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If Google and it's outsourced partner can listen to the recordings, 3 lettered agencies can too. Even if they currently can't, they'll soon make a law to grant

If Google and it's outsourced partner can listen to the recordings, 3 lettered agencies can too. Even if they currently can't, they'll soon make a law to grant them access to Google's and Amazon's. After this, a hijacking, explosion, or terrorist attack would occur. They would argue that it could have been prevented if place X had a listening device installed. And that's all it would take to push a law mandating the installation of such devices in open spaces, eventually private ones. UPDATE On second thought, there's a faster way to the goal. Just make smartphones listen all the time.

malvosenior 7y ago
> On second thought, there's a faster way to the goal. Just make smartphones listen all the time. The good thing about trying this is people would definitely notice the increased bandwidth usage of their phone streaming audio in real time, all the time.
- flattone 7y ago
  People. Like 15% of hn users and the like
  - malvosenior 7y ago
    I think everyone would notice the much higher data usage bill.
    - jstarfish 7y ago
      More and more carriers are moving to "unlimited"/throttled plans. The days of worrying about data usage will soon join the days of worrying about how many minutes you have left.
    - jascii 7y ago
      Since said 3 letter agencies often work together with the telcos, I assume it wouldn't be too hard to keep that bandwidth outside of the users bookkeeping.
  - swiley 7y ago
    Between the larger phone bill and the decreased performance and battery life I feel like most people would notice. Not to mention most phones heat up when they stream anything.
    - hombre_fatal 7y ago
      It's a shame this doesn't happen when people's IoT devices become botnet nodes on their "unlimited" wifi. It would totally change the DDoS market and IoT security for the better. "0/5 stars. This product doubled my bandwidth bill."
      - swiley 7y ago
        I will never ever ever go back to paying by the byte though. No one writes sane enough software (or even freaking documents) to make that doable.
        hombre_fatal 7y ago
        I think it's necessary in the long run. It's the only way anything will ever change. And bandwidth is a finite, shared resource. You also pay per electron that flows through your blender and drop of water you drink from your faucet. Right now the internet is basically built on a bunch of "gentlemen agreements" to play fair, all the way from BGP down to ISPs ("please filter egress, pretty please!") to end-users ("please don't actually use all of your bandwidth because we're overprovisioned!"). Of course, the fee has to be tiny. For example, you don't reconsider hydrating yourself to save some money. But you may reconsider leaving your heater on 24/7 when you can just wear a jacket indoors. It would have to be priced similar to that. Though other things will have to change as well, like we'd need the ability to shop between ISPs in a region. Most people are already paying per byte, but in the most roundabout marketing-mislead way and I see that as a problem that only really helps ISPs. Imagine if it was a fully commoditized utility instead. On the other hand, look at the effects of the status quo. People have so little insight into their usage that you can buy enough residential botnet egress to take down any site for $5 which empowers centralization like Cloudflare DDoS protection. I suppose you either don't see this as a problem or you can think of other solutions.
- cblades 7y ago
  A large number of people already believe that devices and apps are constantly listening and sending recordings home, despite there being no evidence for that. It's a rampant belief supported by "I was talking to Jimmy about these shoes, and suddenly I got ads for those shoes!"
- asdfpoiu10 7y ago
  By this, if you mean the carriers reported data usage: I can think of a way a 3 letter agency could get around this. If you mean running a RAN analyser: I doubt it.
- smattiso 7y ago
  Not necessarily, speech to text engines are pretty decent so it's conceivable a listening device could just send the transcript.
  - bluGill 7y ago
    People would notice the battery drain though.
  - crooked-v 7y ago
    If the point is to train speech to text analysis, just sending the transcript doesn't help.
imglorp 7y ago
There have already been individual subpoenas of this device data. Only question now is, constant feed for fishing or targeted for individuals? https://techcrunch.com/2017/02/23/alexa-free-speech https://techcrunch.com/2017/02/23/alexa-free-speech https://nest.com/legal/transparency-report https://nest.com/legal/transparency-report Personally I'm okay with court-ordered disclosures scoped to single individuals. There's oversight. But I'm not okay with unlimited constant data feeds for dubious "precrime" sweeps.
smallgovt 7y ago
>> After this, a hijacking, explosion, or terrorist attack would occur. They would argue that it could have been prevented if place X had a listening device installed. And that's all it would take to push a law mandating the installation of such devices in open spaces, eventually private ones. I agree that this hypothetical is an accurate depiction of the future, but I think eventually we'll see this as the better of two evils. As the pace of technology accelerates, the average crazy man is going to be capable of killing more and more innocent people. Eventually, creating a safe society is going to involve closely monitoring every citizen and weeding out bad actors. That, or, eventually, some crazy man is going to build a nuclear bomb in their garage and obliterate the world.
- okmokmz 7y ago
  The irony of an account named smallgovt making this comment.... Personally, I'd rather risk get nuked by a crazy guy in his garage, as you say, than live in more of a police/surveillance state than we already do now
  - jefftk 7y ago
    Depends on how high the risk is, no? If surveillance moved the risk from 90% to 10% I think most people would consider it worth it.
    - okmokmz 7y ago
      No
- traumabasedmc 7y ago
  What about the bad actors operating out of federal intelligence agencies? Do they get closely monitored too or do they get a pass because of top secrets?
ehsankia 7y ago
> If Google and it's outsourced partner can listen to the recordings, 3 lettered agencies can too. Just to be clear, if this were true, it would only apply to specific queries you make, not all audio data in your house. There is no evidence of any of these devices recording/sending voice data outside of when a query is going on.
- okmokmz 7y ago
  >There is no evidence of any of these devices recording/sending voice data outside of when a query is going on. This isn't an example of a google device doing so, but there have been multiple cases of these "smart" home devices recording and/or sending audio when not prompted https://techcrunch.com/2018/05/24/family-claims-their-echo-sent-a-private-conversation-to-a-random-contact/ https://techcrunch.com/2018/05/24/family-claims-their-echo-s...
  - cblades 7y ago
    It was prompted, it's just that the match for the activation phrase was incorrectly identified. That's not the same thing as the near-universally believed internet truism that these devices are always listening and sending recordings home.
    - RHSeeger 7y ago
      Mr Google Developer, See here where you have it react and start phoning home when they say "Hey Google"? Right there, we're going to have you add some more terms; things like "jihad", "bomb", and a few others. We'll send you over the zip file of the full list later; it's only a few meg. Yours Truly, TLA Edit: I'm curious why the downvotes. It seems possible to me that the TLAs could have Google add more triggers for recording. If they did, we'd have no way of knowing. Sure, it's not likely, but it certainly seems possible.
      - UncleMeat 7y ago
        Downvotes because the NSA isn't magic. We know how the legal boundaries of their power work from the Snowden leaks. It wouldn't be possible for them to force Google or whoever to do this.
slg 7y ago
>On second thought, there's a faster way to the goal. Just make smartphones listen all the time. Which is why all the complaints about these smart speakers have always seemed a little silly to me. Tapping into the audio of the phone we all carry with us everywhere is infinitely more valuable than tapping into a stationary speaker that is probably sitting in a room alone 90% of the time. It is also much easier to hide all the bandwidth associated with capturing all that extra audio since it has access to a network that the user doesn't completely control. Plus it has access to sensors like a camera and GPS that can reveal info that is even more private than audio. TL;DR - If you don't trust Google's smart speakers, why are your trusting their phone software?
- jascii 7y ago
  There is still such a thing as physics: having a continuous audio stream would deplete the targets phone battery in short order potentially alerting the target that "something's fishy". A plugged in device would not have such problems.
- Slartie 7y ago
  > It is also much easier to hide all the bandwidth associated with capturing all that extra audio since it has access to a network that the user doesn't completely control. However, it is pretty hard to hide the large drain on the battery if your phone constantly streams audio to someone via cell network. And I'd say, since most people are on a volume limited data plan, streaming gigabytes of data will not go unnoticed - people will wonder why their budget is being eaten up so ridiculously fast. In contrast, smart speakers usually are connected to the power grid and WiFi, which effectively means unlimited bandwidth and power for eavesdropping purposes. The only way in which this might be noticed is if someone sniffs network traffic and wonders why this speaker sends so much encrypted data. But I'd argue that the probability for this case is much lower than the probability of raised eyebrows because of the aforementioned cell data plan being drained constantly.
  - newsbinator 7y ago
    If the mobile network is in on it, one's only flag is the battery drain. Apple could add a "microphone actively/recently in use" icon to the top of the phone.
traumabasedmc 7y ago
If the 3 letter agencies need a terror event to justify installing microphones throughout the country, then they will instigate the terror event themselves. There are already cameras. They didn't need announcements or justification. The cameras just went up, and they continue going up. If any justification was needed to blanket the country in cameras, it was "terror". Would they not have already installed microphones? Of course there are microphones, at least in portions of cities. We simply don't know the extent. They are probably being actively installed. Cameras are everywhere, why not microphones? Up next (now): 5G! A tool of surveillance being pushed by the FCC (because Ajit cares about streaming video) to install (more) spy devices on street corners, in addition to all the cameras and bluetooth. Did anyone ask for it? If the agencies haven't already infiltrated every hardware manufacturer (or strong-armed them, or compelled them by law), then they are certainly in a race to compromise every currently-uncompromised device on the market. People know, or at least suspect, that their phones are listening to them, through whatever apps they've carelessly downloaded under the illusion that the apps must be "safe" because they must be "vetted" because they are from "respectable companies". Regular people suspect their phones are spying on them (there are countless accounts and videos and articles to this end), and do they curb their behavior in any way? Do they turn their phones off, ever? No. "It's creepy" is about as far as it goes before that wall of cognitive dissonance. Why? Because they are addicted to the blinking lights, the egoist mentality that social media has driven into them, or whatever "fix" they think they need by constantly inspecting the tiny box they carry, which incidentally broadcasts their location everywhere they go. The agencies don't need justification because they sell us on fear so that we self-report and link our doorbells to police stations, and they convince us that this is what we want, or that this is what we need - that this is just the way things are. It's only when we need convincing that they resort to real terror. The rest is just talking about it.
dingo_bat 7y ago
> Just make smartphones listen all the time. Pixel phones already do that. The excuse is music recognition and ok Google.

malvosenior 7y ago

> On second thought, there's a faster way to the goal. Just make smartphones listen all the time. The good thing about trying this is people would definitely notice the increased bandwidth usage of their phone streaming audio in real time, all the time.

flattone 7y ago
People. Like 15% of hn users and the like
- malvosenior 7y ago
  I think everyone would notice the much higher data usage bill.
  - jstarfish 7y ago
    More and more carriers are moving to "unlimited"/throttled plans. The days of worrying about data usage will soon join the days of worrying about how many minutes you have left.
  - jascii 7y ago
    Since said 3 letter agencies often work together with the telcos, I assume it wouldn't be too hard to keep that bandwidth outside of the users bookkeeping.
- swiley 7y ago
  Between the larger phone bill and the decreased performance and battery life I feel like most people would notice. Not to mention most phones heat up when they stream anything.
  - hombre_fatal 7y ago
    It's a shame this doesn't happen when people's IoT devices become botnet nodes on their "unlimited" wifi. It would totally change the DDoS market and IoT security for the better. "0/5 stars. This product doubled my bandwidth bill."
    - swiley 7y ago
      I will never ever ever go back to paying by the byte though. No one writes sane enough software (or even freaking documents) to make that doable.
      - hombre_fatal 7y ago
        I think it's necessary in the long run. It's the only way anything will ever change. And bandwidth is a finite, shared resource. You also pay per electron that flows through your blender and drop of water you drink from your faucet. Right now the internet is basically built on a bunch of "gentlemen agreements" to play fair, all the way from BGP down to ISPs ("please filter egress, pretty please!") to end-users ("please don't actually use all of your bandwidth because we're overprovisioned!"). Of course, the fee has to be tiny. For example, you don't reconsider hydrating yourself to save some money. But you may reconsider leaving your heater on 24/7 when you can just wear a jacket indoors. It would have to be priced similar to that. Though other things will have to change as well, like we'd need the ability to shop between ISPs in a region. Most people are already paying per byte, but in the most roundabout marketing-mislead way and I see that as a problem that only really helps ISPs. Imagine if it was a fully commoditized utility instead. On the other hand, look at the effects of the status quo. People have so little insight into their usage that you can buy enough residential botnet egress to take down any site for $5 which empowers centralization like Cloudflare DDoS protection. I suppose you either don't see this as a problem or you can think of other solutions.
cblades 7y ago
A large number of people already believe that devices and apps are constantly listening and sending recordings home, despite there being no evidence for that. It's a rampant belief supported by "I was talking to Jimmy about these shoes, and suddenly I got ads for those shoes!"
asdfpoiu10 7y ago
By this, if you mean the carriers reported data usage: I can think of a way a 3 letter agency could get around this. If you mean running a RAN analyser: I doubt it.
smattiso 7y ago
Not necessarily, speech to text engines are pretty decent so it's conceivable a listening device could just send the transcript.
- bluGill 7y ago
  People would notice the battery drain though.
- crooked-v 7y ago
  If the point is to train speech to text analysis, just sending the transcript doesn't help.

imglorp 7y ago

There have already been individual subpoenas of this device data. Only question now is, constant feed for fishing or targeted for individuals? https://techcrunch.com/2017/02/23/alexa-free-speech https://techcrunch.com/2017/02/23/alexa-free-speech https://nest.com/legal/transparency-report https://nest.com/legal/transparency-report Personally I'm okay with court-ordered disclosures scoped to single individuals. There's oversight. But I'm not okay with unlimited constant data feeds for dubious "precrime" sweeps.

smallgovt 7y ago

>> After this, a hijacking, explosion, or terrorist attack would occur. They would argue that it could have been prevented if place X had a listening device installed. And that's all it would take to push a law mandating the installation of such devices in open spaces, eventually private ones. I agree that this hypothetical is an accurate depiction of the future, but I think eventually we'll see this as the better of two evils. As the pace of technology accelerates, the average crazy man is going to be capable of killing more and more innocent people. Eventually, creating a safe society is going to involve closely monitoring every citizen and weeding out bad actors. That, or, eventually, some crazy man is going to build a nuclear bomb in their garage and obliterate the world.

okmokmz 7y ago
The irony of an account named smallgovt making this comment.... Personally, I'd rather risk get nuked by a crazy guy in his garage, as you say, than live in more of a police/surveillance state than we already do now
- jefftk 7y ago
  Depends on how high the risk is, no? If surveillance moved the risk from 90% to 10% I think most people would consider it worth it.
  - okmokmz 7y ago
    No
traumabasedmc 7y ago
What about the bad actors operating out of federal intelligence agencies? Do they get closely monitored too or do they get a pass because of top secrets?

ehsankia 7y ago

> If Google and it's outsourced partner can listen to the recordings, 3 lettered agencies can too. Just to be clear, if this were true, it would only apply to specific queries you make, not all audio data in your house. There is no evidence of any of these devices recording/sending voice data outside of when a query is going on.

okmokmz 7y ago
>There is no evidence of any of these devices recording/sending voice data outside of when a query is going on. This isn't an example of a google device doing so, but there have been multiple cases of these "smart" home devices recording and/or sending audio when not prompted https://techcrunch.com/2018/05/24/family-claims-their-echo-sent-a-private-conversation-to-a-random-contact/ https://techcrunch.com/2018/05/24/family-claims-their-echo-s...
- cblades 7y ago
  It was prompted, it's just that the match for the activation phrase was incorrectly identified. That's not the same thing as the near-universally believed internet truism that these devices are always listening and sending recordings home.
  - RHSeeger 7y ago
    Mr Google Developer, See here where you have it react and start phoning home when they say "Hey Google"? Right there, we're going to have you add some more terms; things like "jihad", "bomb", and a few others. We'll send you over the zip file of the full list later; it's only a few meg. Yours Truly, TLA Edit: I'm curious why the downvotes. It seems possible to me that the TLAs could have Google add more triggers for recording. If they did, we'd have no way of knowing. Sure, it's not likely, but it certainly seems possible.
    - UncleMeat 7y ago
      Downvotes because the NSA isn't magic. We know how the legal boundaries of their power work from the Snowden leaks. It wouldn't be possible for them to force Google or whoever to do this.

slg 7y ago

>On second thought, there's a faster way to the goal. Just make smartphones listen all the time. Which is why all the complaints about these smart speakers have always seemed a little silly to me. Tapping into the audio of the phone we all carry with us everywhere is infinitely more valuable than tapping into a stationary speaker that is probably sitting in a room alone 90% of the time. It is also much easier to hide all the bandwidth associated with capturing all that extra audio since it has access to a network that the user doesn't completely control. Plus it has access to sensors like a camera and GPS that can reveal info that is even more private than audio. TL;DR - If you don't trust Google's smart speakers, why are your trusting their phone software?

jascii 7y ago
There is still such a thing as physics: having a continuous audio stream would deplete the targets phone battery in short order potentially alerting the target that "something's fishy". A plugged in device would not have such problems.
Slartie 7y ago
> It is also much easier to hide all the bandwidth associated with capturing all that extra audio since it has access to a network that the user doesn't completely control. However, it is pretty hard to hide the large drain on the battery if your phone constantly streams audio to someone via cell network. And I'd say, since most people are on a volume limited data plan, streaming gigabytes of data will not go unnoticed - people will wonder why their budget is being eaten up so ridiculously fast. In contrast, smart speakers usually are connected to the power grid and WiFi, which effectively means unlimited bandwidth and power for eavesdropping purposes. The only way in which this might be noticed is if someone sniffs network traffic and wonders why this speaker sends so much encrypted data. But I'd argue that the probability for this case is much lower than the probability of raised eyebrows because of the aforementioned cell data plan being drained constantly.
- newsbinator 7y ago
  If the mobile network is in on it, one's only flag is the battery drain. Apple could add a "microphone actively/recently in use" icon to the top of the phone.

traumabasedmc 7y ago

If the 3 letter agencies need a terror event to justify installing microphones throughout the country, then they will instigate the terror event themselves. There are already cameras. They didn't need announcements or justification. The cameras just went up, and they continue going up. If any justification was needed to blanket the country in cameras, it was "terror". Would they not have already installed microphones? Of course there are microphones, at least in portions of cities. We simply don't know the extent. They are probably being actively installed. Cameras are everywhere, why not microphones? Up next (now): 5G! A tool of surveillance being pushed by the FCC (because Ajit cares about streaming video) to install (more) spy devices on street corners, in addition to all the cameras and bluetooth. Did anyone ask for it? If the agencies haven't already infiltrated every hardware manufacturer (or strong-armed them, or compelled them by law), then they are certainly in a race to compromise every currently-uncompromised device on the market. People know, or at least suspect, that their phones are listening to them, through whatever apps they've carelessly downloaded under the illusion that the apps must be "safe" because they must be "vetted" because they are from "respectable companies". Regular people suspect their phones are spying on them (there are countless accounts and videos and articles to this end), and do they curb their behavior in any way? Do they turn their phones off, ever? No. "It's creepy" is about as far as it goes before that wall of cognitive dissonance. Why? Because they are addicted to the blinking lights, the egoist mentality that social media has driven into them, or whatever "fix" they think they need by constantly inspecting the tiny box they carry, which incidentally broadcasts their location everywhere they go. The agencies don't need justification because they sell us on fear so that we self-report and link our doorbells to police stations, and they convince us that this is what we want, or that this is what we need - that this is just the way things are. It's only when we need convincing that they resort to real terror. The rest is just talking about it.

dingo_bat 7y ago

> Just make smartphones listen all the time. Pixel phones already do that. The excuse is music recognition and ok Google.