4 ms·

I’m fairly confident there will be lawsuits about this... adding listening devices to your tenants apartments has always been a bad call

Frost1x 7y ago
I was gifted a few of these devices and had to return them. For the bulk of society, they're not seen as invasive listening devices and many willingly pay hefty fees for them and install them. Unless you're doing your own NLP locally and designed it, I don't really trust it. To be fair, most already have cell phones that can be tapped in similar ways (with additional sensors--it's amazing what you can derive from MEMs alone) but active assistant listening is usually one of the first "features" I disable.
- maxerickson 7y ago
  The basic devices are like $40. Hopefully most people that pay more than that are doing so for reasons like a better speaker.
  - Frost1x 7y ago
    I have a friend who has around 20 of these scattered around his house, on the side porch, etc. He uses them as speakers to play music in different sections of the house and likes the added feature of having the Google assistant. If you only get one or a couple I suppose it isn't too expensive. My parents aren't tech savvy and are quite old and they have 3 themselves in a very small house.
dreamcompiler 7y ago
I used to use Airbnb a lot. Now I don't so much because I have to write the host beforehand and verify there are no cameras or listening devices in the space. This is where we are now.
- kaybe 7y ago
  Did you ever get a negative answer? (=Yes, there are.)
nabilhat 7y ago
This is the immediate problem. Ignore the FAANG issues for a second, and imagine considering a rental with locks, lights, and thermostats that write to a database your landlord controls. With a baby monitor in the living room that the landlord controls. Getting back to the "smart home" features, allowing your landlord the ability to apply parental controls to restrict your use of features, purchases, requests; and to record them. The privacy issues go well beyond simply installing listening devices which can eavesdrop on tenants.
cardiffspaceman 7y ago
The features of an offline smart home could still support monitoring by the owner/landlord. The smart home's features could be independent islands of automation. Renter says, "Set temperature to at least 78." Landlord says, "Why is my utility bill so high?" Assume the voice recognition is good enough without access to an off-site server. [Edit for grammar]
mistrial9 7y ago
you are badly incorrect -- adversarial listening devices are increasing, especially where there is a power imbalance

Frost1x 7y ago

I was gifted a few of these devices and had to return them. For the bulk of society, they're not seen as invasive listening devices and many willingly pay hefty fees for them and install them. Unless you're doing your own NLP locally and designed it, I don't really trust it. To be fair, most already have cell phones that can be tapped in similar ways (with additional sensors--it's amazing what you can derive from MEMs alone) but active assistant listening is usually one of the first "features" I disable.

maxerickson 7y ago
The basic devices are like $40. Hopefully most people that pay more than that are doing so for reasons like a better speaker.
- Frost1x 7y ago
  I have a friend who has around 20 of these scattered around his house, on the side porch, etc. He uses them as speakers to play music in different sections of the house and likes the added feature of having the Google assistant. If you only get one or a couple I suppose it isn't too expensive. My parents aren't tech savvy and are quite old and they have 3 themselves in a very small house.

dreamcompiler 7y ago

I used to use Airbnb a lot. Now I don't so much because I have to write the host beforehand and verify there are no cameras or listening devices in the space. This is where we are now.

kaybe 7y ago
Did you ever get a negative answer? (=Yes, there are.)

nabilhat 7y ago

This is the immediate problem. Ignore the FAANG issues for a second, and imagine considering a rental with locks, lights, and thermostats that write to a database your landlord controls. With a baby monitor in the living room that the landlord controls. Getting back to the "smart home" features, allowing your landlord the ability to apply parental controls to restrict your use of features, purchases, requests; and to record them. The privacy issues go well beyond simply installing listening devices which can eavesdrop on tenants.

cardiffspaceman 7y ago

The features of an offline smart home could still support monitoring by the owner/landlord. The smart home's features could be independent islands of automation. Renter says, "Set temperature to at least 78." Landlord says, "Why is my utility bill so high?" Assume the voice recognition is good enough without access to an off-site server. [Edit for grammar]

mistrial9 7y ago

you are badly incorrect -- adversarial listening devices are increasing, especially where there is a power imbalance