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As others are posting here, the Echo is obvious about when it's recording: when the onboard hardware detects the wake-word, the LED rings light up blue and it b

by gordyf 10y ago

As others are posting here, the Echo is obvious about when it's recording: when the onboard hardware detects the wake-word, the LED rings light up blue and it begins streaming audio to Amazon until the Alexa service determines that the query has been completed or that there's nothing more to hear. People have monitored the network activity of their Echoes to verify this (and if you don't trust that, well, nothing I say will help you.) Sometimes the wake-word detection is mistakenly triggered and some unrelated audio gets streamed to Amazon, but the LEDs will still light up, and at times it'll even reply to a query that was never intended (I've been watching TV when my Echo will hear something and reply that I don't have any timers set, or whatever) but these recordings would still be covered by the link I pasted in the help text above. I think a lot of the HN paranoia about these devices is overblown. All of this functionality is provided by devices that you already own, including hardware wake-word detection on all modern smartphones, which I assume everyone here carries around everywhere and recharges daily without much concern.

zeta0134 10y ago
I think there's a stronger mental disconnect here in a lot of consumers. Detecting the wake word is easy to do locally; doing natural language processing on the resulting audio recording is what must be offloaded to Amazon, as it's too computationally heavy to perform that process locally. Because the wake word is able to be processed offline, there is no need for the Echo device to record and transmit audio all the time. While the hardware is physically capable of doing this (and therefore, it will never be possible to fully eliminate doubt in the device's security) it would not be in Amazon's or the customer's best interest. Talk about a waste of resources, and a privacy nightmare!
- eclipxe 10y ago
  Exactly. There is no cost model that accounts for the device constantly streaming realtime audio data to Amazon. Just doesn't make sense.
  - visarga 10y ago
    But it could still record background audio and transmit it later to Amazon, when an Alexa query is triggered. How do we know that it doesn't do that? Has anyone opened up the data stream to check what audio it contains?
    - discodave 10y ago
      You can measure the amount of data it's sending so you can at least verify it's not uploading vastly more audio than expected. They could do sneaky stuff like upload the audio after the wake word + a few seconds BEFORE the wake word. The cost benefit of this doesn't seem high especially if you consider that Amazon says all the time that they want to 'earn customer trust'.
      - visarga 10y ago
        Maybe they have hundreds of secret wake words triggering recording and covert upload of audio. It's not hard to implement - they already have 3 wake words, and ability to record audio locally. A list of national security words and marketing words would be the first choices that pop into my mind. Do you trust them not to waste this opportunity to get more user info? What about future software updates and especially user targeted software updates? They could avoid detection by only doing surveillance on selected targets. When they are caught, they can justify it with some "improving services" or "software bug" bullshit excuse.
- tripzilch 10y ago
  > doing natural language processing on the resulting audio recording is what must be offloaded to Amazon, as it's too computationally heavy to perform that process locally. This is an unquestioned assumption actually. I think it's way more to do with the NLP system being very very proprietary. I wouldn't be surprised if it could be done locally, computing is pretty powerful, but they never bothered to even try and make it work locally. Because "cloud computing" is a dream come true for businesses, hiding their special sauce, not having to explain what they're doing (whether it's hard or not) and always maintain control.
DougWebb 10y ago
Typical audio compression rates can be 10:1, especially for voice. So if the LED rings are lit for 30 seconds, is there 30 seconds of network activity, or 3 seconds? If it's 30 seconds, either Amazon is grossly wasting internet bandwidth by streaming uncompressed audio, or it is sending 10x as much data as the query it is supposed to be sending. You do understand that it is trivial to operate the LED lights and microphone independently, right? The hardware /could/ be designed so that the microphone can't be activated without also turning on the LEDs, but I'm guessing they're independently controlled by a microcontroller, and that it's the hidden software which is responsible for turning the LEDs on when the microphone is in use. Yes, this is a concern for smartphones as well. The capability, even if it is not currently in use, is a concern.
- chillacy 10y ago
  And I'd like to add that even if Amazon doesn't do this, malware could, or certain state actors may compel Amazon to ship this on certain customer's devices.
- jonnytran 10y ago
  I'm completely with you. Recording video from webcams without turning on the light indicator has been exploited for years. [1] The FBI director admitted to putting tape over his webcam. Why would anyone think audio is any different? 1: http://www.macrumors.com/2013/12/18/software-allows-hackers-to-activate-macbook-webcams-without-green-warning-light/ http://www.macrumors.com/2013/12/18/software-allows-hackers-...

by gordyf 10y ago

zeta0134 10y ago

I think there's a stronger mental disconnect here in a lot of consumers. Detecting the wake word is easy to do locally; doing natural language processing on the resulting audio recording is what must be offloaded to Amazon, as it's too computationally heavy to perform that process locally. Because the wake word is able to be processed offline, there is no need for the Echo device to record and transmit audio all the time. While the hardware is physically capable of doing this (and therefore, it will never be possible to fully eliminate doubt in the device's security) it would not be in Amazon's or the customer's best interest. Talk about a waste of resources, and a privacy nightmare!

eclipxe 10y ago
Exactly. There is no cost model that accounts for the device constantly streaming realtime audio data to Amazon. Just doesn't make sense.
- visarga 10y ago
  But it could still record background audio and transmit it later to Amazon, when an Alexa query is triggered. How do we know that it doesn't do that? Has anyone opened up the data stream to check what audio it contains?
  - discodave 10y ago
    You can measure the amount of data it's sending so you can at least verify it's not uploading vastly more audio than expected. They could do sneaky stuff like upload the audio after the wake word + a few seconds BEFORE the wake word. The cost benefit of this doesn't seem high especially if you consider that Amazon says all the time that they want to 'earn customer trust'.
    - visarga 10y ago
      Maybe they have hundreds of secret wake words triggering recording and covert upload of audio. It's not hard to implement - they already have 3 wake words, and ability to record audio locally. A list of national security words and marketing words would be the first choices that pop into my mind. Do you trust them not to waste this opportunity to get more user info? What about future software updates and especially user targeted software updates? They could avoid detection by only doing surveillance on selected targets. When they are caught, they can justify it with some "improving services" or "software bug" bullshit excuse.
tripzilch 10y ago
> doing natural language processing on the resulting audio recording is what must be offloaded to Amazon, as it's too computationally heavy to perform that process locally. This is an unquestioned assumption actually. I think it's way more to do with the NLP system being very very proprietary. I wouldn't be surprised if it could be done locally, computing is pretty powerful, but they never bothered to even try and make it work locally. Because "cloud computing" is a dream come true for businesses, hiding their special sauce, not having to explain what they're doing (whether it's hard or not) and always maintain control.

DougWebb 10y ago

Typical audio compression rates can be 10:1, especially for voice. So if the LED rings are lit for 30 seconds, is there 30 seconds of network activity, or 3 seconds? If it's 30 seconds, either Amazon is grossly wasting internet bandwidth by streaming uncompressed audio, or it is sending 10x as much data as the query it is supposed to be sending. You do understand that it is trivial to operate the LED lights and microphone independently, right? The hardware /could/ be designed so that the microphone can't be activated without also turning on the LEDs, but I'm guessing they're independently controlled by a microcontroller, and that it's the hidden software which is responsible for turning the LEDs on when the microphone is in use. Yes, this is a concern for smartphones as well. The capability, even if it is not currently in use, is a concern.

chillacy 10y ago
And I'd like to add that even if Amazon doesn't do this, malware could, or certain state actors may compel Amazon to ship this on certain customer's devices.
jonnytran 10y ago
I'm completely with you. Recording video from webcams without turning on the light indicator has been exploited for years. [1] The FBI director admitted to putting tape over his webcam. Why would anyone think audio is any different? 1: http://www.macrumors.com/2013/12/18/software-allows-hackers-to-activate-macbook-webcams-without-green-warning-light/ http://www.macrumors.com/2013/12/18/software-allows-hackers-...