Just look at TikTok, for example.
(Which didn’t exist when this thread was started, BTW).
It arises from its 14 year long slumber…
More than data mining, more than email reading, I am concerned about why people allow devices that listen to everything into their homes. And they pay for the privilege of being spied upon.
If you’re talking about devices like smartphones and smart speakers, those devices are only listening for the wake word. Barring a bug or something like that, they are not continuously sending your every conversation back to Google/Apple/Amazon etc.
Because it’s a corporation. Americans have been trained for generations to be submissive to corporations, and to fear and despise government. This by design makes Americans easier to victimize and largely helpless, since government is something they potentially can influence and corporations aren’t.
Also, our warped idea of “freedom” makes people violently skeptical of governmental warnings and regulations, while welcoming any corporate control as long as it makes us feel good in the short term and “we get to choose” it.
That is what they say.
Google told users their location data was not collected or stored for targeted advertising. Which was eventually found to be a lie
Google settles with California for allegedly lying to users about location data practices
For more serious consequnces Fujitsu also said it was impossible for the Horizon system to generate apparent shortfalls resulting in 900 sub post masters to be convicted and many more being forced to pay the alleged shortfalls with their own money and/or have their contract terminated.
I am sure there are several other examples, I would not trust these mega companies to lie in order to boost profits if they think they can get away with it.
It seems to me they do get away with it. What is a very occasional $93 million dollar fine, or for that matter a 2.4-billion Euro fine like they paid in 2017, to Google? Routine cost of doing business.
It doesn’t matter much what they say, if your smartphone was sending all your conversations back to servers, you would see it all add up in the amount of data you were using. You could burn through your monthly data plan in a few days. And the vast majority of security researchers who’ve monitored their devices for sending conversation data have come up empty handed - no data is being sent.
Depends on you plan and for cable / wifi connections it is often unlimited.
On a fairly typical 150GB monthly package with several hours of audio taking up a single GB quite a lot of conversation could be sent without the impact on your data usage being excessive (possibly all depending on how much you talk).
I don’t know about that. I know of at least two jurisdictions that have a property information portal that shows more about property than Street view - Street View shows the front of my house while the portal has a newer photo of the front of my house than street view and also has an aerial view of my backyard where you can see enough detail to know I have a patio table. Never heard anyone complain about it - sure, it’s city or county government , not Federal. I’m sure people want houses, driveways, their faces etc blurred- but that also happens on Street View.
I mean Alexa. And indoor web-connected surveillance cameras. Big Brother only had the one camera watching you, some people willingly provide several. And in bedrooms! WTF??
Yep, most county agencies I’ve worked with have publicly-available photos, owner details, and tax payment history.
Not noticing that data usage isn’t the problem, if, as you are implying, that data is being sent. Even a small amount of data is going to show up on any cursory search.
Plenty of people who live under cable/fiber data caps use data monitoring apps. Even if you don’t go over your cellular data plan, every smartphone has a setting to view your cellular data usage. So all it would take is one person posting screenshots of their data usage on X and saying, “Hey, where is this mysterious data going?”
Plus, that still doesn’t address why professional security researchers who expressly search for conversation data usage haven’t seen conversation data usage.
Well, again, when it comes to smart speakers like Alexa, they might be listening 24/7, but they are only listening for the wake word. They aren’t actually sending what you’ve said until after you invoke the wake word.
Not at all true.
Your cites do not prove your case, and in fact prove you are wrong.
From your Times cite:
Although it’s true that the device can hear everything you say within range of its far-field microphones, it is listening for its wake word before it actually starts recording anything (“Alexa” is the default, but you can change it to “Echo,” “Amazon,” or “computer”). Once it hears that, everything in the following few seconds is perceived to be a command or a request, and it’s sent up to Amazon’s cloud computers, where the correct response is triggered.
From your Time cite:
Alexa software is designed to continuously record snatches of audio, listening for a wake word. That’s “Alexa” by default, but people can change it to “Echo” or “computer.” When the wake word is detected, the light ring at the top of the Echo turns blue, indicating the device is recording and beaming a command to Amazon servers.
The scandal in these 2 articles wasn’t that Amazon was sending all conversations back to Amazon (well, to independent contractors, but it’s easier to just say Amazon), but rather that Amazon was using human review on the data it collected. Unfortunately, to make the situation worse, sometimes Alexa misinterpreted innocuous speech for the wake word command and then started sending the data on those private conversations back to Amazon.
It sucks that smart speakers aren’t 100% foolproof when it comes to correctly recognizing wake words (or just bugs in the software as I mentioned originally), but that is a far cry from doing what you’re implying they do. Also, this story is old news. It happened 5 years ago and doesn’t particularly apply to anything going on now. Since then, you can very easily opt out of human review. It sucks again that you have to opt out instead of opt in to human review, but at the very least, Alexa isn’t sending everything it hears back to Amazon. I’d love to see a report from an independent professional security researcher that says they currently are, though.
TL;DR
Neither article claims Alexa is sending every conversation it can hear back to Amazon.
I never claimed EVERY conversation goes. How many are too many. Go ahead, trust your spy machine, I don’t care.
That certainly seems like the claim you were making. Or, what else was it? You were referring only to the occasional fuck up where it misinterprets the wake word? I doubt it because you used an awful lot of hyperbole (“Big Brother,” your “concern” for owners, being “spied” on) for that.
I mean, even after all that overstating, you’re still characterizing it as a “spy machine.”
I agree that the camera height doesn’t seem like a huge deal to me, either. But I don’t understand why the cameras need to be that high. The roof of an ordinary car* is quite a bit lower than the eye-level of an average height adult standing next to it.
*e.g. a sedan or coupe, as opposed to a van, SUV, or truck.
FWIW “unlimited” data beyond a certain amount is often throttled, or charged extra for. You’d certainly notice the extra charge on your bill, or the performance degradation.