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1) It's always listening for a keyword, and then it starts recording. It's a voice interface for a computer. 2) Your phone is doing the same thing except for

1) It's always listening for a keyword, and then it starts recording. It's a voice interface for a computer. 2) Your phone is doing the same thing except for it follows you around everywhere you go and records your map location, what apps you use, who you are talking to and what your web searches are. Your phone isn't recording just what you say...its recording what you do and where you do it and when you do it. It's overwhelmingly more pervasive and invasive if you value privacy. 3) The utility of being able to interact with a computer via my voice wildly surpasses the risk. Even if it had been my voice sent to this random other person all they would get is 3000 recordings of me saying "Alexa, what is the weight of an elephant?" "Alexa, play Magic Sword." "Alexa, whats the weather?" My father-in-law thought these things were the devil until he realized he could ask it to play ANY SONG HE WANTED and it would do it. Now he is always unplugging ours and plugging it back in on the porch so he can use it out there. Literally every article about home assistants brings out a number of people who continue to say how they can't understand how people could have this in their homes. Great, you can't understand it. Meanwhile, an enormous number of people find immense utility in home assistants otherwise they wouldn't be proliferating so wildly for this long.

baxtr 8y ago
I get 1) and 3), but I don’t buy 2). Your phone works with Siri/any other assistant off. The connected speakers don’t. So the comparison doesn’t hold in my opinion.
- stevecalifornia 8y ago
  As an example for #2, when I got an Android somehow I was either automatically opted in or accidentally opted into location sharing. Two years later I found that Google Maps could show me every location I had been to for the last 2 years. I could review, day by day, everywhere I had gone, what time I went, how I drove there and where I went to next.
- jedberg 8y ago
  You can just mute the connected speakers and it's the same as having Siri off. Or get one of the ones that requires you to push a button (the Amazon Tap).
- gnopgnip 8y ago
  Many phones work the same way, the phone is always listening for you to say ok siri.
  - simion314 8y ago
    Can't you turn of this feature on iOS? I don't have Google assistant on on my device.
    - saagarjha 8y ago
      Yes, you can. It’s in Settings under “Siri”.
    - deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
LinuxBender 8y ago
1) Nobody can prove that. It's always listening and you have to assume always recording and transmitting. 2) My phone is a $12 throw away that speaks voice and sms (text). 3) Loose lips sink ships.
- ryanmercer 8y ago
  > Nobody can prove that. It's always listening and you have to assume always recording and transmitting Uh... packet analyzers, IP logs, bandwidth monitoring tools etc... If instead of transmitting occasional bursts of data when you say the wake word it's been sending back tens of megabytes an hour, or tens to hundreds of megabytes a day, you can go "hey, it's probably transmitting everything it hears". There are people that religiously watch what these devices are sending back just to try and catch one of the companies doing something fishy. There are people that religiously watch their network traffic period looking for something nefarious. These devices aren't like your phone, where simply having it on can have all sorts of services/apps using data in the background or you open a webpage and tens or even hundreds of different servers are contacted and data pulled/pushed to/from them. It's a device that should be periodically checking for an update and sending very small audio files back in nearly-real time. If they were recording regularly, or especially all the time, and transmitting it back to a server it would stand out like a sore thumb. Never mind the fact that keeping it secret, and not having a whistle blower, would be damn impossible. Someone's going to mention it to a loved one or friend, or flat out go online "I discovered my Amazon/Google device is actively listening and recording and sending to these IPs in these intervals" when they just know it as fact and didn't have to 'discover' it.
  - LinuxBender 8y ago
    Which nobody can do. It is encrypted and unless the device accept invalid certs, they can queue up, compress, batch upload any data they want. They control the security, not the end-luser.
    - y04nn 8y ago
      Encrypted or not, an audio stream should not be difficult to identify.
pmontra 8y ago
You can opt out of basically every Google login/tracking in Android, except the Play store. I know because I'm logged out of everything and I disable location services. Google Maps keeps working. What I don't understand is why they have to store voice recordings instead of deleting them once they understand the vocal command. There could be a number of reasons and I don't like any of them.
- mcny 8y ago
  > What I don't understand is why they have to store voice recordings instead of deleting them once they understand the vocal command. There could be a number of reasons and I don't like any of them. Not that I have any insider information but a while back someone made a post on reddit about what baffles them about their work and they had a job where they basically listened to very short voice clips and saw something on the screen and they had to decide whether it was the right word on the screen or not.
  - bena 8y ago
    Are you trying to say these home assistants are basically mechanical Turks?
    - andrei_says_ 8y ago
      Most likely the human verification is not in real time but for quality improvements after the facts. In case you weren’t joking.
  - jetrink 8y ago
    There are tons of phone systems that use speech recognition and warn you that you are being recorded for quality assurance purposes. I would assume those recordings come from that type of system. Google and Amazon have been clear that humans will not be listening to the recordings.
- drewmol 8y ago
  >except the Play store Workaround: 1)Install F-Droid (f-droid.org) 2) Install Yalp Store from F-Droid
bena 8y ago
It's rock and roll. You don't get it, but somebody does.
falcolas 8y ago
Point 1: Keyword triggers and is actually said are miles apart, as shown by the Alexa creepy laugh episode. There is no practical way of knowing when Alexa has heard a keyword and recorded content around it. Not to mention the Google play incident where a poor wiring job made the devices think the "enable assistant" button was constantly being pressed. Point 2: My phone, an iPhone, offers a way to turn off the keyword-listening functionality - and presents this switch during initial setup. It also offers a way to turn off all tracking functionality. Apple has no financial gain from lying about this. Point 3: This comes back to point 1. If you don't know what and when the assistant is listening to, you have no idea what phrases are being collected and shipped off. Also, there are plenty of studies floating about the internet about how "anonymized" search engine queries have been collected, studied, and in many cases paint very personal portraits of the people doing searches.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- pizza 8y ago
  Re: point 3, I was reading Kevin Murphy's book on Machine Learning recently and in it he says that roughly 20% of Google search queries that come in everyday have never been seen before. Reminds me of that report about Russian election interference campaigns that included the tidbit about Google being able to pinpoint the exact search queries that members of some GRU unit (Fancy Bear, maybe? idk) made.
- JeremyBanks 8y ago
  > There is no practical way of knowing when Alexa has heard a keyword and recorded content around it. I know this isn't the kind of certainty you're looking for, but Google Home and Alexa both allow you to enable audio cues for when they start and stop recording. I find this helpful from an accessibility perspective, but the privacy-conscious may also appreciate the indicator.
  - ben174 8y ago
    They also have visual cues enabled by default. The light turns on when it is listening. You quickly get an idea of when it is recording and when it is not. And it rarely falsely triggers.
grawprog 8y ago
>The utility of being able to interact with a computer via my voice wildly surpasses the risk. How? Risks: Willingly putting a proprietary device designed to listen to you and watch you, created by a company that exists only to maximize it's shareholders profits by either selling you things, advertising to you or collecting and selling data about you in order to do those first two things better, into your home to constantly watch and listen to everything that goes on. Utility: Control a computer by talking to it... For me at least....that risk far outweighs whatever utility i migbt get by being able to speak to a computer and honestly, if i really needed it that bad i would just set up my computer with voice recognition and control software. It's existed for a while now. I remember playing with it when i was a kid...it sucked...but that was more than 15 years ago. The only real novelty of alexa is that it'a a standalone box that answers you back.
ryandrake 8y ago
> Literally every article about home assistants brings out a number of people who continue to say how they can't understand how people could have this in their homes. It feels weird to feel out of touch. I’ve been a computer/technology enthusiast my whole life, and used to proudly early-adopt all sorts of crazy gadgetry. But the older I get, the fewer things coming out of Silicon Valley appeal to me, and the less I understand the use cases. I just have to shake my head and accept that they are somehow useful to a lot of people and that the idea of a cool useful product is changing.
- duderific 8y ago
  "Alexa, play [almost any recorded music ever]" is pretty cool.* * You have to have Amazon Music Unlimited which costs from $4.99 to $9.99 a month.
dreamcompiler 8y ago
I would love to have an always-on always-listening home assistant which did not ship my audio stream off to a cloud I don't control. The fact that all the current listening assistants do ship the audio stream to the cloud has nothing to do with CPU power and everything to do with a desire to collect as much personal data as possible, and as far as I'm concerned they can pound sand.
titzer 8y ago
1) It's always listening for a keyword, and then it starts recording. It's a voice interface for a computer. Show me the source code! ...all of it, including what's running the entire cloud behind it! Until then, fuck no, no hot mics in my house. And actually then, still no hot mics unless I've plugged my Les Paul into my amp, in which case I switched them on.

baxtr 8y ago

I get 1) and 3), but I don’t buy 2). Your phone works with Siri/any other assistant off. The connected speakers don’t. So the comparison doesn’t hold in my opinion.

stevecalifornia 8y ago
As an example for #2, when I got an Android somehow I was either automatically opted in or accidentally opted into location sharing. Two years later I found that Google Maps could show me every location I had been to for the last 2 years. I could review, day by day, everywhere I had gone, what time I went, how I drove there and where I went to next.
jedberg 8y ago
You can just mute the connected speakers and it's the same as having Siri off. Or get one of the ones that requires you to push a button (the Amazon Tap).
gnopgnip 8y ago
Many phones work the same way, the phone is always listening for you to say ok siri.
- simion314 8y ago
  Can't you turn of this feature on iOS? I don't have Google assistant on on my device.
  - saagarjha 8y ago
    Yes, you can. It’s in Settings under “Siri”.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]

LinuxBender 8y ago

1) Nobody can prove that. It's always listening and you have to assume always recording and transmitting. 2) My phone is a $12 throw away that speaks voice and sms (text). 3) Loose lips sink ships.

ryanmercer 8y ago
> Nobody can prove that. It's always listening and you have to assume always recording and transmitting Uh... packet analyzers, IP logs, bandwidth monitoring tools etc... If instead of transmitting occasional bursts of data when you say the wake word it's been sending back tens of megabytes an hour, or tens to hundreds of megabytes a day, you can go "hey, it's probably transmitting everything it hears". There are people that religiously watch what these devices are sending back just to try and catch one of the companies doing something fishy. There are people that religiously watch their network traffic period looking for something nefarious. These devices aren't like your phone, where simply having it on can have all sorts of services/apps using data in the background or you open a webpage and tens or even hundreds of different servers are contacted and data pulled/pushed to/from them. It's a device that should be periodically checking for an update and sending very small audio files back in nearly-real time. If they were recording regularly, or especially all the time, and transmitting it back to a server it would stand out like a sore thumb. Never mind the fact that keeping it secret, and not having a whistle blower, would be damn impossible. Someone's going to mention it to a loved one or friend, or flat out go online "I discovered my Amazon/Google device is actively listening and recording and sending to these IPs in these intervals" when they just know it as fact and didn't have to 'discover' it.
- LinuxBender 8y ago
  Which nobody can do. It is encrypted and unless the device accept invalid certs, they can queue up, compress, batch upload any data they want. They control the security, not the end-luser.
  - y04nn 8y ago
    Encrypted or not, an audio stream should not be difficult to identify.

pmontra 8y ago

You can opt out of basically every Google login/tracking in Android, except the Play store. I know because I'm logged out of everything and I disable location services. Google Maps keeps working. What I don't understand is why they have to store voice recordings instead of deleting them once they understand the vocal command. There could be a number of reasons and I don't like any of them.

mcny 8y ago
> What I don't understand is why they have to store voice recordings instead of deleting them once they understand the vocal command. There could be a number of reasons and I don't like any of them. Not that I have any insider information but a while back someone made a post on reddit about what baffles them about their work and they had a job where they basically listened to very short voice clips and saw something on the screen and they had to decide whether it was the right word on the screen or not.
- bena 8y ago
  Are you trying to say these home assistants are basically mechanical Turks?
  - andrei_says_ 8y ago
    Most likely the human verification is not in real time but for quality improvements after the facts. In case you weren’t joking.
- jetrink 8y ago
  There are tons of phone systems that use speech recognition and warn you that you are being recorded for quality assurance purposes. I would assume those recordings come from that type of system. Google and Amazon have been clear that humans will not be listening to the recordings.
drewmol 8y ago
>except the Play store Workaround: 1)Install F-Droid (f-droid.org) 2) Install Yalp Store from F-Droid

bena 8y ago

It's rock and roll. You don't get it, but somebody does.

falcolas 8y ago

Point 1: Keyword triggers and is actually said are miles apart, as shown by the Alexa creepy laugh episode. There is no practical way of knowing when Alexa has heard a keyword and recorded content around it. Not to mention the Google play incident where a poor wiring job made the devices think the "enable assistant" button was constantly being pressed. Point 2: My phone, an iPhone, offers a way to turn off the keyword-listening functionality - and presents this switch during initial setup. It also offers a way to turn off all tracking functionality. Apple has no financial gain from lying about this. Point 3: This comes back to point 1. If you don't know what and when the assistant is listening to, you have no idea what phrases are being collected and shipped off. Also, there are plenty of studies floating about the internet about how "anonymized" search engine queries have been collected, studied, and in many cases paint very personal portraits of the people doing searches.

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
pizza 8y ago
Re: point 3, I was reading Kevin Murphy's book on Machine Learning recently and in it he says that roughly 20% of Google search queries that come in everyday have never been seen before. Reminds me of that report about Russian election interference campaigns that included the tidbit about Google being able to pinpoint the exact search queries that members of some GRU unit (Fancy Bear, maybe? idk) made.
JeremyBanks 8y ago
> There is no practical way of knowing when Alexa has heard a keyword and recorded content around it. I know this isn't the kind of certainty you're looking for, but Google Home and Alexa both allow you to enable audio cues for when they start and stop recording. I find this helpful from an accessibility perspective, but the privacy-conscious may also appreciate the indicator.
- ben174 8y ago
  They also have visual cues enabled by default. The light turns on when it is listening. You quickly get an idea of when it is recording and when it is not. And it rarely falsely triggers.

grawprog 8y ago

>The utility of being able to interact with a computer via my voice wildly surpasses the risk. How? Risks: Willingly putting a proprietary device designed to listen to you and watch you, created by a company that exists only to maximize it's shareholders profits by either selling you things, advertising to you or collecting and selling data about you in order to do those first two things better, into your home to constantly watch and listen to everything that goes on. Utility: Control a computer by talking to it... For me at least....that risk far outweighs whatever utility i migbt get by being able to speak to a computer and honestly, if i really needed it that bad i would just set up my computer with voice recognition and control software. It's existed for a while now. I remember playing with it when i was a kid...it sucked...but that was more than 15 years ago. The only real novelty of alexa is that it'a a standalone box that answers you back.

ryandrake 8y ago

> Literally every article about home assistants brings out a number of people who continue to say how they can't understand how people could have this in their homes. It feels weird to feel out of touch. I’ve been a computer/technology enthusiast my whole life, and used to proudly early-adopt all sorts of crazy gadgetry. But the older I get, the fewer things coming out of Silicon Valley appeal to me, and the less I understand the use cases. I just have to shake my head and accept that they are somehow useful to a lot of people and that the idea of a cool useful product is changing.

duderific 8y ago
"Alexa, play [almost any recorded music ever]" is pretty cool.* * You have to have Amazon Music Unlimited which costs from $4.99 to $9.99 a month.

dreamcompiler 8y ago

I would love to have an always-on always-listening home assistant which did not ship my audio stream off to a cloud I don't control. The fact that all the current listening assistants do ship the audio stream to the cloud has nothing to do with CPU power and everything to do with a desire to collect as much personal data as possible, and as far as I'm concerned they can pound sand.

titzer 8y ago

1) It's always listening for a keyword, and then it starts recording. It's a voice interface for a computer. Show me the source code! ...all of it, including what's running the entire cloud behind it! Until then, fuck no, no hot mics in my house. And actually then, still no hot mics unless I've plugged my Les Paul into my amp, in which case I switched them on.