3 ms·

> The newfound privacy conundrum presented by installing a device that can literally listen to everything you’re saying represents a chilling new development in

> The newfound privacy conundrum presented by installing a device that can literally listen to everything you’re saying represents a chilling new development in the age of internet-connected things. I say this every time these home assistants are discussed: this is not new. There are no new privacy implications whatsoever, unless you're one of those very few people who doesn't have a cell phone. The vast majority of us have had devices that can literally listen to everything we're saying for years now, many of us for decades. And to make it worse, we take them with us outside, they're not just in the home. Why do home assistants awake this privacy fear, but nobody cares about cell phones listening in on you? I seriously do not get it.

ianai 9y ago
I’ve turned off “hey Siri” on all of my devices. Primarily for battery life. You can’t say everyone’s for their phones listening to them.
- mikeash 9y ago
  And you know that this actually stops it from listening to you how, exactly?
  - eikenberry 9y ago
    I'd assume because they don't want the liability. Believe it or not most companies take this sort of thing very seriously and don't want to open themselves up to lawsuits.
    - mikeash 9y ago
      Why doesn't that logic also apply to Amazon promising not to transmit anything unless it hears the trigger word?
  - ianai 9y ago
    For one, my battery life improves with it turned off.
    - mikeash 9y ago
      Measured, or merely observed? I wouldn't trust casual observation for something like this. In any case, there are other explanations for this than the feature doing what it says. Recording takes less power than constantly running a neural net over the audio to see if you said the trigger phrase. If you really don't trust the manufacturer, they could even artificially use excess power when the feature is enabled, just to make it look like it's doing something extra. Or they might not be listening to you 24/7, but only at selected times. There really is no way to verify that your phone isn't listening to you when it's not supposed to be.
GuiA 9y ago
My cell phone displays a clear indicator when any app is accessing the microphone (and I know I can trust it because I can access the source code). I have no way to verify what any of the currently available home devices do with their microphone.
- mikeash 9y ago
  Do you have the source code for your phone's baseband? How confident are you that the code you have is actually what's running on the device?
eikenberry 9y ago
On every model of Android I've seen you can disable the voice activation feature so that they aren't constantly listening. Some models come with it off by default. I assume the something similar is available on iOS.
- RyanCavanaugh 9y ago
  You still don't know whether or not the phone is actually listening. This is even worse on cell phones because you can't easily insert something like WireShark between your cell phone and the data network. Untrusted microphones connected to networks are untrusted microphones connected to networks. The only thing distinguishing an Echo from any smart phone is that you can monitor the Echo's network traffic.
munificent 9y ago
From the article: > (By the way: If you enabled an always-listening assistant on your smartphone, now’s a good time to consider the implications.)
- mikeash 9y ago
  Which is horribly naive, because there's nothing that prevented your RAZR from listening to you, other than the good intentions of Motorola. First, you need to answer this question: can you trust the device maker? If the answer is "yes," then both types of devices are fine. If your phone says it doesn't listen to you when it's not supposed to, it doesn't. If your home assistant says it doesn't listen to you except some dumb routine to check for the wake word, it doesn't. If the answer is "no," then both types of devices are bad. If you can't trust a home assistant not to spy on you contrary to what the manufacturer says, then you can't trust a phone either. It's possible to trust one and not the other if you distrust a particular manufacturer. But I haven't seen anyone saying "I don't trust Amazon specifically, but I'd be fine with a home assistant if it was made by Company X." It's always a blanket "why does anyone ever allow anything like this into their homes?" To be clear, it's the "newfound" I object to. There's definitely a privacy conundrum here, but it's an old one, and 99% of people have already decided they do not care.

ianai 9y ago

I’ve turned off “hey Siri” on all of my devices. Primarily for battery life. You can’t say everyone’s for their phones listening to them.

mikeash 9y ago
And you know that this actually stops it from listening to you how, exactly?
- eikenberry 9y ago
  I'd assume because they don't want the liability. Believe it or not most companies take this sort of thing very seriously and don't want to open themselves up to lawsuits.
  - mikeash 9y ago
    Why doesn't that logic also apply to Amazon promising not to transmit anything unless it hears the trigger word?
- ianai 9y ago
  For one, my battery life improves with it turned off.
  - mikeash 9y ago
    Measured, or merely observed? I wouldn't trust casual observation for something like this. In any case, there are other explanations for this than the feature doing what it says. Recording takes less power than constantly running a neural net over the audio to see if you said the trigger phrase. If you really don't trust the manufacturer, they could even artificially use excess power when the feature is enabled, just to make it look like it's doing something extra. Or they might not be listening to you 24/7, but only at selected times. There really is no way to verify that your phone isn't listening to you when it's not supposed to be.

GuiA 9y ago

My cell phone displays a clear indicator when any app is accessing the microphone (and I know I can trust it because I can access the source code). I have no way to verify what any of the currently available home devices do with their microphone.

mikeash 9y ago
Do you have the source code for your phone's baseband? How confident are you that the code you have is actually what's running on the device?

eikenberry 9y ago

On every model of Android I've seen you can disable the voice activation feature so that they aren't constantly listening. Some models come with it off by default. I assume the something similar is available on iOS.

RyanCavanaugh 9y ago
You still don't know whether or not the phone is actually listening. This is even worse on cell phones because you can't easily insert something like WireShark between your cell phone and the data network. Untrusted microphones connected to networks are untrusted microphones connected to networks. The only thing distinguishing an Echo from any smart phone is that you can monitor the Echo's network traffic.

munificent 9y ago

From the article: > (By the way: If you enabled an always-listening assistant on your smartphone, now’s a good time to consider the implications.)

mikeash 9y ago
Which is horribly naive, because there's nothing that prevented your RAZR from listening to you, other than the good intentions of Motorola. First, you need to answer this question: can you trust the device maker? If the answer is "yes," then both types of devices are fine. If your phone says it doesn't listen to you when it's not supposed to, it doesn't. If your home assistant says it doesn't listen to you except some dumb routine to check for the wake word, it doesn't. If the answer is "no," then both types of devices are bad. If you can't trust a home assistant not to spy on you contrary to what the manufacturer says, then you can't trust a phone either. It's possible to trust one and not the other if you distrust a particular manufacturer. But I haven't seen anyone saying "I don't trust Amazon specifically, but I'd be fine with a home assistant if it was made by Company X." It's always a blanket "why does anyone ever allow anything like this into their homes?" To be clear, it's the "newfound" I object to. There's definitely a privacy conundrum here, but it's an old one, and 99% of people have already decided they do not care.