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Siri records fights, doctor’s appointments, and sex, and contractors hear it
- forgotmyhnacc 7y agoMany HNers have a weird belief that Apple is somehow a privacy focused company, despite it actually being no more private than Facebook or Google. The main concern people have (voice assistants beside) is data gathering for ads, which Apple does for their app search, among other places. Also, their data centers are in China, which gives Chinese authorities full access to their iCloud account. If you want privacy, don't rely on corporations. Host everything yourself, and encrypt your data at rest and in flight.
- Aloha 7y agoTheir datacenter for Chinese customers are in china. I expect them to take reasonable precautions, mistakes do get made. I'm not a user of voice assistants, I'd rather use the device directly, its faster anyhow. To quote from the article "Voice assistants appear to be yet another instance where a technology has been developed and adopted faster than its consequences have been fully thought-out."
- j2bax 7y agoThere are at least a few instances where using a voice assistant is far faster than using the device directly. An example that I use frequently is something like “hey Siri remind me to change my furnace filter in 3 months”. In many cases using a voice command/shortcut is quicker than navigating to an app and locating the ui to do it.
- kemayo 7y agoI'm particularly fond of "hey Siri, when I get home remind me to take out the trash" as a shortcut.
- forgotmyhnacc 7y ago> Their datacenter for Chinese customers are in china. Why is it okay for an American company to allow foreign, human right violator governments to spy on their citizens?
- gremlinsinc 7y agoOkay? It's not really. But it's the price of cheap labor in China and any other incentive they have for doing business there. Everything done in China comes with a no-privacy guarantee you can't take a shit in China without them knowing the color and consistency.
- panpanna 7y ago> Many HNers have a weird belief that Apple is somehow a privacy focused company Note how the top comments here branch into criticizing Google? It takes a lot to change people's opinions in such matters. It just easier to repeat the same old same old arguments and continue with our lives...
- blub 7y agoGoogle is the worst at privacy. Even when Apple or any other company fucks up it's always worth noting that, maybe it dents their undeserved reputation even more.
- bitreality 7y agoArguing over which tech behemoth is worse at privacy is pointless. The fact is that they are incentivized against privacy. Your data is valuable. The cost of anonymizing your data is expensive, and offers little measurable ROI. Some companies work on providing the illusion that they care about privacy. But at the end of the day, unless it's convenient for them, and does not interfere with their goal, you should assume the worst.
- blub 7y agoNo, because privacy in today's world is not black and white. Apple is definitely much better than MS and Google, so people that e.g. buy Apple smartphones have better privacy than Android users. This is not a theoretical concern: I can buy an iPad for my parents, turn of iCloud & Siri, install an Ad-blocker and they will be reasonably safe from cybercriminals and spyware companies like Google.
- z3t4 7y agoKnowing your users and how they use your software is too big of an advantage, and it seems users doesnt care, or is there a market for users willing to pay for privacy!?
- Kye 7y agoThis is a "blue ocean" situation. Plenty of people would care if they understood the hazards of the status quo and a viable alternative existed. People can already make their own privacy-respecting phone, but most people aren't up for it. Someone will have to get close enough to the UX polish of Apple and Google to pull people away. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Ocean_Strategy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Ocean_Strategy
- wil421 7y agoGoogle makes business off of selling ads. Apple makes their business off selling hardware and software.
- justapassenger 7y agoBoth models aren’t that different. One is to show you better ads, and make you buy stuff, and other is to make iPhone better, and make you buy it. In both cases they need your data to make money.
- AsyncAwait 7y agoIncreasingly 'services', for which they want to lock you in for rent.
- blub 7y agoI agree with your general recommendations to not rely on corps and to use crypto, but it's not a weird belief, it's a fact. Google is bar Facebook the worst company in the world at privacy and their whole business model is focused around subverting privacy. There are many studies done by non-profits and government organizations which prove this. They also repeatedly got fined for their rotten practices. That doesn't mean Apple are saints. Any US corporation is suspect and a feature like Siri is broken by design and can't be implemented with privacy in mind.
- romwell 7y ago> “These recordings are accompanied by user data showing location, contact details, and app data.” This should be in the title. Media was focusing on contractors listening to Google Assistant snippets not long ago — and those were anonymized. Private and identifying information was in the snippets, not metadata (the article mentioned this).
- zaroth 7y agoI think the story is possibly confusing this bit. When recorded, and transmitted to Apple, the location, Apple ID, etc. of the recording device is known. The same (similar) would be true for any voice assistant. When the contractors are reviewing snippets for training purposes, this data is anonymized. In the case of Apple; > Apple has said that it takes steps to protect users from being connected with the recordings sent to contractors. The audio is not linked to an Apple ID and less than 1% of daily Siri activations are reviewed."
- romwell 7y agoI wish the article was more clear on this. It takes a lot of work to properly anonymize the data. The question is: what information does the operator see?
- panpanna 7y agoAs I understand it, the data was not anonymized. They simply asked the contractors to sign a non-disclosure contract.
- Buge 7y agoIt's a direct quote from the whistleblower: > The whistleblower said: “There have been countless instances of recordings featuring private discussions between doctors and patients, business deals, seemingly criminal dealings, sexual encounters and so on. These recordings are accompanied by user data showing location, contact details, and app data.” > That accompanying information may be used to verify whether a request was successfully dealt with. In its privacy documents, Apple says the Siri data “is not linked to other data that Apple may have from your use of other Apple services”. There is no specific name or identifier attached to a record and no individual recording can be easily linked to other recordings. > Apple told the Guardian: “A small portion of Siri requests are analysed to improve Siri and dictation. User requests are not associated with the user’s Apple ID. Siri responses are analysed in secure facilities and all reviewers are under the obligation to adhere to Apple’s strict confidentiality requirements.” Strangely, the whistleblower's quote directly contradicts Apple's privacy documents. The whistleblower says the recordings are linked to some other information, but the privacy documents say the recordings are not linked to other information. But the whistleblower's quote does not contradict Apple's quote to the Guardian. The whistleblower never says the recordings are linked to the user's Apple ID. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/jul/26/apple-contractors-regularly-hear-confidential-details-on-siri-recordings https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/jul/26/apple-con...
- guessmyname 7y agoDupe: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20537960 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20537960
- rgovostes 7y agoApple has extensively annotated iOS with understandable information about how data is used. The user has the ability to review this info when they enable Hey Siri, or any time in the Siri & Search settings. It lists the data that is sent to Apple when you activate Siri. Personally, I’ve only ever seen Hey Siri falsely activate once, from something a character on TV said. (I could get Ok, Google to trigger on a friend’s phone by talking in a ridiculous falsetto that sounded nothing like the friend’s voice.) Per the law of large numbers I’m sure it does trigger in doctors’ offices and so on but I’m skeptical that it’s a widespread problem. I do use Siri to dictate text messages all the time while I’m driving, and I’m sure I’d be embarrassed by one or two that human reviewers have heard.
- hug 7y agoSiri activates almost any time I say “are you serious?!”, which is a phrase I say with some regularity. I’ve definitely had it activated a number of times by the TV or when watching YouTube or Twitch.
- freehunter 7y agoI had it trigger while watching an episode of Archer. I even went back and played it a few more times to double check it wasn’t a fluke.
- dhimes 7y agoI no longer see a way to turn Siri "off", only to not respond to "hey Siri" but rather the home button. Does this mean she's not listening unless I've activated, or is she listening anyway? (I can't seem to help anthropomorphizing Siri it seems...).
- pkroll 7y agoIf you turn off all the options, you'll get a dialog that asks if you want to turn Siri off altogether. (As I just did.)
- droithomme 7y agoIf Siri reviewers encounter evidence of certain crimes such as murder, sex trafficking, pedophilia, or domestic abuse, it is obvious they have a basic moral duty to report the crime and turn over the evidence to investigators.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- identity0 7y agoI disagree. There's a reason that evidence obtained illegally by the police can't be admitted in court, even if it proves some horrible crime. IMO the fair use of the law for the whole population is far more important than stopping one criminal.
- Iv 7y ago"by the police" In this case it is not the police who obtained it. I think in some countries, not reporting crimes you know about could count as complicity.
- apetrov 7y agounless you’re a lawyer and have a client-attorney privilege. same thing might apply here.
- hermitdev 7y agoObligatory not a lawyer, but third party doctrine likely applies in the US, meaning that it would not be illegal for police to use such evidence if supplied by Apple. Not sure where the line is drawn if Apple itself violated it's own EULA, or violated local wire tapping laws, or if a service like Siri falls under such laws. I know California and Illinois are 2 party consent states. Not positive if it's only for phone calls or all voice recordings.
- novok 7y agoThats the burn a forest to kill a few rabid dogs argument.
- dingo_bat 7y agoWhat happens on your iPhone, stays on your iPhone. And also on Apple contractors' iPhones. And maybe on employee phones too. But if you're a criminal you can rest assured apple will never give your data to FBI.
- bredren 7y agoThis may be tangential but I’m regularly amazed at how bad Siri is at basic things still. I’ll try to use it for things in front of guests on the HomePod and Siri is embarrassing half of the time
- Aloha 7y agoI've never quite gotten the allure of voice assistants myself, it just seems like a really frustrating way to use a computer.
- ben_w 7y agoI use it sometimes. For household use I pretty much agree: my partner has Alexa set up to turn lights on and off, and it only works about 70% of the time. Apple doesn’t, I think, say it’s Siri which is running this keyboard which I am using right now to “write” this content, but I assume the voice recognition engine is the same one, and it’s significantly more useful than Alexa. For example the only edits I have made while dictating this have been where I change my mind about what I wanted to write, not any transcription errors. It is certainly much more useful, when I wish to take notes, than the on-screen keyboard.
- Operyl 7y agoI agree, and then that technology is put to use on the pretty well put together accessibility tech showing up in iOS 13: https://youtu.be/aqoXFCCTfm4 https://youtu.be/aqoXFCCTfm4
- sorokod 7y ago"my partner has Alexa set up to turn lights on and off" Do you really need the help of a megacorp to turn lights on and off?
- ben_w 7y agoNo, but it does feel very Star Trek.
- Aloha 7y agoThe original Guardian article makes it clearer that the metadata isnt accompanying the audio, this article does not. That said, this article closes with a poignant and telling quote. "Voice assistants appear to be yet another instance where a technology has been developed and adopted faster than its consequences have been fully thought-out."
- eob123 7y agoThe librem cannot come fast enough.
- indalo 7y agoI'm overdue for a phone and I am at this moment reaching religious faith levels of hope for this librem phone. please release it!
- firecall 7y agoQuelle surprise; Tim Cook has acted in a hypercritical and sanctimonious fashion to further the capitalist aims of his company. I am disappointed in Apple. Very.
- xiphias2 7y agoIt would be great if people could review what voice recordings were sent to the companies past week. After that people could make a decision whether they want to continue using the product.
- amelius 7y agoThis would be a security issue. What if your SO's private conversations are reported to you?
- jtbayly 7y agoYou seem to be implying it is safer to send a recording from my phone to a huge corporation where it will be heard by any number of people I don't know than sending the recording to myself, the owner of that phone. Surely not. Perhaps that's not what you meant?
- amelius 7y agoI suppose, if given the choice, most people would prefer their most intimate secrets to be leaked to a total stranger than to the people closest to them. Of course, both situations are bad, but the latter is arguably worse.
- cmiles74 7y agoI agree that would be an awkward situation for myself and SO, but I disagree that it would represent a security issue. If the data is being sent to the vendor, I believe we should be able to audit that data. IMHO, deciding otherwise is giving far too much power to the vendor.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- writepub 7y agoApple is marginally better than the rest at privacy, but their marketing centers around it. If you're naive enough to fall for their marketing, this should be a wake up call. This, and the zero resistance Apple offers China, when they demand iCloud data of Chinese citizens.
- chronogram 7y ago> If you're naive enough to fall for their marketing, this should be a wake up call. I admit that I was naive enough..
- theshadowknows 7y agoOne thing that happens to me is sometimes I’ll accidentally send people random texts from my watch while I sleep. I’ve started putting it in “water mode” and also airplane mode just before I go to bed to help keep that from happening. All I need is to accidentally text my boss an audio from having sex with my wife.
- dingo_bat 7y agoYou can also try taking off the watch just before you go to bed.
- Havoc 7y agoOrdered a nice far field microphone and raspberry 4. Gonna try to build my own voice assistant with Mycroft.
- jwatt 7y agoDoes Mycroft need a network connection for voice recognition to work? I wasn't able to conclusively tell from a quick scan of their website but their Get Started document[1] says "Mycroft devices need to be paired with your Mycroft Home account to work", which sounds like it does. I had been intending to do something similar to you, but using Snips[2] since it supposedly has on-device voice recognition (and use of Rust, which I like). 1. https://mycroft.ai/get-started/ https://mycroft.ai/get-started/ 2. https://docs.snips.ai/getting-started https://docs.snips.ai/getting-started
- Vendan 7y agoThe Mycroft Home stuff covers Google Speech to Text, so I'm betting that overall speech processing is done in the cloud, though I'm sure wake-word detection is done locally. https://mycroft.ai/documentation/home-mycroft-ai-pairing/ https://mycroft.ai/documentation/home-mycroft-ai-pairing/
- Havoc 7y agoYeah - but not google - they switched to mozilla deepspeech. You can run deepspeech locally, but needs something reasonably powerful
- Havoc 7y agoYeah it uses a mozilla cloud speech api. I gather one can run it locally though (Deepspeech). So not too worried about this aspect.
- IshKebab 7y agoLet's do this again next month for Alexa!
- forofdo 7y ago> Voice assistants appear to be yet another instance where a technology has been developed and adopted faster than its consequences have been fully thought-out. What a rubbish. This is totally expected and thought-out. It's even worse, this is probably the #1 reason voice assistants exist at all, to provide these companies with even more valuable data. I cannot imagine the existence of Siri (or any other voice assistent) without a business model behind it.
- kdmccormick 7y agoUm, could the business model be to provide value to users in order to make the systems they are loaded on more attractive products? Sure, a huge part of the Siri/Alexa/Assistant business model is probably data collection. But does that mean all voice assistants ever inherently have no real end-user value? I don't regularly use them, but I would be very happy to find a reliable way to change music and send messages with my voice while driving. Before the era of mass data harvesting, arguably useful utilities like the MS Office suite were loaded onto OSs to make users more likely to stay on that platform.
- mettamage 7y agoWait, isn't it possible to research this by setting up a hotspot that shows the traffic on your computer? Or would it be an issue because it's encrypted? Couldn't you then still at least correlate traffic with sound/voice?
- kbumsik 7y agoEvery recording has to be sent to the server, there is zero local processing for voice assistant except recognizing "Hey Siri".
- jtbayly 7y agoAudio has to be sent to do the recognition. The only question is whether the company then turns around and saves it and sends it for further analysis. You can't track that step.
- jtbayly 7y agoI think the most important piece of info isn't even in this article. The Verge article I submitted[0] had this quote: "Additionally, as The Guardian notes, while Amazon and Google allow customers to opt out of some uses of their recordings, Apple doesn’t offer a similar privacy protecting option, outside of disabling Siri entirely. That’s a particularly bad look, given that Apple has built so much of its reputation on selling itself as the privacy company that defends your data in ways that Google and Amazon don’t." I was shocked by this because I opt out of sending analysis data to Apple at setup of my devices. I figured that would also prevent sending Siri recordings. Apparently not, though. [0]: https://www.theverge.com/2019/7/26/8932064/apple-siri-private-conversation-recording-explanation-alexa-google-assistant https://www.theverge.com/2019/7/26/8932064/apple-siri-privat...
- akseln 7y agoDoes disabling Siri severely affect accessibility and usability for physically impaired people? Also how is this on other platforms, are disabled people forced to unfairly compromise their privacy to properly use IT today?
- jbverschoor 7y agoThe thing is, I don’t even want siri to do anything smart. It needs to: dial a number, and keep a lot of frequently dialed people so it doesn’t think I meant someone else Set the alarm / timer Understand the street I want to navigate to. The whole smart thing, looking up things on the internet or contextualized answers don’t work, and they’re frustrating as hell. Also, I want Siri to work offline. So basically I want voice recognition with a short set of instructions I’m happy to memorize.
- linuxftw 7y agoSadly, most phones used to have this exact technology before the 'ok, google' stuff became ubiquitous. My older android did exactly these things and it was great. I could even send text messages that weren't terrible.
- mcdramamean 7y agoSomeone needs to invent a soundproof phone case. When it's closed; no light or sound is let it.
- justapassenger 7y agoApple is playing fairly dangerous game, positioning themselves as some kind of saint, or tron, fighting for the user. Firing shots at all tech companies for collecting data can backfire at them. Like it does in this case. It shows that they’re likely overselling what they can do without your data, and to deliver they your data anyway - they just try to be quiet about it. Of course there are different level of data collection, and I’m not making a call if what Apple is doing here is bad. But they have spent last few years building narrative that any data is bad, as it allowed them to differentiate themselves. They built their marketing around it in last few years. But it’s likely that they won’t be able to deliver on it. With AI being hot and constantly needing more data to improve it, Apple needs to get this data somehow, and their narrative makes it hard, unless they’re willing to mislead their customers.
- thekyle 7y agoI have a theory that Apple chose the privacy route because it was their only serious way to compete. Apple simply doesn't have the AI chops to compete with Google. They were already years behind in ML when they started their privacy marketing and possibility even further behind now. Since they can't compete on ML features their only other option was to compete on privacy. Apple is taking the calculated risk that people will be willing to sacrifice features in exchange better privacy. If they're right it will pay off massively. If they're wrong it could be very bad for them.
- gremlinsinc 7y agoWhy doesn't Apple et al let users know what they're sending and at least have a way to view and delete sensitive data before it's reviewed. Maybe store it online a month before it's reviewed and pop up a notification that you have Siri data queued for review. Most people would listen if it's something simple like directions would leave it but anything private they could remove. Or have an audio queue when audio is being recorded some heartbeat like click so every few seconds while recording you hear a click and are like oh shit and can tell Siri not to send that recording.