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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
by 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 agoFor 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 agoI mean, the "main" function of a phone IS to listen to you. For phone calls.
- blub 7y agoThe 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 agoIf 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.
- blub 7y agoThe latter is more unlikely compared to the former, which is by design. Furthermore, at least on iOS Siri can be completely turned off through a configuration profile. This is a reasonable approach for someone whose thread model allows them to use a smartphone...
- mikeash 7y agoMicrophones connected to power and internet 24/7 have been in people’s houses since the 1990s (or earlier, if you consider the phone network to be equivalent). Yet it only became “creepy” when they started talking back. This tells me it’s an emotional response, not rational.
- blub 7y agoNobody considers the phone network to be equivalent :) Even current smartphones do not turn on their microphones outside of a call, unless one has made the huge mistake to turn their assistants on, or there's an app recording - and at least on iOS that's controllable by permissions and marked clearly when the app is in the background. Anyway, smartphones are creepy too.
- mikeash 7y agoHow do you know that phones don’t turn on their microphones outside of a call?
- emiliobumachar 7y agoBack in the 1990s, their hardware design was simple enough that any mass surveillance would inevitably get exposed when the odd hacker took his device apart. These days, I'm not sure at all. All we have is the law as a deterrent, and that's weak, especially to governments.
- blub 7y agoThis was answered in another comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20593642 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20593642 One cannot know with absolute certainty, only with reasonable certainty. On the other hand, an assistant is listening all the time by design. If one needs to know with absolute certainty, then they cannot use a mobile phone, nor probably a reasonably modern regular phone.
- saagarjha 7y ago