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I'm curious if the police will push this, as it could reveal how much voice information is actually stored. Amazon has declined to answer how much voice informa

by Flammy 10y ago

I'm curious if the police will push this, as it could reveal how much voice information is actually stored. Amazon has declined to answer how much voice information is stored online[1] and how much if that is tied to your identity. We do know that Alexa stores a list of queries you've spoken, and you can "delete" these records, but it is unknown if this impacts the actual voice data behind them. [1] https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=201809740 https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=... and https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2014/11/11/how-closely-is-amazons-echo-listening/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2014/11/11...

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
FrancoDiaz 10y ago
Wait a minute, we'd already know if Alexa was recording everything by the network traffic that obviously has already been sniffed. We can assume that Amazon is storing every "Alex,..." query that you've ever done. So what is there to know?
- Flammy 10y ago
  We know they are streaming it to do all the NLP in the cloud. This is obvious from the computational costs alone of doing NLP. The important question here is "What happens to the audio data streamed to the cloud, a few seconds AFTER the query has been identified (or not identified) and the results sent back to the Alexa device?" The nieve assumption is "all audio data is deleted after processing". The reality is that data is still valuable to Amazon for a variety of uses such as (1) further training their voice recognition software (2) advertising data mining [how many people are in the room, things they are talking about --- note, Facebook's mobile app infamously does this] If they just store the query text, that is 'best case' from a privacy perspective. If they just store query text and query audio, that is less than ideal, but not too bad. If they store all audio, ever recorded, for an indefinite period of time... that is what this police request could reveal: Audio data stored for a non-keyword-trigger, and for days/weeks after the fact.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  - FrancoDiaz 10y ago
    I deleted my other reply to you. I understand the difference now. It's about the actual voice vs the query text.
  - Fnoord 10y ago
    I guess a way around this is: 1) Put the speech to text. 2) Put the text to speech. 3) Send the data over Tor. Although #3 would use a Tor exit node and would allow packet sniffing/logging/mangling etc, it'd at least be more anonymous. Thing is, this is in nobody's interest. Not in the police or Amazon's interest. For the owner, it'd depend on if they are the defendant/suspect or the victim. The victim is not always the person who owns the Amazon Echo. But an Amazon Echo is a nice point of defense because the proof cannot be deleted anymore. All one has to say during a robbery is "Alexa, call the cops". That's quicker than having to dial the number. And at any point, if you do say Alexa, you can also trigger a warning or proof. Ultimately, if you could change the keyword to something more generic you could trigger it without a robber noticing, or by tricking them. A keyword like "put your hands up"? I don't know.
  - frik 10y ago
    > computational costs alone of doing NLP The speech recognition part could run on a Pentium 133 in the nineties (Nuance software, Dragon naturally speaking), the Echo device has probably a more powerful CPU than that. The NLP part could run on the device as well, it's mainly a storage problem, you need dozens of GB, at least 32GB sdcard. Ideally only the search phrases would be sent to Google/Amazon/etc. That's also how Bill Gates vision was described in his 1995 book The Road Ahead. A personal agent in a wallet PC would surf the information super highway for you. ...well we are "almost" there but with a different solution.
    - matthewmacleod 10y ago
      Speech recognition in the 90s was absolutely turd.
- darkstar999 10y ago
  > We can assume That doesn't solve a murder.
- sharemywin 10y ago
  but, are they storing every voice recording? How would you know?
  - FrancoDiaz 10y ago
    So we know that they have a record of every query that Alexa has detected. I'm guessing what you're questioning is whether they're storing the actual voices so that they can differentiate between different people that have queried Alexa.
    - hillz 10y ago
      I'm quite confident that they store the voice data. It's very valuable to them as a source of training data for future versions of 'Alexa'-like products.
      - FrancoDiaz 10y ago
        Definitely, as well as being able to eventually differentiate between mom, dad, and the kids.
  - ewindisch 10y ago
    you know because they let you access and replay the recordings from their app.
    - CaptSpify 10y ago
      But we don't know that's every recording that they have. They very well could have a "allow_user_to_see_recording" toggle.
      - watty 10y ago
        No, from day one people have been sniffing Echo traffic to see if it sends any non-triggered data. It does not.
- jbigelow76 10y ago
  "Hey Alexa, how do I dispose of a dead body". Maybe the cops are just hoping to get lucky.
  - mejari 10y ago
    I guess Tina didn't like her roses.
- wcummings 10y ago
  "Alexa, remind me to murder John tomorrow evening."

by Flammy 10y ago

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

FrancoDiaz 10y ago

Wait a minute, we'd already know if Alexa was recording everything by the network traffic that obviously has already been sniffed. We can assume that Amazon is storing every "Alex,..." query that you've ever done. So what is there to know?

Flammy 10y ago
We know they are streaming it to do all the NLP in the cloud. This is obvious from the computational costs alone of doing NLP. The important question here is "What happens to the audio data streamed to the cloud, a few seconds AFTER the query has been identified (or not identified) and the results sent back to the Alexa device?" The nieve assumption is "all audio data is deleted after processing". The reality is that data is still valuable to Amazon for a variety of uses such as (1) further training their voice recognition software (2) advertising data mining [how many people are in the room, things they are talking about --- note, Facebook's mobile app infamously does this] If they just store the query text, that is 'best case' from a privacy perspective. If they just store query text and query audio, that is less than ideal, but not too bad. If they store all audio, ever recorded, for an indefinite period of time... that is what this police request could reveal: Audio data stored for a non-keyword-trigger, and for days/weeks after the fact.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- FrancoDiaz 10y ago
  I deleted my other reply to you. I understand the difference now. It's about the actual voice vs the query text.
- Fnoord 10y ago
  I guess a way around this is: 1) Put the speech to text. 2) Put the text to speech. 3) Send the data over Tor. Although #3 would use a Tor exit node and would allow packet sniffing/logging/mangling etc, it'd at least be more anonymous. Thing is, this is in nobody's interest. Not in the police or Amazon's interest. For the owner, it'd depend on if they are the defendant/suspect or the victim. The victim is not always the person who owns the Amazon Echo. But an Amazon Echo is a nice point of defense because the proof cannot be deleted anymore. All one has to say during a robbery is "Alexa, call the cops". That's quicker than having to dial the number. And at any point, if you do say Alexa, you can also trigger a warning or proof. Ultimately, if you could change the keyword to something more generic you could trigger it without a robber noticing, or by tricking them. A keyword like "put your hands up"? I don't know.
- frik 10y ago
  > computational costs alone of doing NLP The speech recognition part could run on a Pentium 133 in the nineties (Nuance software, Dragon naturally speaking), the Echo device has probably a more powerful CPU than that. The NLP part could run on the device as well, it's mainly a storage problem, you need dozens of GB, at least 32GB sdcard. Ideally only the search phrases would be sent to Google/Amazon/etc. That's also how Bill Gates vision was described in his 1995 book The Road Ahead. A personal agent in a wallet PC would surf the information super highway for you. ...well we are "almost" there but with a different solution.
  - matthewmacleod 10y ago
    Speech recognition in the 90s was absolutely turd.
darkstar999 10y ago
> We can assume That doesn't solve a murder.
sharemywin 10y ago
but, are they storing every voice recording? How would you know?
- FrancoDiaz 10y ago
  So we know that they have a record of every query that Alexa has detected. I'm guessing what you're questioning is whether they're storing the actual voices so that they can differentiate between different people that have queried Alexa.
  - hillz 10y ago
    I'm quite confident that they store the voice data. It's very valuable to them as a source of training data for future versions of 'Alexa'-like products.
    - FrancoDiaz 10y ago
      Definitely, as well as being able to eventually differentiate between mom, dad, and the kids.
- ewindisch 10y ago
  you know because they let you access and replay the recordings from their app.
  - CaptSpify 10y ago
    But we don't know that's every recording that they have. They very well could have a "allow_user_to_see_recording" toggle.
    - watty 10y ago
      No, from day one people have been sniffing Echo traffic to see if it sends any non-triggered data. It does not.
jbigelow76 10y ago
"Hey Alexa, how do I dispose of a dead body". Maybe the cops are just hoping to get lucky.
- mejari 10y ago
  I guess Tina didn't like her roses.
wcummings 10y ago
"Alexa, remind me to murder John tomorrow evening."