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Alexa feels like like one of those devices that everyone (tech & non-tech people alike) understand to be an always-on recording device, and a proof point that m

Alexa feels like like one of those devices that everyone (tech & non-tech people alike) understand to be an always-on recording device, and a proof point that many people do, in fact, choose convenience over privacy.

gigatexal 7y ago
I’ll never use one for this reason. Apple records my voice to my HomePod but I trust they’re deleted after some time.
- lake_vincent 7y ago
  Not to be facetious, but why exactly do you trust Apple to delete your data after some time? What has Apple done or said to earn your trust? Genuinely curious.
  - dymk 7y ago
    They've got a pretty stunning record for not keeping data around longer than needed. They build their products at the hardware level (secure enclave) so they can't even access certain types of user data. Their business model doesn't involve monetizing user's data, and they've been public and explicit about that.
  - r00fus 7y ago
    A brand is a promise. Apple's brand is heavily security-focused. If their promise is broken, their brand will suffer. Amazon has no such promise or brand. They offer low prices and high convenience.
    - abduhl 7y ago
      Where can I read more about this promise? What, exactly, was promised?
    - perl4ever 7y ago
      Sure, someone like Apple may have a strong brand. But once it's built up, it's an attractive asset to deplete, the way corporate raiders go after a company with a lot of cash (which Apple also has). Many companies have followed a pattern of building up a brand over a long period of time and then hollowing it out and degrading it. GE home appliances come to mind. The other thing is that sometimes a company does something by accident that would damage the brand if anyone finds out, and covering it up is the only way to save it. I don't think there's any way to prevent this from happening somewhere at a huge company from the top, because people are always going to make mistakes and bad decisions and then they don't want anyone to know for fear of consequences.
      - r00fus 7y ago
        Your skepticism is the proper viewpoint, but facts/previous actions matter. When has Apple ever done that? Apple's style would be getting everyone to buy into the feature that has privacy implications with some mitigations.
  - gigatexal 7y ago
    They’ve no business use-case to keep or monetize it.
neilv 7y ago
Perhaps multiple categories: 1. Non-tech people, who don't understand the immediate technical aspects of what's happening, and haven't had much occasion to think about the implications. 2. Tech people, many of us who do understand a lot of what's happening in technical levels, but are conditioned by all the practices around us (and our paychecks/startups depending on it) to not think of this as bad for society.
- vitalysh 7y ago
  I already have phone in my pocket with Google assistant (yes, you can switch it off, but is it truly off?) Thats why I decided that Alexa is not a big deal.
  - harshreality 7y ago
    Phones have a security/privacy advantage, because being battery powered and (potentially) using metered data, the cost of recording everything and shipping interesting parts of the audio to the corporate mothership would be immediate, in customer complaints about battery life and data usage. Wifi/ethernet and AC-connected devices change the risk/benefit calculation significantly. Alexa or Google Assistant on a phone is therefore not really the same thing as Alexa or Google on a standalone plug-in device. For example, a google phone (depending on model/setup) and Google mini might both listening all the time for "Hey google". Both respond by listening and recording the next collection of sounds. However, the bar for deciding when to ship that audio off to Google, or when it's confident enough it can handle processing on-device, could easily change depending on whether the device is battery-powered or whether it's on wifi/eth instead of mobile. A wall-powered device might opt to keep a running history in ram of the last N seconds of audio, so it has more context with which to answer questions if Google Assistant is addressed. If it's battery powered, there are obvious reasons not to do that unless the phone has a dedicated extremely low powered continuous recording loop circuit.
Raphmedia 7y ago
What people may not understand is that this huge data set is easily consumable. It's one thing to think "Oh, sure they record me but nobody is going to sit through everything I said". It's another thing to understand that with machine learning Amazon might be able to parse this data almost instantly and categorize you, rate you and analyse you without breaking a sweat.
rootusrootus 7y ago
I've never met anyone who thought it was always recording. The non-tech folks don't even realize the audio processing is handled on a remote server, and the tech folks understand how the wake word functions together with remote processing.
- devoply 7y ago
  Yeah pretty much and it's quite stupid for Amazon to keep recordings forever. What use could they possibly be, a year or two max for retention should be the case.
  - dayvid 7y ago
    With 1. good audio compression and selective removal of empty data with time stamps 2. Speech recognition algorithms that convert recorded data to text content you could hold a non-trivial amount of data in cold storage.
throerwer2343 7y ago
This is not much different from 'free' e-mail accounts provided by Google.
perl4ever 7y ago
I don't think that people in fact choose convenience over privacy, because the impact of a loss of privacy can be, and usually is, latent indefinitely. There's no way to evaluate what might be given up eventually, and no alarm to tell you when you've passed the point of no return. For instance, all the US government security clearance investigations were leaked to someone unknown several years ago. The consequence for most people was a short period of credit monitoring and nothing notable otherwise. But if someone now has a database of all possible compromising information, fingerprints, and other information for everyone who's had a position of trust with the government, then some day when a previous "nobody" is suddenly of interest, then that data can be leveraged.
thisisit 7y ago
I disagree - Tech folks are aware and people do freak out over it. Then companies come out assuring people and blogs are written showing that nothing bad is happening. So, slowly people forget about it even though they have doubts. Non-tech folks have no idea what is going on and if they were told this was an always-on recording device, some of them might actually freak out.

gigatexal 7y ago

I’ll never use one for this reason. Apple records my voice to my HomePod but I trust they’re deleted after some time.

lake_vincent 7y ago
Not to be facetious, but why exactly do you trust Apple to delete your data after some time? What has Apple done or said to earn your trust? Genuinely curious.
- dymk 7y ago
  They've got a pretty stunning record for not keeping data around longer than needed. They build their products at the hardware level (secure enclave) so they can't even access certain types of user data. Their business model doesn't involve monetizing user's data, and they've been public and explicit about that.
- r00fus 7y ago
  A brand is a promise. Apple's brand is heavily security-focused. If their promise is broken, their brand will suffer. Amazon has no such promise or brand. They offer low prices and high convenience.
  - abduhl 7y ago
    Where can I read more about this promise? What, exactly, was promised?
  - perl4ever 7y ago
    Sure, someone like Apple may have a strong brand. But once it's built up, it's an attractive asset to deplete, the way corporate raiders go after a company with a lot of cash (which Apple also has). Many companies have followed a pattern of building up a brand over a long period of time and then hollowing it out and degrading it. GE home appliances come to mind. The other thing is that sometimes a company does something by accident that would damage the brand if anyone finds out, and covering it up is the only way to save it. I don't think there's any way to prevent this from happening somewhere at a huge company from the top, because people are always going to make mistakes and bad decisions and then they don't want anyone to know for fear of consequences.
    - r00fus 7y ago
      Your skepticism is the proper viewpoint, but facts/previous actions matter. When has Apple ever done that? Apple's style would be getting everyone to buy into the feature that has privacy implications with some mitigations.
- gigatexal 7y ago
  They’ve no business use-case to keep or monetize it.

neilv 7y ago

Perhaps multiple categories: 1. Non-tech people, who don't understand the immediate technical aspects of what's happening, and haven't had much occasion to think about the implications. 2. Tech people, many of us who do understand a lot of what's happening in technical levels, but are conditioned by all the practices around us (and our paychecks/startups depending on it) to not think of this as bad for society.

vitalysh 7y ago
I already have phone in my pocket with Google assistant (yes, you can switch it off, but is it truly off?) Thats why I decided that Alexa is not a big deal.
- harshreality 7y ago
  Phones have a security/privacy advantage, because being battery powered and (potentially) using metered data, the cost of recording everything and shipping interesting parts of the audio to the corporate mothership would be immediate, in customer complaints about battery life and data usage. Wifi/ethernet and AC-connected devices change the risk/benefit calculation significantly. Alexa or Google Assistant on a phone is therefore not really the same thing as Alexa or Google on a standalone plug-in device. For example, a google phone (depending on model/setup) and Google mini might both listening all the time for "Hey google". Both respond by listening and recording the next collection of sounds. However, the bar for deciding when to ship that audio off to Google, or when it's confident enough it can handle processing on-device, could easily change depending on whether the device is battery-powered or whether it's on wifi/eth instead of mobile. A wall-powered device might opt to keep a running history in ram of the last N seconds of audio, so it has more context with which to answer questions if Google Assistant is addressed. If it's battery powered, there are obvious reasons not to do that unless the phone has a dedicated extremely low powered continuous recording loop circuit.

Raphmedia 7y ago

What people may not understand is that this huge data set is easily consumable. It's one thing to think "Oh, sure they record me but nobody is going to sit through everything I said". It's another thing to understand that with machine learning Amazon might be able to parse this data almost instantly and categorize you, rate you and analyse you without breaking a sweat.

rootusrootus 7y ago

I've never met anyone who thought it was always recording. The non-tech folks don't even realize the audio processing is handled on a remote server, and the tech folks understand how the wake word functions together with remote processing.

devoply 7y ago
Yeah pretty much and it's quite stupid for Amazon to keep recordings forever. What use could they possibly be, a year or two max for retention should be the case.
- dayvid 7y ago
  With 1. good audio compression and selective removal of empty data with time stamps 2. Speech recognition algorithms that convert recorded data to text content you could hold a non-trivial amount of data in cold storage.

throerwer2343 7y ago

This is not much different from 'free' e-mail accounts provided by Google.

perl4ever 7y ago

I don't think that people in fact choose convenience over privacy, because the impact of a loss of privacy can be, and usually is, latent indefinitely. There's no way to evaluate what might be given up eventually, and no alarm to tell you when you've passed the point of no return. For instance, all the US government security clearance investigations were leaked to someone unknown several years ago. The consequence for most people was a short period of credit monitoring and nothing notable otherwise. But if someone now has a database of all possible compromising information, fingerprints, and other information for everyone who's had a position of trust with the government, then some day when a previous "nobody" is suddenly of interest, then that data can be leveraged.

thisisit 7y ago

I disagree - Tech folks are aware and people do freak out over it. Then companies come out assuring people and blogs are written showing that nothing bad is happening. So, slowly people forget about it even though they have doubts. Non-tech folks have no idea what is going on and if they were told this was an always-on recording device, some of them might actually freak out.