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I still don't understand why this is possible. I've frequently seen the claim that an Echo only records brief snippets, looking for the wake word. If that's s
by shakna 8y ago
I still don't understand why this is possible.
I've frequently seen the claim that an Echo only records brief snippets, looking for the wake word.
If that's so, there's next to nothing for Amazon to hand over.
- themagician 8y agoIt’s not possible. This is a classic example of the legal system confusing reality with science fiction. You can monitor Echo itself over your network and quickly realize that it’s not sending a constant stream of voice data. For the most part the device is off until it hears its name.
- ethbro 8y agoOn the other hand, if the government comes to Amazon with a valid sealed court order, are you willing to bet they'll stand up rather than start streaming audio recordings home? Amazon winning DoD cloud business is actually the smartest thing the US government could do to align interests.
- peteretep 8y ago> a valid sealed court order If the government show up with a valid court order, generally they can do what the hell they want? That's how justice works in a democracy?
- danso 8y agoI mean, yes? The need for a valid court order is so that the executive branch (e.g. law enforcement) can’t unilaterally surveil and detain people. The court makes this decision by looking at the laws, which are passed by the legislative branch. If the elected legislature passes a law that vastly lowers the barrier for govt intrusion, well, it’s not a great situation, but it is possible under democratic principles.
- peteretep 8y agoMy comment was unclear, and I agree that this is how it's meant to work.
- aleksei 8y agoDemocracy has nothing to do with it. But yes, it's how most if not all governments operate.
- rtpg 8y agoWhat would even be the legal basis for such a court order?
- ethbro 8y agoTerrorism related investigations. It's not a legal stretch to extend CALEA wiretaps to IoT devices. And if the device manufacturer cooperates (in the same way ATT does), then the hurdles shrink drastically.
- michaelmrose 8y agoYou don't see any distinction between A) Giving the government access to communications that provider already has legal access to. B) Collecting additional data from inside homes by exploiting current legal access to the software?
- ethbro 8y agoWhen the only difference is Amazon making a silent firmware push, or endangering $10B+ of business? No.
- salawat 8y agoWhat does their business situation have anything to do with it? If I hosted 10 billion dollars worth of unrelated business functionality, then told you to provide me with access for widespread surveillance purposes in an unrelated vertical of your business, you would think that is justifiable? I beg your pardon, but what color is the sky where you are? Business doesn't work that way. Neither does ethics or morality. Profit does not whitewash societal harm. It may create other business opportunities to remedy negative externalities, but there is no guarantee that the nature of the harm inflicted has a profitable capitalism compatible remediation. This is one of those cases.
- ethbro 8y agoWho said anything about widespread surveillance? The "government wants to listen to every Echo user" idea is paranoid fantasy. The "government would really like to listen to these individuals, but doesn't want to go through full court proceedings" is less fanciful and not without precedent. It's not just profit. It's the morass of backroom bargains to stave off regulation, honest desire to "do good", future contracts, and political goodwill. There's a rich history of US technology companies enabling the government / military for all of the above reasons.
- curiousgal 8y agoMaybe they're hoping one of the parties involved yelled "Alexa!" as the crime was taking place. /s
- ISL 8y agoAlexa, call the police! #### is here, and he's trying to hurt me! Seems like a pretty good use for a voice-activated service. "Alexa, lock the doors!" also sounds useful in this context.
- coss 8y agonot if you are trying to escape :X
- mtgx 8y agoAttacker: Alexa unlock the door for me.
- superflyguy 8y agoThe way a thief can unlock your phone, you mean?
- pbhjpbhj 8y agoDoes Alexa need Star Trek-style command codes. "Alexa, unlock the door, command override Janeway alpha-two-phi."
- ams6110 8y agoI'm sorry Dave, I can't do that.
- Dylan16807 8y agoWhy sarcasm? If I was being attacked and remembered I would absolutely do that.
- lostlogin 8y ago
- PascLeRasc 8y agoiFixit reports that it has 4GB of storage onboard [1]. That's room for 97 hours of mp3 96kbps audio [2], and if we're going full conspiracy they could have put an entirely different flash chip in there with the wrong markings. [1] https://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/Amazon+Echo+Dot+Teardown/61304 https://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/Amazon+Echo+Dot+Teardown/613... [2] https://soundandpicture.com/2011/06/audio-memory-cards-how-much-record-time-do-i-have/ https://soundandpicture.com/2011/06/audio-memory-cards-how-m...
- dunpeal 8y agoIt would be super sketchy if it records any audio, since there's no real reason or need to do that for the features it provides. Also, if we're going conspiracy mode: we're all surrounded by devices with very good microphones that are always on, primarily our phones.
- gambiting 8y agoThere's a very simple reason why phones cannot be recording all the time - it would have an impact on the battery life. But an always plugged in device like the echo does not have such limitation.
- dsl 8y agoIt's not really a conspiracy. The CIA actively uses vulnerable phones, televisions, and other devices as clandestine listening devices. 99.9% of HN readers are just too boring (read: not terrorists or foreign officials) to have to worry about it.
- rocqua 8y agoSource?
- visarga 8y agoIt could be possible that Alexa was accidentally triggered and recorded interesting snippets as a side effect.
- superflyguy 8y ago"Amazon/verizon - tell themagician's Alexa to start recording now. And don't tell themagician."
- themagician 8y agoJokes on them, I keep the Echo in the bathroom because I mainly use it to sing in the shower. So they can listen to me shit and sing “Call me Maybe”.
- dingaling 8y ago> You can monitor Echo itself over your network No, you can't. The SSL certs are pinned. You can determine the metadata and quantity of data transferred, but not the contents.
- lima 8y agoThis is the point - a constant stream would be easily detected from metadata alone.
- themagician 8y agoUnless they have invented some kind of magic compression then I can. The Echo either sends nothing or tiny pings. If they’ve invented some kind of subspace coms channel that can stream an hour of voice over 12kb, then props.
- oh-kumudo 8y agoSending voice data constantly is easy to catch on the user's side, by simply monitoring the traffic. So once they got caught, it is going to cause them a huge fortune and completely meltdown in terms of customer trust. And on the technical side, this makes very little sense either, they only needs to have the Alexa keyword detected then went through the backend ASR service, otherwise the cost is going to be overwhelming.
- uptown 8y agoWhy would you need voice? Just translate to text and send that. It’d be a very very small payload.
- teraflop 8y agoThe Alexa hardware is cheap and doesn't have a lot of computational horsepower, so you can get better accuracy by doing the speech recognition on the server side.
- oh-kumudo 8y agoThe Alexa device itself is rather cheap and the running a relative huge model on 'edge' device is still fairly expensive and remains an open question. Again it falls into economic side of things, it makes sense to adapt a layered model in this case, to delay more expensive processing to the server side.
- kabdib 8y agoA defense lawyer would have a ton of fun poking holes in the accuracy of speech-to-text, especially on a small device. (You could easily determine if the device is doing this kind of processing by looking at power draw or thermals. This stuff takes a lot of crunch). Amazon isn't stupid. They know that if a back-door is found in these devices, or if they have bugs that allow them to be compromised, that they are toast in the market. I'd be surprised if they didn't have internal briefs and a bunch of planning on many scenarios like this. Amazon has almost certainly made the most secure device it can, knowing it will be under intense scrutiny, and will have prepped its legal teams appropriately.
- Buge 8y agoJust because there's "next to nothing" doesn't mean there's actually nothing. The speech recognition sometimes has false positives on the wake word. Also there's the tiny chance that the victim yelled out Alexa in an attempt to get evidence to the police.
- shakna 8y agoThat information would likely be on the device itself, which the police have. However, this is about requests for information over on the Amazon servers - where it would be surprising to find they have anything of significance.
- Buge 8y agoHuh? I haven't heard of the device itself storing any significant amount of data. And if it does, it would likely be somewhat difficult for the police to figure out how to get it. On the other hand, it's widely documented that Amazon stores recordings on their servers every time the watch word activates. And Amazon provides users an easy interface to listen to those recordings.
- shakna 8y ago> On the other hand, it's widely documented that Amazon stores recordings on their servers every time the watch word activates. Right. And it doesn't look like that happened. This is some sort of fishing expedition based on the premise that Amazon gets more than just wake-word activated data.
- Buge 8y ago>And it doesn't look like that happened. What indication of that is there? My original comments were listing scenarios in which the wake word might have activated. >based on the premise that Amazon gets more than just wake-word activated data. I don't see that at all. It seems to me the police are saying "there's a chance the wake word activated, let's check, and if so, get those recordings".
- ams6110 8y agoThere most likely is nothing for Amazon to hand over, but the prosecution is asking on the speculation that there might be, and Amazon probably won't even answer that question without the legally-binding demand.