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> Emo Phillips once made this joke: The other day a woman came up to me and said, "Didn't I see you on television?" I said, "I don't know. You can't see out the

> Emo Phillips once made this joke: The other day a woman came up to me and said, "Didn't I see you on television?" I said, "I don't know. You can't see out the other way." Evidently Amazon has made that joke obsolete. Like Stallman, I'm so uncomfortable installing a listening device in my home like OK Google, Alexa, Siri, etc. It creeps me out on a visceral level unlike any other kind of snooping.

ehnto 8y ago
I am honestly very surprised at how comfortable people are with them. I think the smartphone paved the way and normalized it. I remember friends and family being terrified that their SMS messages were being read. Now people often don't give it a second thought.
- beenBoutIT 8y ago
  Never write anything in an email/SMS/etc that you wouldn’t feel comfortable reading on the Jumbotron in Times Square. If you follow that simple rule you'll do fine.
  - ehnto 8y ago
    Well we can hope we don't have to add not saying anything out loud in public or near a smart device to that list. Perhaps it's already too late for that.
    - mirimir 8y ago
      Yes, it's already too late for that :( My wife complains sometimes that I don't talk to her anymore. After quietly turning her phone off, and putting it in a distant room, I explain why ;)
  - 13of40 8y ago
    Or, more realistically, that you wouldn't feel comfortable having read back to you in court.
  - turbografx16 8y ago
    You shouldn't fucking have to. That just leads to social cooling.
ma2rten 8y ago
I don't understand why so many tech-literate people have an issue with that. As I am sure you know, those devices only record your voice and send it to the server when they hear their hotword. The hotword detection has to be done on the device itself for technical reasons (battery and data usage). Theoretically it's possible that the companies that build those devices lie and actually record you other times. But the same applies to any internet connected device that has a camera and/or microphone, such as pretty much every laptop and mobile phone.
- sporkland 8y ago
  I assume it's the similarity to 1984.
- cyphar 8y ago
  Aside from the striking similarity to 1984 there is the fact that all of these devices are internet-connected and probably have backdoors or vulnerabilities (so while they might not listen all the time normally, they can be switched to listening all the time if you become targeted). Stallman calls this a "universal backdoor". Most of these devices are always-on and are placed in central positions in your home -- this is not generally true of laptops (mobile phones are carried with you -- but I don't actually have a smartphone for this reason). Personally I physically disconnect all of the internal microphones from my laptops, and cover the cameras. I wish more people would do the same thing. Purism actually provides physical hardware switches which is much easier-to-use than having to physically take apart your machine (though Purism used to have proprietary kernel drivers, I'm not sure what the current status is).
  - Fnoord 8y ago
    > Personally I physically disconnect all of the internal microphones from my laptops, and cover the cameras. How do you deal with the former on your smartphone?
    - JackCh 8y ago
      You missed this part: "I don't actually have a smartphone for this reason)."
Crontab 8y ago
I've actually told my partner that we will have no such devices in our home. Luckily we are in agreement because this is a hard line for me.
magnetic 8y ago
I am uncomfortable about it too (and haven't installed any in my home), but I'm not sure what to do about the exact same issues from smart phones that we carry with us all the time: they can easily listen in on our conversation, in addition to knowing when that conversation happened and where. The home pods are a bit of a drop in the bucket when you think about "smartphone coverage around the world". What options are there?

ehnto 8y ago

I am honestly very surprised at how comfortable people are with them. I think the smartphone paved the way and normalized it. I remember friends and family being terrified that their SMS messages were being read. Now people often don't give it a second thought.

beenBoutIT 8y ago
Never write anything in an email/SMS/etc that you wouldn’t feel comfortable reading on the Jumbotron in Times Square. If you follow that simple rule you'll do fine.
- ehnto 8y ago
  Well we can hope we don't have to add not saying anything out loud in public or near a smart device to that list. Perhaps it's already too late for that.
  - mirimir 8y ago
    Yes, it's already too late for that :( My wife complains sometimes that I don't talk to her anymore. After quietly turning her phone off, and putting it in a distant room, I explain why ;)
- 13of40 8y ago
  Or, more realistically, that you wouldn't feel comfortable having read back to you in court.
- turbografx16 8y ago
  You shouldn't fucking have to. That just leads to social cooling.

ma2rten 8y ago

I don't understand why so many tech-literate people have an issue with that. As I am sure you know, those devices only record your voice and send it to the server when they hear their hotword. The hotword detection has to be done on the device itself for technical reasons (battery and data usage). Theoretically it's possible that the companies that build those devices lie and actually record you other times. But the same applies to any internet connected device that has a camera and/or microphone, such as pretty much every laptop and mobile phone.

sporkland 8y ago
I assume it's the similarity to 1984.
cyphar 8y ago
Aside from the striking similarity to 1984 there is the fact that all of these devices are internet-connected and probably have backdoors or vulnerabilities (so while they might not listen all the time normally, they can be switched to listening all the time if you become targeted). Stallman calls this a "universal backdoor". Most of these devices are always-on and are placed in central positions in your home -- this is not generally true of laptops (mobile phones are carried with you -- but I don't actually have a smartphone for this reason). Personally I physically disconnect all of the internal microphones from my laptops, and cover the cameras. I wish more people would do the same thing. Purism actually provides physical hardware switches which is much easier-to-use than having to physically take apart your machine (though Purism used to have proprietary kernel drivers, I'm not sure what the current status is).
- Fnoord 8y ago
  > Personally I physically disconnect all of the internal microphones from my laptops, and cover the cameras. How do you deal with the former on your smartphone?
  - JackCh 8y ago
    You missed this part: "I don't actually have a smartphone for this reason)."

Crontab 8y ago

I've actually told my partner that we will have no such devices in our home. Luckily we are in agreement because this is a hard line for me.

magnetic 8y ago

I am uncomfortable about it too (and haven't installed any in my home), but I'm not sure what to do about the exact same issues from smart phones that we carry with us all the time: they can easily listen in on our conversation, in addition to knowing when that conversation happened and where. The home pods are a bit of a drop in the bucket when you think about "smartphone coverage around the world". What options are there?