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I would love to think that animated speculation on the breathtaking suite of abuses an always-listening in-home web appliance invites was one of the first react
by aaroninsf 10y ago
I would love to think that animated speculation on the breathtaking suite of abuses an always-listening in-home web appliance invites was one of the first reaction to Echo and Allo of most HN readers. It certainly was among my coworkers.
The list of horrors just starts writing itself.
Is that a reason to not pursue the technology?
Normally I'd say 'of course not, but let's keep such possibilities front and center...'
In this case, my gut instinct is to say 'not in my home!'... not until we have some frank and detailed consensus on safeguards against abuse.
The words blackmail, gag orders, backdoors, 'anonymized'-that-isn't... they are all blinking red around me.
- arkem 10y agoGoogle Allo is the chat app, you're thinking of Google Home. Snowden is saying Allo is dangerous because end-to-end encryption is an opt in setting and not the default setting. Google set it up this way to provide Google Now style automated context based annotation to messages. Users can turn on an "off-the-record" style mode with end to end encryption but it disables the message annotation.