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> When people complained that putting microphones in your home 24/7 was creepy, the response was "that's nonsense, Siri is not sending anything unless you speci

> When people complained that putting microphones in your home 24/7 was creepy, the response was "that's nonsense, Siri is not sending anything unless you specifically ask for it". This seems like a distorted representation, to support your argument, of what most the complaints and responses were. The gulf between 24/7 recording and "occasionally unintentional sending" is absolutely massive and you just merge them into "see, we were right". The complaints were (and still are) conspiracy theories that they were streaming constant recordings and constantly listening; which they aren't; almost nobody is pretending this would be okay. I've also not seen anyone who knows what they are talking about seriously claiming that /no person/ would ever listen to the audio samples - only that there isn't somebody _listening_ to your samples e.g. in a targeted, continual sense. In fact the only part that does sound slightly worrying is that the evaluators get location information along with audio; this would probably be enough to reverse any ID anonymisation, and if the metadata is kept - requests by law enforcement, though I would hope the contractors couldn't control/request specific samples coming into them. In any case, Alexa is potentially worse than this because I can see a history and playback old recordings on my account, which means they are kept fully associated. Apple might do this with Siri internally, I don't know.

jtbayly 7y ago
Many apps turn the microphone on and leave it on. Even if they aren’t recording it all or having somebody listen, it is clearly to spy on you to see what you are doing. (Ie did you hear some ad?) That’s not a conspiracy theory, and it is practically indistinguishable from constant listening for the normal person.
- freehunter 7y ago
  >Many apps turn the microphone on and leave it on. Source?
- tinus_hn 7y ago
  If an app in the background has the microphone on on iOS the OS will show a red indicator warning you. Also apps can’t access the microphone without your permission.
blub 7y ago
You need to carefully read what you are quoting. The microphones are in the houses 24/7, connected to power and the internet. That is creepy. There were also several creepy situations involving these devices: * Google home had a hardware flaw which actually made it record 24/7. * all assistants activate by mistake when they think they recognize the activation word. Siriously. * An Amazon Echo recorded a private conversation and sent it to a random contact of the owner
- lancesells 7y ago
  For some reason smart speakers give me pause but not a smartphone. A smartphone is kind of the same thing (microphones listening) when plugged in with the addition of a camera and a host of other sensors. I guess because a phone's main function is to not listen to us that makes the speakers much more worrisome to everyone? Even something like an Apple Watch is the same thing with the addition of reading your vitals.
  - fastball 7y ago
    I mean, the "main" function of a phone IS to listen to you. For phone calls.
    - blub 7y ago
      The main function of a phone is to make phone calls. In order to do that, it activates a microphone during the call. This is not the same as listening, never mind always listening. A home assistant must always listen in order to recognize the activation words.
      - fastball 7y ago
        If you don't trust home assistant vendors to not randomly send non-queries to the cloud, I'm not sure why you'd trust phone vendors to not have the microphone on when you haven't given it permission.
        7y ago
pdkl95 7y ago
> The complaints were (and still are) conspiracy theories The people making those complaints are probably not crazy; it might be a good idea to try to understand their actual concerns instead of jumping to this inaccurate (and insulting) misrepresentation. > they were streaming constant recordings That would be a waste of bandwidth. Obviously a constant stream isn't happening. While a trivial noise gate and high-efficiency encoding could easily[1] allow almost constant recording of voice for trivial amounts of bandwidth, that isn't really the concern. > constantly listening It has to be constantly listening, or it wouldn't hear the wake word. However, this too isn't really the concern. > in a targeted, continual sense Dan Geer, on "targeting"[2]: >> There is no mechanistic difference whatsoever between personalization and targeting save for the intent of the analyst. To believe otherwise is to believe in the Tooth Fairy. To not care is to abandon your duty. Targeted surveillance is by definition rare and often hard to avoid. I'm far more concerned about non-targeted, sparsely-gathered data that surveillance capitalists like Google/FB/etc can use to refine their model of your pattern-of-life[3]. While this touches on a few important issues, yet again this isn't why I consider always-on, remotely-controlled microphones to be a serious problem. The big problem is that you're normalizing the idea that remote 3rd parties might be recording in areas traditionally considered private. Kyllo v United States[4] created a bright-line rule that asks if a technology (in general, not any specific product) is considered to be "in general public use"[5]. If it's not, using that technology is considered a "search" for 4th Amendment purposes, and a warrant is required if the police want to use it. When a technology is "in general public use"[5], the police no longer need a warrant to use their own voice-activated internet-controlled microphones to see the "details of a private home that would previously have been unknowable without physical intrusion"[6]. I don't care what these devices may or may not be recording right now. I do care that normalizing of the idea that voice might be recorded inside the home by a remotely-managed device is eroding my future 4th Amendment rights even if I never buy an Alexa/etc. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16346416 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16346416 [2] http://geer.tinho.net/geer.source.27iv17.txt http://geer.tinho.net/geer.source.27iv17.txt [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pattern-of-life_analysis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pattern-of-life_analysis [4] https://caselaw.findlaw.com/us-supreme-court/533/27.html https://caselaw.findlaw.com/us-supreme-court/533/27.html [5] used multiple times in ruling[4] (esp. section II of Justice Stevens' dissent) [6] see [4], 2nd paragraph

jtbayly 7y ago

Many apps turn the microphone on and leave it on. Even if they aren’t recording it all or having somebody listen, it is clearly to spy on you to see what you are doing. (Ie did you hear some ad?) That’s not a conspiracy theory, and it is practically indistinguishable from constant listening for the normal person.

freehunter 7y ago
>Many apps turn the microphone on and leave it on. Source?
tinus_hn 7y ago
If an app in the background has the microphone on on iOS the OS will show a red indicator warning you. Also apps can’t access the microphone without your permission.

blub 7y ago

You need to carefully read what you are quoting. The microphones are in the houses 24/7, connected to power and the internet. That is creepy. There were also several creepy situations involving these devices: * Google home had a hardware flaw which actually made it record 24/7. * all assistants activate by mistake when they think they recognize the activation word. Siriously. * An Amazon Echo recorded a private conversation and sent it to a random contact of the owner

lancesells 7y ago
For some reason smart speakers give me pause but not a smartphone. A smartphone is kind of the same thing (microphones listening) when plugged in with the addition of a camera and a host of other sensors. I guess because a phone's main function is to not listen to us that makes the speakers much more worrisome to everyone? Even something like an Apple Watch is the same thing with the addition of reading your vitals.
- fastball 7y ago
  I mean, the "main" function of a phone IS to listen to you. For phone calls.
  - blub 7y ago
    The main function of a phone is to make phone calls. In order to do that, it activates a microphone during the call. This is not the same as listening, never mind always listening. A home assistant must always listen in order to recognize the activation words.
    - fastball 7y ago
      If you don't trust home assistant vendors to not randomly send non-queries to the cloud, I'm not sure why you'd trust phone vendors to not have the microphone on when you haven't given it permission.
      - 7y ago

pdkl95 7y ago

> The complaints were (and still are) conspiracy theories The people making those complaints are probably not crazy; it might be a good idea to try to understand their actual concerns instead of jumping to this inaccurate (and insulting) misrepresentation. > they were streaming constant recordings That would be a waste of bandwidth. Obviously a constant stream isn't happening. While a trivial noise gate and high-efficiency encoding could easily[1] allow almost constant recording of voice for trivial amounts of bandwidth, that isn't really the concern. > constantly listening It has to be constantly listening, or it wouldn't hear the wake word. However, this too isn't really the concern. > in a targeted, continual sense Dan Geer, on "targeting"[2]: >> There is no mechanistic difference whatsoever between personalization and targeting save for the intent of the analyst. To believe otherwise is to believe in the Tooth Fairy. To not care is to abandon your duty. Targeted surveillance is by definition rare and often hard to avoid. I'm far more concerned about non-targeted, sparsely-gathered data that surveillance capitalists like Google/FB/etc can use to refine their model of your pattern-of-life[3]. While this touches on a few important issues, yet again this isn't why I consider always-on, remotely-controlled microphones to be a serious problem. The big problem is that you're normalizing the idea that remote 3rd parties might be recording in areas traditionally considered private. Kyllo v United States[4] created a bright-line rule that asks if a technology (in general, not any specific product) is considered to be "in general public use"[5]. If it's not, using that technology is considered a "search" for 4th Amendment purposes, and a warrant is required if the police want to use it. When a technology is "in general public use"[5], the police no longer need a warrant to use their own voice-activated internet-controlled microphones to see the "details of a private home that would previously have been unknowable without physical intrusion"[6]. I don't care what these devices may or may not be recording right now. I do care that normalizing of the idea that voice might be recorded inside the home by a remotely-managed device is eroding my future 4th Amendment rights even if I never buy an Alexa/etc. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16346416 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16346416 [2] http://geer.tinho.net/geer.source.27iv17.txt http://geer.tinho.net/geer.source.27iv17.txt [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pattern-of-life_analysis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pattern-of-life_analysis [4] https://caselaw.findlaw.com/us-supreme-court/533/27.html https://caselaw.findlaw.com/us-supreme-court/533/27.html [5] used multiple times in ruling[4] (esp. section II of Justice Stevens' dissent) [6] see [4], 2nd paragraph