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Google says Nest’s built-in mic not listed in specs was not meant to be secret

businessinsider.com

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Re: Google says Nest’s built-in mic not listed in specs was not meant to be secret

#91

Post by jve »

cbg0 wrote: post #41
est31 wrote: post #25

Oh wow, this is amazing. There's been a lawsuit in court about someone in Germany who sued their landlord because the landlord has put a Google Nest fire alarm into their flat against their will, ignoring offers by the renter to put in a non-google-non-iot fire alarm at the renter's expense. The landlord won because apparently the court was not convinced that the fire alarm could spy on conversations [1]... What woul…

> What would have happened if Google had secretly put a microphone into their fire alarms as well, not just their home security system? You could have found it by dismantling the device and the renter would have won their case against the landlord.

I hope you all know that Nest fire alarm aka Nest Protect v2 features microphone for automatic sound (health) checks.

Re: Google says Nest’s built-in mic not listed in specs was not meant to be secret

#92

Post by Aeolun »

strictnein wrote: post #10

Infosec dramas are getting more and more tiresome. Between this and the Singapore Airlines story, it just seems like people need to ratchet everything up to 11. You have two options, choose one: - 1. Google wants to spy on you with a hidden mic - 2. They had future plans for the mic, but it was disabled, so it wasn't mentioned by the marketing department For the Singapore Airlines story, you have two options, choose…

The same logic could be applied to the Trojan horse.

“Don’t worry, those soldiers won’t come out. It’s just in case we want to use them in the future.”

Re: Google says Nest’s built-in mic not listed in specs was not meant to be secret

#93

Post by xyzzy123 »

jve wrote: post #91
cbg0 wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What would have happened if Google had secretly put a microphone into their fire alarms as well, not just their home security system? You could have found it by dismantling the device and the renter would have won their case against the landlord.

I hope you all know that Nest fire alarm aka Nest Protect v2 features microphone for automatic sound (health) checks.

Yeah so the nest protect is, when you look at it objectively, a ceiling mounted general purpose remote sensing package. It’s basically only lacking a wide angle camera and I suspect that’s because they figured it would cross too far into “creepy” for it to be saleable.

It seems to me like a team sat for a while, looked at all the possible ways they could get people to mount a package like this in every room and settled on calling it a smoke alarm.

At the most optimistic they started with a smoke alarm and gradually realised they could build a general purpose platform based on the hardware being deployed in lots of rooms and many types of sensors being dirt cheap now.

Decided they could enable new capabilities (and data goldmines!) in software later.

It’s a pity there’s not an actually customer controlled version of it.

Re: Google says Nest’s built-in mic not listed in specs was not meant to be secret

#95

Post by jusssi »

est31 wrote: post #30
dnbgfher wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For Google, I'm not sure how option 2 is supposed to be acceptable either. It is perfectly reasonable to be concerned about introducing an internet-connected microphone into your house. It doesn't even require assuming a malicious Google to see potential problems with this. You're one decent security flaw (in an IoT device no less) from anybody having a microphone in your house.

> You're one decent security flaw (in an IoT device no less) from anybody having a microphone in your house. Many people already have Android smartphones, so there is already a Google microphone in your house. The big difference is that you know that it has a microphone.

Not to mention, that Android phones seem to pick up "ok google" activation pattern from random conversations, and start sending voice to Google's servers for speech-to-text processing. Even after repeated attempts to find and turn off voice activation from settings.

Re: Google says Nest’s built-in mic not listed in specs was not meant to be secret

#96

Post by [deleted] »

pdkl95 wrote: post #32
jonas21 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't need "advanced audio processing" to detect a glass window breaking because it is loud, and has a distinctive spectrogram. It's a lot easier to detect glass breaking than a wake word, and you can buy standalone acoustic glass break sensors for under $30. [1] https://www.amazon.com/Honeywell-Intellisense-FG-1625-Acoust...

Ok, so it could at least plausibly have been local processing. I haven't been able to find out what kind of CPU/etc is in the device, and most of the features would have been easy to implement on the almost any hardware. It would have been even stranger to also include a powerful (expensive) CPU to do a bunch of audio processing, but if there are techniques that work on $30 devices, that opens up a much broader range…

[deleted]

Re: Google says Nest’s built-in mic not listed in specs was not meant to be secret

#97

Post by [deleted] »

strictnein wrote: post #10

Infosec dramas are getting more and more tiresome. Between this and the Singapore Airlines story, it just seems like people need to ratchet everything up to 11. You have two options, choose one: - 1. Google wants to spy on you with a hidden mic - 2. They had future plans for the mic, but it was disabled, so it wasn't mentioned by the marketing department For the Singapore Airlines story, you have two options, choose…

[deleted]

Re: Google says Nest’s built-in mic not listed in specs was not meant to be secret

#98

Post by jjulius »

kmlx wrote: post #60
vermilingua wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think Google is well past conspiracy territory. They are a company whose bottom line depends on collecting as much user data as possible; in an economy that compels them to improve their bottom line by any means available. Is there really any doubt that google can and will spy on you if given the slightest opportunity?

Yes, I have 100% doubt anyone is spying on anyone. I think most of it is paranoia. I also think this kind of paranoia is detrimental to our evolution as a species. We should be sharing more, not hiding in our caves.

>We should be sharing more...

Why? And what else should we be sharing?

Re: Google says Nest’s built-in mic not listed in specs was not meant to be secret

#99

Post by coldtea »

kmlx wrote: post #60
vermilingua wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think Google is well past conspiracy territory. They are a company whose bottom line depends on collecting as much user data as possible; in an economy that compels them to improve their bottom line by any means available. Is there really any doubt that google can and will spy on you if given the slightest opportunity?

Yes, I have 100% doubt anyone is spying on anyone. I think most of it is paranoia. I also think this kind of paranoia is detrimental to our evolution as a species. We should be sharing more, not hiding in our caves.

>We should be sharing more, not hiding in our caves.

Ironic coming from a non-eponymous account, and in an era when we share two orders of magnitude more stuff than any other, even pictures of what food we had at diner...

Re: Google says Nest’s built-in mic not listed in specs was not meant to be secret

#100

Post by michaelt »

taneq wrote: post #38
strictnein wrote: post #10

Infosec dramas are getting more and more tiresome. Between this and the Singapore Airlines story, it just seems like people need to ratchet everything up to 11. You have two options, choose one: - 1. Google wants to spy on you with a hidden mic - 2. They had future plans for the mic, but it was disabled, so it wasn't mentioned by the marketing department For the Singapore Airlines story, you have two options, choose…

> 2. They had future plans for the mic, but it was disabled, so it wasn't mentioned by the marketing department If you design in something which is later not used, you don't populate that part of the circuit board. Not unless you're intending to use it later, anyway. Components cost money. A software equivalent would be "we had plans to offer an integrated backup system but that didn't happen, although we still uploa…

  If you design in something which is later
  not used, you don't populate that part of
  the circuit board.
In this case the microphone was discovered when Google added built-in 'Google Assistant' support to the 'Nest Guard'.

I think there is no doubt they intended to start using it later, because they did.

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