playing the "you can't prove that" game, then you also can't prove that your $12 throw away phone isn't always recording, or that you new kitchen countertop doesn't have a recording device embedded in it, or that the maker of whatever device you are using to type that comment isn't breaking a plethora of laws to record everything you type or say or do around that device at any time.
When my throw away phone is transmitting, it gets warm. I also set it next to an amplifier and I can actually hear it bleed into the amp when it chats with the cell site. I can even tell a couple of seconds ahead of time when I am getting a text or a phone call.
I can imagine a system that throws an extra byte or 2 on those "chats" with the cell tower, or even abuses the timing that it decides to reach out and check the tower as the method of communication.
The actual voice recording and processing tech is small enough that it could be thrown right alongside the actual phone, for pretty cheap, and could run entirely separate from the phone itself, maybe even having its own battery!
> "Using these files, it was fairly easy to identify the person involved and his female companion; weather queries, first names, and even someone’s last name enabled us to quickly zero in on his circle of friends,” according to the report. “Public data from Facebook and Twitter rounded out the picture.” Please keep in mind the next time you or a friend says "well, what do I care if Amazon knows when I ask to turn the…
I cannot think of 1 single thing I talk about in my own home that I feel uncomfortable with Amazon knowing.
Is there a good non-internet connected device for turning on lights with your voice?
It'd be simple enough to hook this up to Philips Hue or whatever to do what you want.
There are numerous Sphinx language bindings. I went for Ruby via Isabella https://github.com/chrisvfritz/isabella. I used this because it provided a framework for what I wanted: define a simple grammar (JSGF, Java Speech Grammar Format) and call specified script(s) with the parsed results. The hardest part was probably mapping out the phonemes for the grammar atoms. (If your target language isn't English, you may be out of luck).
This worked really well for what I needed (directing band-in-a-box from the other side of the room) but still needs a little tuning. Even with a leading activation token ("Hey Isabella...") she sometimes gets confused and thinks she's been summoned when it's just some random song playing. Choosing a concise, simple, unambiguous grammar was helpful, along with sensitivity adjustment. There are other knobs to twiddle -- as evidenced by the academic mailing list activity -- but I didn't need to look closer for my simple use case.
It was a fun little project and the kids liked it, especially paired with a text-to-speech module (tts gem under Ruby): "Hey Isabella, am I ?" (or "Is ?"), and a randomly generated response :)
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1) Nobody can prove that. It's always listening and you have to assume always recording and transmitting. 2) My phone is a $12 throw away that speaks voice and sms (text). 3) Loose lips sink ships.
> Nobody can prove that. You guys are way to paranoid. They're a public company and they are constantly under audit. They have explicitly stated in their white papers that the device has two computers, one that just listens for the "Alexa" keyword that activates the other one for signal processing. Do you really think they would lie on those white papers? The government would be so far up their ass with fines it woul…
And yes, I am proudly paranoid. History and experience have confirmed the need for my paranoia for many decades.