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I was a huge Google Fan but this is becoming lunacy. I understood trading some data and privacy for great search results, maps and free quality email. But peo

by saluki 7y ago

I was a huge Google Fan but this is becoming lunacy. I understood trading some data and privacy for great search results, maps and free quality email. But people willingly bringing always on listening devices in to their homes (beyond what smartphones are already capable of) I just can't comprehend it. Why would people voluntarily do this in exchange for being able to ask for weather, play a playlist, add a todo and a few other parlor tricks. I guess I value my privacy more than others and don't like the idea of entities compiling a record of my data that they can sell and market. Imagine how some governments could use this data to limit freedoms, crack down on their opposition. And what about the first data breech that includes transcripts or even audio of all your household conversations/activities over the past three years matched up to your email or even address? It just sounds like we are heading down the wrong road.

tantalor 7y ago
Do you own a cell phone?
- dna_polymerase 7y ago
  Having a cell phone does not invalidate their legitimate critique.
  - davinic 7y ago
    Of course not, but phrasing it in this way (that phones are a separate exception) minimizes the legitimate critiques of always-listening cellphone privacy.
    - ntsplnkv2 7y ago
      Phones solve many more problems though. I'm willing to make some sacrifice so that I can get GPS/maps anywhere I go, ability to make emergency phone calls, etc. Smart speakers really don't have the same value add.
  - okmokmz 7y ago
    Apparently on this site it does. I had a conversation where I made a joke about Alexa glasses spying on us all in public instead of just in the privacy of people's homes now and got downvoted to oblivion because apparently you aren't allowed to care about privacy if you own a phone. The amount of whataboutisms on this site where people try to invalidate others opinions or critiques is incredible and makes it very difficult to have any kind of genuine discussion. I imagine it's partially because there are plenty of Google/Facebook/Amazon employees on this site so it's in their best interest to shut down any pro-privacy discussion
  - authoritarian 7y ago
    Apparently on this site it does. I had a conversation where I made a joke about Alexa glasses spying on us all in public instead of just in the privacy of people's homes now and got downvoted to oblivion because apparently you aren't allowed to care about privacy if you own a phone. The amount of whataboutisms on this site where people try to invalidate others opinions or critiques is incredible and makes it very difficult to have any kind of genuine discussion. I imagine it's partially because there are plenty of Google/Facebook/Amazon employees on this site so it's in their best interest to shut down any pro-privacy discussion
- melling 7y ago
  He mentions that he does. The thing is everyone has a cellphone, even many kids. Invite half a dozen people over and you’ll get half a dozen cellphones. I have a couple of Amazon Echos, plus iOS devices that occasionally activate Siri for no reason. I love them. My feeling is that I’m willing to live with it for now. Hopefully, a decade from now, voice technology is perfected and more is done on device.
  - throwaway2048 7y ago
    There is never going to come a day when any of these companies give you more control over your devices. Why would they? Thats their entire competitive advantage.
    - melling 7y ago
      The Pixel 4 does speech to text on device. They do it because it's faster. Once it becomes a solved problem, there will be better open source devices and more competition. On device will be a checkbox feature. Not every company makes you the product.
      - serf 7y ago
        >Not every company makes you the product. yeah, but since that has been a workable angle we'd had an explosion of companies that do make you the product. I wouldn't assume the inverse over time related to a reduction in effort from better devices and competition; i'd assume further growth.
- saluki 7y ago
  of course I do, it's alluded to in my comment: "(beyond what smartphones are already capable of)" I agree, smart phones provide the same surveillance capabilities of 'smart' speakers and more. But supposedly phones aren't always on and listening to all your audio like the 'smart' speakers. This might just be a divide in society, some people accept surveillance as not an issue and are fine with it. Would you place a similar 'smart' speaker device in your home if the government suddenly required it? I just feel a surveillance state is detrimental to freedom and democracy, the freedom we have in the states is not common. If you look back in history and even around the world today it's pretty rare. I just want to make sure we aren't setting ourselves up to weaken it or even lose it.
  - streb-lo 7y ago
    > But supposedly phones aren't always on and listening to all your audio like the 'smart' speakers. New phones are. Also, AFAIK, Alexa et al. are only sending traffic home after the wake word is heard. I believe this has been confirmed via wireshark.
    - saluki 7y ago
      That's true a phone has 'smart' speaker features. It seems 'smart' speakers wake more easily than Siri. We hadn't been hearing news stories about FANG employees listening to/reviewing conversations intimate moments until the 'smart' speakers were deployed. I expect this could have been going on with Siri as well though. I'm open to using a 'smart' speaker in the future, there might not be any reason for concern. Currently it just seems like a bad idea to add recording devices you don't control around your home.
      - scatters 7y ago
        > We hadn't been hearing news stories about FANG employees listening to/reviewing conversations intimate moments until the 'smart' speakers were deployed. That just shows that the media didn't think those stories would sell.
    - skrause 7y ago
Santosh83 7y ago
The problem is the illusion that these devices present of being just another utility like a toaster or a TV or even a smartphone. The always on link between these listening devices and their command and control is not evident. It gives the illusion of operating locally.
greggman2 7y ago
I hate not having privacy but I don't understand singling Google out here. Siri is listening (both on phones and on Apple' homepod), Alexa is listening, Cortana is listening, ... I actually am less worried about those (since I turn them off) than I do about Netflix/Amazon knowing every movie I watch. Amazon knowing every product I order. My Credit Card and Bank company knowing every business I transact with. My Mac and PC spying on what I do with them (i think that's more Windows than Mac). My PC/iPhone/Android/Rift knowing every app I run. My ISP knowing all the websites I visit or DNS lookups I make etc... I could go on and on but I don't see how Google sticks out here. It's a much bigger problem.
- SamBam 7y ago
  I don't see anything in the parent comment that says this is a Google-only issue. Also, the Netflix and Amazon examples don't seem to be in the same category, to me. Every time you interact with Netflix and Amazon, you are doing so deliberately. You are choosing exactly what to give them. You can easily pick another service. Always-on listening devices, on the other hand, are taking data that you did not choose to give them, and other people's data as well. That's the point in the headline of this article. I would never need to tell guests "If you order something from Amazon, they'll know you ordered it," but apparently I might need to tell them to watch their mouths in my house. There's a big difference.
  - jachee 7y ago
    > Every time you interact with ... Amazon, you are doing so deliberately. Don't forget that Echo devices are Amazon's always-on listening devices.
    - SamBam 7y ago
      Yes, sure, but that wasn't what the comment I was replying to was talking about... This is about the difference between always-on listeners, including Echo, and stores where you buy things.
    - urda 7y ago
cmsonger 7y ago
My personal view is that the biggest issue here is the lack of user protection. I'd be a LOT less concerned about this if the appropriate legal framework protected me. The Star Trek vision of voice as an interface is a good vision. The question is how the regulatory framework protects users in this world and keeps it from being the dystopian nightmare that our "for profit corporations get to do whatever they like as long as you agreed in an 'all or nothing' click through" seem to be headed for.
- jachee 7y ago
  The in-universe answer from Star Trek is that there's no more capitalism in their post-scarcity society.
  - Santosh83 7y ago
    While the tech seems to be catching up in certain areas (if not the FTL drive), socially we're nowhere near what was depicted in Star Trek. It wasn't just post-capitalism but post-money. People no longer had to work for basic necessities. That is almost an unimaginably different setup to what humanity has always been used to. There's also a noticeable lack of crime and corruption, again something humans will have to extensively transform themselves in order to reach the goal...
    - mrexroad 7y ago
      Don’t forget, that in Star Trek, there’s a post-apocalyptic period waiting for us before the post-capitalism times...
- DennisP 7y ago
  If the voice interface is implemented locally then it's not a problem. Google already has it working on the Pixel. It has some limitations but it responds faster and works offline. https://techcrunch.com/2019/03/12/googles-new-voice-recognition-system-works-instantly-and-offline-if-you-have-a-pixel/ https://techcrunch.com/2019/03/12/googles-new-voice-recognit...
52-6F-62 7y ago
The new version of Fahrenheit 451 (film w/ Michael Jordan) does a fantastic take of this. I highly recommend it unless anyone is a Fahrenheit 451 originalist.
Taylor_OD 7y ago
A lot of people just don't care.
robomartin 7y ago
> people willingly bringing always on listening devices in to their homes <...> I just can't comprehend it. The reason is "people" lack education in technology. They can barely use a computer these days, with "using a computer" generally means being on Facebook with a browser. There's a very significant divide in this regard that has been growing for decades. And it isn't getting any better. This is why it is nearly impossible to convince people you know to use better passwords and adopt security and privacy-conscious behaviors. I don't know if you (plural) have experienced this, I know a few people for whom sending a link via email is a challenge. They think they sent you a link and what you get is unusable. No, it isn't about age at all. Smart phones and tablets have changed the relationship people have with computers. They make things very easy to use and require almost no technological knowledge to operate. In computers, the browser or Chromebooks do the same. Add it all up and the idea that someone does not even remotely think that a thermostat could be recording every word being said in home doesn't even cross their minds. Going beyond that, thinking about how and where that data is stored and how it could be used it yet another level. All this says it is the responsibility of the tech community to make sure customers understand the important aspects of the technology we provide.
- pintxo 7y ago
  > All this says it is the responsibility of the tech community to make sure customers understand the important aspects of the technology we provide. Which is difficult as long as some peoples income depends on not making sure that customers understand. As much as I'd like to pretend we are all morally and ethically acting grown ups, reality tells us we are not. Ultimately this needs to be regulated by law and continually enforced. It seems like regulation is slowly rolling in, but enforcement seems to still be far out.
- qroshan 7y ago
  "The reason is "people" lack education in technology" This is a dumb statement. Lots of tech people use all of these devices. In fact smart tech people differentiate between machine listening and humans listening. A Math, Tech person know that the probability of a human listening to my recording is close 0.000001%. Humans, including yourself, make far worse decisions every day in your life that have much higher detrimental effect to your overall quality of life than worrying about stupid things
raxxorrax 7y ago
People just don't know how valuable this data actually is. Sure it only gets value if a critical quantity is reached. There is just a disconnect in understanding. With huge efforts they will create archives of 5% special price coupons, but how tech companies extract free money from them is beyond their comprehension. The implications of having every deed and word quantified is perhaps too abstract a danger to understand.
- lukifer 7y ago
  > People just don't know how valuable this data actually is. Jaron Lanier has an interesting plan for renegotiating the "paying for services with data" relationship we now have with tech companies: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/09/23/opinion/data-privacy-jaron-lanier.html https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/09/23/opinion/data-...
- teslafanboi 7y ago
  no, you just over estimate how valuable this data is because you desperately want to feel important. guess what, you saying "ok google turn on my lights" 1000x times is completely worthless to anyone. you're not important and your data means nothing to anyone. grow up
- teslafanboi22 7y ago
  no, you just over estimate how valuable this data is because you desperately want to feel important. guess what, you saying "ok google turn on my lights" 1000x times is completely worthless to anyone. you're not important and your data means nothing to anyone. grow up
chenning 7y ago
I don't think this is just a Google issue. Osterloh just happened to be the first one to come right out and say, yeah, maybe you should tell your guests. Personally, I thought the bigger news (insult) was when he said, "Gosh, I haven't thought about this before in quite this way." Give me a break. You knew it. I knew it. We all knew it. Maybe the right thing to do is have the device recognize there's an unknown voice in the room and announce that it's listening. That hasn't happened for some reason, but I highly doubt the reason is that no one ever thought of it.
- braythwayt 7y ago
  > Gosh, I haven't thought about this before in quite this way Imagine if I made a self-driving car. Imagine if, in the rain, it simply slowed down and stopped right where it was, even in the middle of the freeway. Now imagine that when asked about whether this was dangerous and ought to be disclosed to customers, the VP of Engineering said, "Gosh, I haven't thought about this before in quite this way." We'd all say the VP was either lying, or was dangerously incompetent and was running a dysfunctional engineering group. I don't need to get into a long conversation about whether this is malice or incompetence: It's unacceptable either way with self-driving cars to claim to have not thought about safety, and in the case of privacy and disclosure of recordings in my home, it's unacceptable either way to claim to have not thought about it. This company is rotten from head to toe, and so is the system of incentives that lead companies like Google and Facebook to flout all standards of responsibility. How can someone say something like this and still have their job at 5pm PST? How can Zuck say time and time again, "Sorry, we'll do better next time, by the way, political ads can lie," and there are no serious consequences?
- 205guy 7y ago
  Exactly! He knew it, the whole company knew it and took advantage of it, and didn't disclose it publicly until questioned by a reporter. I see parallels to the genetic testing kits: it's all fun and games until police use it to find people who committed crimes. Just wait until investigative units realize FAANGs have recordings from inside houses that they can supeona.
naasking 7y ago
> But people willingly bringing always on listening devices in to their homes (beyond what smartphones are already capable of) I just can't comprehend it. Always-on listening doesn't seem like a huge deal. What matters is the policy of allowing Google people to listen to captured audio, even if it's for training purposes. This is skirting uncomfortably close to a dystopian surveillance society. If you want to gather data from people, provide an incentive to voluntarily participate. For instance, on Google maps you can become a contributor and there are benefits and bonuses if you contribute enough. Yes, this group is self-selected so it's not as good as a random sample, but it's better than the dystopian alternative.
- mindcrime 7y ago
  Always-on audio capture is a HORRIBLE idea in general. First, if it's stored - at all - then you have to ask "who else could get access to the recording besides (Google|Apple|whoever)?" Whether it's a nation-state via a search warrant, or some random script kiddie who hax0red the storage mechanism, once it's recorded you don't know WHO is going to get access, or what their intentions will be. Secondly, even if it's not normally recorded, so long as the capability is there, you've basically bugged yourself. Now if you become a target for surveillance, all the other party has to do is arrange for (Google|Apple|whoever) to give them a real-time feed from your device and now all of your conversations are fair game. Smart phones are bad enough, but why put more devices in your home (car, office, etc.) that make it trivial for others to monitor you?
  - machello13 7y ago
    Isn't this true with any device that has an embedded microphone? Laptops and pre-smart cell phones have had the same vulnerabilities for a very long time, no?
    - mindcrime 7y ago
      It's a fair point... unless a device has a hardware mute switch, it's hard to know for sure if somebody can activate it remotely for listening. But why add more attack vectors unnecessarily?
fluffything 7y ago
> Why would people voluntarily do this in exchange for being able to ask for weather, play a playlist, add a todo and a few other parlor tricks. I don't really understand why the device needs to store my recording and send it over the internet. I would be willing to pay more for a device that guarantees that my recordings are deleted immediately.
- jeremyjh 7y ago
  Echo does this - only wake word phrases are sent to the internet - but it is not guaranteed by the hardware. Also your failed requests - where it recognized the wake word but not the request - are listened to by QA people. Those could easily be private conversations with an accidental wake word.
  - machello13 7y ago
    I'm pretty sure this is how all smart speakers work.
  - tjansen 7y ago
    A simple work-around on Echos is to enable the wake word notification pling. Then you immediately notice that the Echo is listening.
snarf21 7y ago
You are right but as you say all those things apply to your smartphone and the smartphone of every person you are in range of. Also, smartphones have cameras front and back. An Alexa in my bathroom only has a mic and speakers. The future will also be powered by cameras and microphones in public and you will be tracked. Amazon is actively selling software and hardware to enable dystopia today. I imagine that if governments start to use Alexa, et. al. to crack down on dissenters, those whole business lines disappear as people dump them all in the trash. I think we have to depend on capitalism and whistleblowers to shout if things change. If someone wants to listen in on the sounds of my bathroom, help yourself. I personally draw the line at cameras. No camera, no Ring doorbell and my phone is usually in my pocket or in a shelf with no visual access. The other thing that I'd point out is that a lot of people publicly shout their political and other positions voluntarily. This is great for free speech but is an even easier and richer target for government crackdowns.
glitcher 7y ago
I blame Star Trek. Simply speaking out loud to ask the computer anytime something was needed, it seemed like magical tech. We just didn't anticipate the companies and extra consequences that would come along with it. I would love to see a parody of Star Trek where all the tech is run by an advertising company exploiting all the crew members individually by capturing all their private data around the clock.
- api 7y ago
  No relationship. Why does the device have to record and send everything to the cloud to provide this experience? I suspect the answer is a mix of "we want to invade privacy" and "it makes the devices cheaper to build since you can put really wimpy chips in them."
  - shadowgovt 7y ago
    In the short run, it gives the company three direct benefits for making the technology work (besides the "They can advertise at you better" one that people like to drumbeat on). 1) Context is nearly invisible, and is constructed from dozens to hundreds of data points. Holding state on the user (not just from direct interaction with the agent, but from other services the agent can be aware of) makes a lot more context possible. My assistant knows about my calendar, where I've been recently, and my recent emails; it can make much better educated guesses about what I mean if I say "What's travel time to Oakland?" 2) Getting the voice recognition tech itself from 90% accurate to 99.9% accurate requires awareness of the tens of thousands of real-world complicators that never show up in laboratory testing. As Google showed off by bootstrapping their voice recognition tech via Goog-411, they know how to take megabytes / gigabytes of "dirty signal" and use it to refine their algorithms against unforeseen corner cases. 3) Releasing new assistant features can be done atop existing collected data, without requiring months of lag for enough state to build up for the feature to be useful.
    - api 7y ago
      All of these are addressable engineering challenges if privacy were a priority. It's just that privacy is not a priority. (1) is not that hard, just subscribe to feeds or query cloud services from the device. (2) is harder but could be done by treating the devices as a cluster or sending data up only when it can't be easily recognized and storing it only long enough to be useful in training (and storing it anonymously), and as for (3) the device could store data encrypted in the cloud and that would be fine. A new or updated device just downloads and decrypts the index to its data. There are other workable approaches. I think the best way to change that is legislation. We need HIPAA-type liability laws applying to all privacy-sensitive data: recorded audio, recorded video, location, etc. Leak someone's location or a recording of audio from their house? That'll be $10,000 per person per incident. That would instantly transform privacy invasion from an asset to a liability and incentivize companies to minimize data collected and when it must be collected to provide the service minimize the length of the time it is stored. As it stands literally all economic incentives jump up and down and scream "invade the user's privacy s much as possible!" These are: (1) Data is valuable and advertisers will pay for it or pay for data-driven ad services. (2) Engineering privacy-invasive systems is easier than engineering privacy-respecting systems. This is a subset of "engineering insecure systems is easier than engineering secure systems" as privacy is a dimension of security. (3) Privacy sensitive approaches usually require more compute and storage at the edge, increasing device build cost.
mr_overalls 7y ago
I couldn't agree more. Are there any good open-source projects for AI assistants? There certainly seems to be a need.
- _salmon 7y ago
  Yep, Home Assistant - https://www.home-assistant.io/ https://www.home-assistant.io/
  - timc3 7y ago
    That is not an AI assistant.
- derimagia 7y ago
  Mycroft is the biggest that I know of: https://mycroft.ai/ https://mycroft.ai/
wnevets 7y ago
I've gotten Alexa and Google's Home for free but I refuse to set them up. Even if you believe these companies aren't going to "spy" on you, the security of these things has been proven dubious at best.
- RandallBrown 7y ago
  What is the worst thing you think could happen if you did set either of them up? I'm personally not a very private person and I'm not worried about giving up some privacy for convenience. There are a few bad things I could think of like the government using out of context recordings to frame you or something like that, but the odds of that happening seem so vanishingly small, I can't worry about it.
shadowgovt 7y ago
> Why would people voluntarily do this in exchange for being able to ask for weather, play a playlist, add a todo and a few other parlor tricks Because it's a lot of fun and the personal risk is basically nonexistant. It's the oldest story in the book: different personal evaluations of risk of activity.
bashallah 7y ago
Can’t you just removed the hardware from the device? It’s not like microphones are magical.
oppositelock 7y ago
What does having a Nest thermostat get you? I'm a tech dude, I build modern software, but I live in a dumb, old fashioned house. My programmable Honeywell thermostat, which has no internet connection, does a perfectly fine job of keeping my home the right temperature. My door locks use a key, and keys have great battery life, and my smoke detectors beep instead of speaking to me. What am I missing by not having internet connected stuff?
- seanmcdirmid 7y ago
  Mainly a Nest thermostat looks cool.
- outside1234 7y ago
  you can turn it on remotely, like when you are on the way home from work, and have a warm house when you get there. to me, that is the killer reason to have it online.
  - seandougall 7y ago
    If you have a predictable schedule, there are plenty of offline thermostats that let you set target temperatures for different times of day. If you don't, I can see how being able to control it remotely would be nice. (But an embedded microphone is still creepy and unnecessary.)
    - rtkwe 7y ago
      Then you're in luck because the Google Nest thermostats don't actually have microphones in them at all! https://support.google.com/googlenest/answer/9330256?hl=en https://support.google.com/googlenest/answer/9330256?hl=en
- beznet 7y ago
  Im in the same boat, I find the concepts very fascinating but almost all of it is trying to solve problems that don't even exist for me. The only thing my friends with IoT devices do are party tricks on voice command with their smart lights. Other than that, I find the so called 'problems' these devices solving are extraordinarily trivial.
sgustard 7y ago
Are we acknowledging a difference between the Nest device he warns about (which is sold as a surveillance device) and, say, an Amazon Echo? (Which the headline mentions as equally problematic, but the body of the article doesn't mention at all.) My understanding of the Echo is that it only records after hearing a trigger word.
Ajedi32 7y ago
> beyond what smartphones are already capable of What do you mean by this? What exactly is it that you believe smart speakers capable of that smartphones are not? (Modern smartphones are just as capable of listening for and responding to hotwords as smart speakers are, fyi.)
- postalrat 7y ago
  People are afraid of dying in a terrorist attack but aren't afraid of driving their car around town. Even though the odds of them dying in a car accident are much greater than dying in a terrorist attack. I think the same thinking allows people to overlook their phones while focusing on their smart speakers.
pjmlp 7y ago
Skynet apparently is somewhere under Google's cellar.
anigbrowl 7y ago
'Don't be evil' as a company motto really seemed to make Google different in the early days - not just in terms of being hip and cool in contrast to their contemporary competitors, but in terms of recognizing that technology has a moral dimension and that the firm's long-term wellbeing lay not just in maximizing its technological power but distributing the benefits thereof as widely as possible, rather than conserving it for private advantage. I find their news product a useful barometer of the extent to which they've abandoned that. Last Monday I sat down at my workstation and the top item - amid war, political instability, and everything else going on in the world - were articles about the Google Pixel 4. I know this wasn't a reflection of my browsing habits - I'm just not interested in phone technology at the product level, and and any online shopping/product research that I do these days happens on a separate account on a separate device, because I don't want to mix up my consumer preferences with my intellectual interests. You would think that with all Google's brainpower the presentation and distribution of news would by now have seen massive advances, but instead it has simply magnified the worst aspect of print and Tv news. I'm beset with sports, entertainment, 'health' (mostly quackery), and 'technology (mostly consumer products) news every day, even though I used to be able to opt out of those things. If I make the mistake of looking at a sports article on my workstation or phone, I am swamped with sports articles for the next day or two, presumably because the sports market is so lucrative and Google's algorithms get tremendously excited at the possibility that I am adopting the consumer the consumer profile of a sports fan. Likewise I am constantly being advanced second- and third-hand sources of news based on SEO and existing reach; every other story I read is a half-assed rewrite of original research done by a news outlet with a smaller brand footprint. If I'm lucky I can see that in the first paragraph or two and can click through to the original, if not it's because a big news outlet is just stealing or redoing stories without credit or attribution and I may find out about it later when I read Twitter. I could rant on and on and on about Google's news product and about their other products and practices, but all my critiques of the firm boil down to this: google has become a company that takes bids (including from itself) on the order in which it provides leaves to consumers, while denying them sight of the trees they are plucked from.
kcdev 7y ago
You said it yourself: smartphones are already capable of it. So what difference does it make if you add an Alexa or Google Home? At least those aren't going everywhere with you. This is the defeatist attitude, but this tech is probably here to stay. We just need to do our best to make sure companies do the right thing.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
ianmcgowan 7y ago
I have a few echos and a google home, and I love the feeling of living in the future by controlling things with my voice. It may be naive, but I think the device vendors have way more to lose if it turns out they are actually recording all the time, not just listening for the wake word. It will be the wrong road if we end up at 1984, but I’m hoping for the Culture, or at least the Jetsons...
_davebennett 7y ago
I know I'm gonna be in the minority with this, but what if you really just don't care despite knowing the danger? I have a Google Home in my bedroom, and it's extremely convenient for controlling my lights. I'm aware of the privacy concerns with such a device, but out of all the things in the world that worries me it's just not far up my list to disregard the convenience. I imagine a lot of consumers might feel this way. Now this would be a different story if something was forced upon me (like the government mandated some device, and I don't have an active choice in having it) but I'm making an active choice to buy this device and use it knowing that it could very well be recording the conversations, sex, whatever else goes on in my bedroom.
- madrox 7y ago
  I feel like this is the only sane response. To say there is no danger is naive. To say this is existential danger is...well...have you read the news lately? Every day we are making choices about what risks we're willing to accept. In the scheme of things, this is novel but minor.
notus 7y ago
It's no different than an iPhone
at-fates-hands 7y ago
> It just sounds like we are heading down the wrong road. Humans are a lazy bunch and this feeds into these genetically coded tendencies in the worst way. I feel like there is a growing backlash against these technologies that are getting way too invasive. Myself and a few of my friends have gone back to being as "analog" as possible. Dumb thermostats, dumb tv's, regular old key locks (you can still get some pretty secure, non-electronic locks), dumb fridges, etc, etc. The point is to disconnect as much as possible from the internet, Google, FB and Amazon. Three of my best friends now just carry Windows phones. Internet connected, very few apps, and phone service. We are of course, a very small minority whose seen the dark side of these technologies. I don't think enough people know or understand the consequences of having these devices in their homes.
azarizotza 7y ago
This might be because I’m running on a half hour of sleep but I legit thought you said you were a Google Fan as if Google makes smart ceiling fans and you were somehow talking to me.
godelski 7y ago
> I guess I value my privacy more than others and don't like the idea of entities compiling a record of my data that they can sell and market. I think a lot of people don't understand how much their data is worth. It is something I frequently hear, that "my data is useless, so why hide it?" or "what are they going to do, see that I like cat photos? HA!". I think these kinds of comments are slowly diminishing as the average person is seeing 1) these tech companies are worth $1+ trillion 2) people get scared and think Facebook is always listening because they every so often hit the mark too well. But I don't think most even know the extend of the data that these companies have (e.g. they think that Google only has their email data and knows nothing about financial), let alone how that data can be used.
kelnos 7y ago
> But people willingly bringing always on listening devices in to their homes (beyond what smartphones are already capable of) I just can't comprehend it. I don't get this position: my (Android) phone can already record my voice, so how does having a Google Home materially increase the privacy risk? The GH does have access to mains power and a wifi connection, so that makes it easier to record all the time and upload a lot of data vs. a phone, but it seems like a bit of a stretch to me to think that Google would be doing something nefarious with GH and then absolutely nothing on Android. I've also noticed that when I call out to my GH, my phone will usually respond too, so it's not like my phone can't understand me, even when it's in my pocket, so the capability is definitely there. So if you do trust Google enough to have an Android phone, then you should probably trust them just as much to have a GH. Beyond that, then it just comes down to bugs: what if GH is too sensitive and thinks you've uttered the wake word often when you haven't? Ok, then some conversations may get recorded that you didn't intend. That's certainly a concern, but "I just can't comprehend it" would seem a bit hyperbolic in that case. > ... includes transcripts or even audio of all your household conversations/activities over the past three years This seems to indicate to me that you believe that GH etc. are always recording and uploading every sound it hears, all day long, without regard for the wake word. If you believe this, I guess that is your prerogative, but I guess we're probably not going to have a productive discussion here.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- mrb 7y ago
  «I don't get this position: my (Android) phone can already record my voice, so how does having a Google Home materially increase the privacy risk?» Indeed. Maybe people don't realize that a smartphone is a much bigger privacy risk. A phone can literally record audio and video, track your position, monitor all your online activity, and upload all that without you even noticing it, even when the screen is off and locked. (This can happen when the phone is hacked or if the OS or device vendors are evil.) I think people perceive devices like the Echo Dot or Nest Mini as more dangerouse simply because they aren't used to them. But smartphones have existed for more than a decade, so people have long accepted these.
urda 7y ago
If you've carried an Android at all, you've already had a listening device in your home for years. This device also has a ton more sensors and data it collects off you than a smart speaker could.
president 7y ago
The thing is, the majority viewpoint always wins, whether they are right or wrong. If we had a well-educated and well-informed populace, people might make better decisions. Unfortunately, this is not the case and the situation is worsened with marketing and advertising from companies choosing revenue over morals.
kevindong 7y ago
> I guess I value my privacy more than others and don't like the idea of entities compiling a record of my data that they can sell and market. Because big tech/advertising companies don't sell your individual data. They sell to other entities the ability to show people like you specific content. I wouldn't use products monetized in the first way, but I'm happy with the latter approach.
jfoster 7y ago
As you noted, smartphones are already capable of this. Smart speakers are relatively moot from a privacy perspective, unless you keep your phone in a soundproof case.
me_me_me 7y ago
> But people willingly bringing always on listening devices in to their homes Because flying cars. The home assistant is the glimpse of future people looked forward to since first Scifi movies. Its convenient and out of way. And people don't understand nor care about privacy. That said I am still ranting to my brother that he is using Alexa whenever I visit his home.

by saluki 7y ago

tantalor 7y ago

Do you own a cell phone?

dna_polymerase 7y ago
Having a cell phone does not invalidate their legitimate critique.
- davinic 7y ago
  Of course not, but phrasing it in this way (that phones are a separate exception) minimizes the legitimate critiques of always-listening cellphone privacy.
  - ntsplnkv2 7y ago
    Phones solve many more problems though. I'm willing to make some sacrifice so that I can get GPS/maps anywhere I go, ability to make emergency phone calls, etc. Smart speakers really don't have the same value add.
- okmokmz 7y ago
  Apparently on this site it does. I had a conversation where I made a joke about Alexa glasses spying on us all in public instead of just in the privacy of people's homes now and got downvoted to oblivion because apparently you aren't allowed to care about privacy if you own a phone. The amount of whataboutisms on this site where people try to invalidate others opinions or critiques is incredible and makes it very difficult to have any kind of genuine discussion. I imagine it's partially because there are plenty of Google/Facebook/Amazon employees on this site so it's in their best interest to shut down any pro-privacy discussion
- authoritarian 7y ago
  Apparently on this site it does. I had a conversation where I made a joke about Alexa glasses spying on us all in public instead of just in the privacy of people's homes now and got downvoted to oblivion because apparently you aren't allowed to care about privacy if you own a phone. The amount of whataboutisms on this site where people try to invalidate others opinions or critiques is incredible and makes it very difficult to have any kind of genuine discussion. I imagine it's partially because there are plenty of Google/Facebook/Amazon employees on this site so it's in their best interest to shut down any pro-privacy discussion
melling 7y ago
He mentions that he does. The thing is everyone has a cellphone, even many kids. Invite half a dozen people over and you’ll get half a dozen cellphones. I have a couple of Amazon Echos, plus iOS devices that occasionally activate Siri for no reason. I love them. My feeling is that I’m willing to live with it for now. Hopefully, a decade from now, voice technology is perfected and more is done on device.
- throwaway2048 7y ago
  There is never going to come a day when any of these companies give you more control over your devices. Why would they? Thats their entire competitive advantage.
  - melling 7y ago
    The Pixel 4 does speech to text on device. They do it because it's faster. Once it becomes a solved problem, there will be better open source devices and more competition. On device will be a checkbox feature. Not every company makes you the product.
    - serf 7y ago
      >Not every company makes you the product. yeah, but since that has been a workable angle we'd had an explosion of companies that do make you the product. I wouldn't assume the inverse over time related to a reduction in effort from better devices and competition; i'd assume further growth.
saluki 7y ago
of course I do, it's alluded to in my comment: "(beyond what smartphones are already capable of)" I agree, smart phones provide the same surveillance capabilities of 'smart' speakers and more. But supposedly phones aren't always on and listening to all your audio like the 'smart' speakers. This might just be a divide in society, some people accept surveillance as not an issue and are fine with it. Would you place a similar 'smart' speaker device in your home if the government suddenly required it? I just feel a surveillance state is detrimental to freedom and democracy, the freedom we have in the states is not common. If you look back in history and even around the world today it's pretty rare. I just want to make sure we aren't setting ourselves up to weaken it or even lose it.
- streb-lo 7y ago
  > But supposedly phones aren't always on and listening to all your audio like the 'smart' speakers. New phones are. Also, AFAIK, Alexa et al. are only sending traffic home after the wake word is heard. I believe this has been confirmed via wireshark.
  - saluki 7y ago
    That's true a phone has 'smart' speaker features. It seems 'smart' speakers wake more easily than Siri. We hadn't been hearing news stories about FANG employees listening to/reviewing conversations intimate moments until the 'smart' speakers were deployed. I expect this could have been going on with Siri as well though. I'm open to using a 'smart' speaker in the future, there might not be any reason for concern. Currently it just seems like a bad idea to add recording devices you don't control around your home.
    - scatters 7y ago
      > We hadn't been hearing news stories about FANG employees listening to/reviewing conversations intimate moments until the 'smart' speakers were deployed. That just shows that the media didn't think those stories would sell.
  - skrause 7y ago

Santosh83 7y ago

The problem is the illusion that these devices present of being just another utility like a toaster or a TV or even a smartphone. The always on link between these listening devices and their command and control is not evident. It gives the illusion of operating locally.

greggman2 7y ago

I hate not having privacy but I don't understand singling Google out here. Siri is listening (both on phones and on Apple' homepod), Alexa is listening, Cortana is listening, ... I actually am less worried about those (since I turn them off) than I do about Netflix/Amazon knowing every movie I watch. Amazon knowing every product I order. My Credit Card and Bank company knowing every business I transact with. My Mac and PC spying on what I do with them (i think that's more Windows than Mac). My PC/iPhone/Android/Rift knowing every app I run. My ISP knowing all the websites I visit or DNS lookups I make etc... I could go on and on but I don't see how Google sticks out here. It's a much bigger problem.

SamBam 7y ago
I don't see anything in the parent comment that says this is a Google-only issue. Also, the Netflix and Amazon examples don't seem to be in the same category, to me. Every time you interact with Netflix and Amazon, you are doing so deliberately. You are choosing exactly what to give them. You can easily pick another service. Always-on listening devices, on the other hand, are taking data that you did not choose to give them, and other people's data as well. That's the point in the headline of this article. I would never need to tell guests "If you order something from Amazon, they'll know you ordered it," but apparently I might need to tell them to watch their mouths in my house. There's a big difference.
- jachee 7y ago
  > Every time you interact with ... Amazon, you are doing so deliberately. Don't forget that Echo devices are Amazon's always-on listening devices.
  - SamBam 7y ago
    Yes, sure, but that wasn't what the comment I was replying to was talking about... This is about the difference between always-on listeners, including Echo, and stores where you buy things.
  - urda 7y ago

cmsonger 7y ago

My personal view is that the biggest issue here is the lack of user protection. I'd be a LOT less concerned about this if the appropriate legal framework protected me. The Star Trek vision of voice as an interface is a good vision. The question is how the regulatory framework protects users in this world and keeps it from being the dystopian nightmare that our "for profit corporations get to do whatever they like as long as you agreed in an 'all or nothing' click through" seem to be headed for.

jachee 7y ago
The in-universe answer from Star Trek is that there's no more capitalism in their post-scarcity society.
- Santosh83 7y ago
  While the tech seems to be catching up in certain areas (if not the FTL drive), socially we're nowhere near what was depicted in Star Trek. It wasn't just post-capitalism but post-money. People no longer had to work for basic necessities. That is almost an unimaginably different setup to what humanity has always been used to. There's also a noticeable lack of crime and corruption, again something humans will have to extensively transform themselves in order to reach the goal...
  - mrexroad 7y ago
    Don’t forget, that in Star Trek, there’s a post-apocalyptic period waiting for us before the post-capitalism times...
DennisP 7y ago
If the voice interface is implemented locally then it's not a problem. Google already has it working on the Pixel. It has some limitations but it responds faster and works offline. https://techcrunch.com/2019/03/12/googles-new-voice-recognition-system-works-instantly-and-offline-if-you-have-a-pixel/ https://techcrunch.com/2019/03/12/googles-new-voice-recognit...

52-6F-62 7y ago

The new version of Fahrenheit 451 (film w/ Michael Jordan) does a fantastic take of this. I highly recommend it unless anyone is a Fahrenheit 451 originalist.

Taylor_OD 7y ago

A lot of people just don't care.

robomartin 7y ago

> people willingly bringing always on listening devices in to their homes <...> I just can't comprehend it. The reason is "people" lack education in technology. They can barely use a computer these days, with "using a computer" generally means being on Facebook with a browser. There's a very significant divide in this regard that has been growing for decades. And it isn't getting any better. This is why it is nearly impossible to convince people you know to use better passwords and adopt security and privacy-conscious behaviors. I don't know if you (plural) have experienced this, I know a few people for whom sending a link via email is a challenge. They think they sent you a link and what you get is unusable. No, it isn't about age at all. Smart phones and tablets have changed the relationship people have with computers. They make things very easy to use and require almost no technological knowledge to operate. In computers, the browser or Chromebooks do the same. Add it all up and the idea that someone does not even remotely think that a thermostat could be recording every word being said in home doesn't even cross their minds. Going beyond that, thinking about how and where that data is stored and how it could be used it yet another level. All this says it is the responsibility of the tech community to make sure customers understand the important aspects of the technology we provide.

pintxo 7y ago
> All this says it is the responsibility of the tech community to make sure customers understand the important aspects of the technology we provide. Which is difficult as long as some peoples income depends on not making sure that customers understand. As much as I'd like to pretend we are all morally and ethically acting grown ups, reality tells us we are not. Ultimately this needs to be regulated by law and continually enforced. It seems like regulation is slowly rolling in, but enforcement seems to still be far out.
qroshan 7y ago
"The reason is "people" lack education in technology" This is a dumb statement. Lots of tech people use all of these devices. In fact smart tech people differentiate between machine listening and humans listening. A Math, Tech person know that the probability of a human listening to my recording is close 0.000001%. Humans, including yourself, make far worse decisions every day in your life that have much higher detrimental effect to your overall quality of life than worrying about stupid things

raxxorrax 7y ago

People just don't know how valuable this data actually is. Sure it only gets value if a critical quantity is reached. There is just a disconnect in understanding. With huge efforts they will create archives of 5% special price coupons, but how tech companies extract free money from them is beyond their comprehension. The implications of having every deed and word quantified is perhaps too abstract a danger to understand.

lukifer 7y ago
> People just don't know how valuable this data actually is. Jaron Lanier has an interesting plan for renegotiating the "paying for services with data" relationship we now have with tech companies: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/09/23/opinion/data-privacy-jaron-lanier.html https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/09/23/opinion/data-...
teslafanboi 7y ago
no, you just over estimate how valuable this data is because you desperately want to feel important. guess what, you saying "ok google turn on my lights" 1000x times is completely worthless to anyone. you're not important and your data means nothing to anyone. grow up
teslafanboi22 7y ago
no, you just over estimate how valuable this data is because you desperately want to feel important. guess what, you saying "ok google turn on my lights" 1000x times is completely worthless to anyone. you're not important and your data means nothing to anyone. grow up

chenning 7y ago

I don't think this is just a Google issue. Osterloh just happened to be the first one to come right out and say, yeah, maybe you should tell your guests. Personally, I thought the bigger news (insult) was when he said, "Gosh, I haven't thought about this before in quite this way." Give me a break. You knew it. I knew it. We all knew it. Maybe the right thing to do is have the device recognize there's an unknown voice in the room and announce that it's listening. That hasn't happened for some reason, but I highly doubt the reason is that no one ever thought of it.

braythwayt 7y ago
> Gosh, I haven't thought about this before in quite this way Imagine if I made a self-driving car. Imagine if, in the rain, it simply slowed down and stopped right where it was, even in the middle of the freeway. Now imagine that when asked about whether this was dangerous and ought to be disclosed to customers, the VP of Engineering said, "Gosh, I haven't thought about this before in quite this way." We'd all say the VP was either lying, or was dangerously incompetent and was running a dysfunctional engineering group. I don't need to get into a long conversation about whether this is malice or incompetence: It's unacceptable either way with self-driving cars to claim to have not thought about safety, and in the case of privacy and disclosure of recordings in my home, it's unacceptable either way to claim to have not thought about it. This company is rotten from head to toe, and so is the system of incentives that lead companies like Google and Facebook to flout all standards of responsibility. How can someone say something like this and still have their job at 5pm PST? How can Zuck say time and time again, "Sorry, we'll do better next time, by the way, political ads can lie," and there are no serious consequences?
205guy 7y ago
Exactly! He knew it, the whole company knew it and took advantage of it, and didn't disclose it publicly until questioned by a reporter. I see parallels to the genetic testing kits: it's all fun and games until police use it to find people who committed crimes. Just wait until investigative units realize FAANGs have recordings from inside houses that they can supeona.

naasking 7y ago

> But people willingly bringing always on listening devices in to their homes (beyond what smartphones are already capable of) I just can't comprehend it. Always-on listening doesn't seem like a huge deal. What matters is the policy of allowing Google people to listen to captured audio, even if it's for training purposes. This is skirting uncomfortably close to a dystopian surveillance society. If you want to gather data from people, provide an incentive to voluntarily participate. For instance, on Google maps you can become a contributor and there are benefits and bonuses if you contribute enough. Yes, this group is self-selected so it's not as good as a random sample, but it's better than the dystopian alternative.

mindcrime 7y ago
Always-on audio capture is a HORRIBLE idea in general. First, if it's stored - at all - then you have to ask "who else could get access to the recording besides (Google|Apple|whoever)?" Whether it's a nation-state via a search warrant, or some random script kiddie who hax0red the storage mechanism, once it's recorded you don't know WHO is going to get access, or what their intentions will be. Secondly, even if it's not normally recorded, so long as the capability is there, you've basically bugged yourself. Now if you become a target for surveillance, all the other party has to do is arrange for (Google|Apple|whoever) to give them a real-time feed from your device and now all of your conversations are fair game. Smart phones are bad enough, but why put more devices in your home (car, office, etc.) that make it trivial for others to monitor you?
- machello13 7y ago
  Isn't this true with any device that has an embedded microphone? Laptops and pre-smart cell phones have had the same vulnerabilities for a very long time, no?
  - mindcrime 7y ago
    It's a fair point... unless a device has a hardware mute switch, it's hard to know for sure if somebody can activate it remotely for listening. But why add more attack vectors unnecessarily?

fluffything 7y ago

> Why would people voluntarily do this in exchange for being able to ask for weather, play a playlist, add a todo and a few other parlor tricks. I don't really understand why the device needs to store my recording and send it over the internet. I would be willing to pay more for a device that guarantees that my recordings are deleted immediately.

jeremyjh 7y ago
Echo does this - only wake word phrases are sent to the internet - but it is not guaranteed by the hardware. Also your failed requests - where it recognized the wake word but not the request - are listened to by QA people. Those could easily be private conversations with an accidental wake word.
- machello13 7y ago
  I'm pretty sure this is how all smart speakers work.
- tjansen 7y ago
  A simple work-around on Echos is to enable the wake word notification pling. Then you immediately notice that the Echo is listening.

snarf21 7y ago

You are right but as you say all those things apply to your smartphone and the smartphone of every person you are in range of. Also, smartphones have cameras front and back. An Alexa in my bathroom only has a mic and speakers. The future will also be powered by cameras and microphones in public and you will be tracked. Amazon is actively selling software and hardware to enable dystopia today. I imagine that if governments start to use Alexa, et. al. to crack down on dissenters, those whole business lines disappear as people dump them all in the trash. I think we have to depend on capitalism and whistleblowers to shout if things change. If someone wants to listen in on the sounds of my bathroom, help yourself. I personally draw the line at cameras. No camera, no Ring doorbell and my phone is usually in my pocket or in a shelf with no visual access. The other thing that I'd point out is that a lot of people publicly shout their political and other positions voluntarily. This is great for free speech but is an even easier and richer target for government crackdowns.

glitcher 7y ago

I blame Star Trek. Simply speaking out loud to ask the computer anytime something was needed, it seemed like magical tech. We just didn't anticipate the companies and extra consequences that would come along with it. I would love to see a parody of Star Trek where all the tech is run by an advertising company exploiting all the crew members individually by capturing all their private data around the clock.

api 7y ago
No relationship. Why does the device have to record and send everything to the cloud to provide this experience? I suspect the answer is a mix of "we want to invade privacy" and "it makes the devices cheaper to build since you can put really wimpy chips in them."
- shadowgovt 7y ago
  In the short run, it gives the company three direct benefits for making the technology work (besides the "They can advertise at you better" one that people like to drumbeat on). 1) Context is nearly invisible, and is constructed from dozens to hundreds of data points. Holding state on the user (not just from direct interaction with the agent, but from other services the agent can be aware of) makes a lot more context possible. My assistant knows about my calendar, where I've been recently, and my recent emails; it can make much better educated guesses about what I mean if I say "What's travel time to Oakland?" 2) Getting the voice recognition tech itself from 90% accurate to 99.9% accurate requires awareness of the tens of thousands of real-world complicators that never show up in laboratory testing. As Google showed off by bootstrapping their voice recognition tech via Goog-411, they know how to take megabytes / gigabytes of "dirty signal" and use it to refine their algorithms against unforeseen corner cases. 3) Releasing new assistant features can be done atop existing collected data, without requiring months of lag for enough state to build up for the feature to be useful.
  - api 7y ago
    All of these are addressable engineering challenges if privacy were a priority. It's just that privacy is not a priority. (1) is not that hard, just subscribe to feeds or query cloud services from the device. (2) is harder but could be done by treating the devices as a cluster or sending data up only when it can't be easily recognized and storing it only long enough to be useful in training (and storing it anonymously), and as for (3) the device could store data encrypted in the cloud and that would be fine. A new or updated device just downloads and decrypts the index to its data. There are other workable approaches. I think the best way to change that is legislation. We need HIPAA-type liability laws applying to all privacy-sensitive data: recorded audio, recorded video, location, etc. Leak someone's location or a recording of audio from their house? That'll be $10,000 per person per incident. That would instantly transform privacy invasion from an asset to a liability and incentivize companies to minimize data collected and when it must be collected to provide the service minimize the length of the time it is stored. As it stands literally all economic incentives jump up and down and scream "invade the user's privacy s much as possible!" These are: (1) Data is valuable and advertisers will pay for it or pay for data-driven ad services. (2) Engineering privacy-invasive systems is easier than engineering privacy-respecting systems. This is a subset of "engineering insecure systems is easier than engineering secure systems" as privacy is a dimension of security. (3) Privacy sensitive approaches usually require more compute and storage at the edge, increasing device build cost.

mr_overalls 7y ago

I couldn't agree more. Are there any good open-source projects for AI assistants? There certainly seems to be a need.

_salmon 7y ago
Yep, Home Assistant - https://www.home-assistant.io/ https://www.home-assistant.io/
- timc3 7y ago
  That is not an AI assistant.
derimagia 7y ago
Mycroft is the biggest that I know of: https://mycroft.ai/ https://mycroft.ai/

wnevets 7y ago

I've gotten Alexa and Google's Home for free but I refuse to set them up. Even if you believe these companies aren't going to "spy" on you, the security of these things has been proven dubious at best.

RandallBrown 7y ago
What is the worst thing you think could happen if you did set either of them up? I'm personally not a very private person and I'm not worried about giving up some privacy for convenience. There are a few bad things I could think of like the government using out of context recordings to frame you or something like that, but the odds of that happening seem so vanishingly small, I can't worry about it.

shadowgovt 7y ago

> Why would people voluntarily do this in exchange for being able to ask for weather, play a playlist, add a todo and a few other parlor tricks Because it's a lot of fun and the personal risk is basically nonexistant. It's the oldest story in the book: different personal evaluations of risk of activity.

bashallah 7y ago

Can’t you just removed the hardware from the device? It’s not like microphones are magical.

oppositelock 7y ago

What does having a Nest thermostat get you? I'm a tech dude, I build modern software, but I live in a dumb, old fashioned house. My programmable Honeywell thermostat, which has no internet connection, does a perfectly fine job of keeping my home the right temperature. My door locks use a key, and keys have great battery life, and my smoke detectors beep instead of speaking to me. What am I missing by not having internet connected stuff?

seanmcdirmid 7y ago
Mainly a Nest thermostat looks cool.
outside1234 7y ago
you can turn it on remotely, like when you are on the way home from work, and have a warm house when you get there. to me, that is the killer reason to have it online.
- seandougall 7y ago
  If you have a predictable schedule, there are plenty of offline thermostats that let you set target temperatures for different times of day. If you don't, I can see how being able to control it remotely would be nice. (But an embedded microphone is still creepy and unnecessary.)
  - rtkwe 7y ago
    Then you're in luck because the Google Nest thermostats don't actually have microphones in them at all! https://support.google.com/googlenest/answer/9330256?hl=en https://support.google.com/googlenest/answer/9330256?hl=en
beznet 7y ago
Im in the same boat, I find the concepts very fascinating but almost all of it is trying to solve problems that don't even exist for me. The only thing my friends with IoT devices do are party tricks on voice command with their smart lights. Other than that, I find the so called 'problems' these devices solving are extraordinarily trivial.

sgustard 7y ago

Are we acknowledging a difference between the Nest device he warns about (which is sold as a surveillance device) and, say, an Amazon Echo? (Which the headline mentions as equally problematic, but the body of the article doesn't mention at all.) My understanding of the Echo is that it only records after hearing a trigger word.

Ajedi32 7y ago

> beyond what smartphones are already capable of What do you mean by this? What exactly is it that you believe smart speakers capable of that smartphones are not? (Modern smartphones are just as capable of listening for and responding to hotwords as smart speakers are, fyi.)

postalrat 7y ago
People are afraid of dying in a terrorist attack but aren't afraid of driving their car around town. Even though the odds of them dying in a car accident are much greater than dying in a terrorist attack. I think the same thinking allows people to overlook their phones while focusing on their smart speakers.

pjmlp 7y ago

Skynet apparently is somewhere under Google's cellar.

anigbrowl 7y ago

'Don't be evil' as a company motto really seemed to make Google different in the early days - not just in terms of being hip and cool in contrast to their contemporary competitors, but in terms of recognizing that technology has a moral dimension and that the firm's long-term wellbeing lay not just in maximizing its technological power but distributing the benefits thereof as widely as possible, rather than conserving it for private advantage. I find their news product a useful barometer of the extent to which they've abandoned that. Last Monday I sat down at my workstation and the top item - amid war, political instability, and everything else going on in the world - were articles about the Google Pixel 4. I know this wasn't a reflection of my browsing habits - I'm just not interested in phone technology at the product level, and and any online shopping/product research that I do these days happens on a separate account on a separate device, because I don't want to mix up my consumer preferences with my intellectual interests. You would think that with all Google's brainpower the presentation and distribution of news would by now have seen massive advances, but instead it has simply magnified the worst aspect of print and Tv news. I'm beset with sports, entertainment, 'health' (mostly quackery), and 'technology (mostly consumer products) news every day, even though I used to be able to opt out of those things. If I make the mistake of looking at a sports article on my workstation or phone, I am swamped with sports articles for the next day or two, presumably because the sports market is so lucrative and Google's algorithms get tremendously excited at the possibility that I am adopting the consumer the consumer profile of a sports fan. Likewise I am constantly being advanced second- and third-hand sources of news based on SEO and existing reach; every other story I read is a half-assed rewrite of original research done by a news outlet with a smaller brand footprint. If I'm lucky I can see that in the first paragraph or two and can click through to the original, if not it's because a big news outlet is just stealing or redoing stories without credit or attribution and I may find out about it later when I read Twitter. I could rant on and on and on about Google's news product and about their other products and practices, but all my critiques of the firm boil down to this: google has become a company that takes bids (including from itself) on the order in which it provides leaves to consumers, while denying them sight of the trees they are plucked from.

kcdev 7y ago

You said it yourself: smartphones are already capable of it. So what difference does it make if you add an Alexa or Google Home? At least those aren't going everywhere with you. This is the defeatist attitude, but this tech is probably here to stay. We just need to do our best to make sure companies do the right thing.

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

ianmcgowan 7y ago

I have a few echos and a google home, and I love the feeling of living in the future by controlling things with my voice. It may be naive, but I think the device vendors have way more to lose if it turns out they are actually recording all the time, not just listening for the wake word. It will be the wrong road if we end up at 1984, but I’m hoping for the Culture, or at least the Jetsons...

_davebennett 7y ago

I know I'm gonna be in the minority with this, but what if you really just don't care despite knowing the danger? I have a Google Home in my bedroom, and it's extremely convenient for controlling my lights. I'm aware of the privacy concerns with such a device, but out of all the things in the world that worries me it's just not far up my list to disregard the convenience. I imagine a lot of consumers might feel this way. Now this would be a different story if something was forced upon me (like the government mandated some device, and I don't have an active choice in having it) but I'm making an active choice to buy this device and use it knowing that it could very well be recording the conversations, sex, whatever else goes on in my bedroom.

madrox 7y ago
I feel like this is the only sane response. To say there is no danger is naive. To say this is existential danger is...well...have you read the news lately? Every day we are making choices about what risks we're willing to accept. In the scheme of things, this is novel but minor.

notus 7y ago

It's no different than an iPhone

at-fates-hands 7y ago

> It just sounds like we are heading down the wrong road. Humans are a lazy bunch and this feeds into these genetically coded tendencies in the worst way. I feel like there is a growing backlash against these technologies that are getting way too invasive. Myself and a few of my friends have gone back to being as "analog" as possible. Dumb thermostats, dumb tv's, regular old key locks (you can still get some pretty secure, non-electronic locks), dumb fridges, etc, etc. The point is to disconnect as much as possible from the internet, Google, FB and Amazon. Three of my best friends now just carry Windows phones. Internet connected, very few apps, and phone service. We are of course, a very small minority whose seen the dark side of these technologies. I don't think enough people know or understand the consequences of having these devices in their homes.

azarizotza 7y ago

This might be because I’m running on a half hour of sleep but I legit thought you said you were a Google Fan as if Google makes smart ceiling fans and you were somehow talking to me.

godelski 7y ago

> I guess I value my privacy more than others and don't like the idea of entities compiling a record of my data that they can sell and market. I think a lot of people don't understand how much their data is worth. It is something I frequently hear, that "my data is useless, so why hide it?" or "what are they going to do, see that I like cat photos? HA!". I think these kinds of comments are slowly diminishing as the average person is seeing 1) these tech companies are worth $1+ trillion 2) people get scared and think Facebook is always listening because they every so often hit the mark too well. But I don't think most even know the extend of the data that these companies have (e.g. they think that Google only has their email data and knows nothing about financial), let alone how that data can be used.

kelnos 7y ago

> But people willingly bringing always on listening devices in to their homes (beyond what smartphones are already capable of) I just can't comprehend it. I don't get this position: my (Android) phone can already record my voice, so how does having a Google Home materially increase the privacy risk? The GH does have access to mains power and a wifi connection, so that makes it easier to record all the time and upload a lot of data vs. a phone, but it seems like a bit of a stretch to me to think that Google would be doing something nefarious with GH and then absolutely nothing on Android. I've also noticed that when I call out to my GH, my phone will usually respond too, so it's not like my phone can't understand me, even when it's in my pocket, so the capability is definitely there. So if you do trust Google enough to have an Android phone, then you should probably trust them just as much to have a GH. Beyond that, then it just comes down to bugs: what if GH is too sensitive and thinks you've uttered the wake word often when you haven't? Ok, then some conversations may get recorded that you didn't intend. That's certainly a concern, but "I just can't comprehend it" would seem a bit hyperbolic in that case. > ... includes transcripts or even audio of all your household conversations/activities over the past three years This seems to indicate to me that you believe that GH etc. are always recording and uploading every sound it hears, all day long, without regard for the wake word. If you believe this, I guess that is your prerogative, but I guess we're probably not going to have a productive discussion here.

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mrb 7y ago
«I don't get this position: my (Android) phone can already record my voice, so how does having a Google Home materially increase the privacy risk?» Indeed. Maybe people don't realize that a smartphone is a much bigger privacy risk. A phone can literally record audio and video, track your position, monitor all your online activity, and upload all that without you even noticing it, even when the screen is off and locked. (This can happen when the phone is hacked or if the OS or device vendors are evil.) I think people perceive devices like the Echo Dot or Nest Mini as more dangerouse simply because they aren't used to them. But smartphones have existed for more than a decade, so people have long accepted these.

urda 7y ago

If you've carried an Android at all, you've already had a listening device in your home for years. This device also has a ton more sensors and data it collects off you than a smart speaker could.

president 7y ago

The thing is, the majority viewpoint always wins, whether they are right or wrong. If we had a well-educated and well-informed populace, people might make better decisions. Unfortunately, this is not the case and the situation is worsened with marketing and advertising from companies choosing revenue over morals.

kevindong 7y ago

> I guess I value my privacy more than others and don't like the idea of entities compiling a record of my data that they can sell and market. Because big tech/advertising companies don't sell your individual data. They sell to other entities the ability to show people like you specific content. I wouldn't use products monetized in the first way, but I'm happy with the latter approach.

jfoster 7y ago

As you noted, smartphones are already capable of this. Smart speakers are relatively moot from a privacy perspective, unless you keep your phone in a soundproof case.

me_me_me 7y ago

> But people willingly bringing always on listening devices in to their homes Because flying cars. The home assistant is the glimpse of future people looked forward to since first Scifi movies. Its convenient and out of way. And people don't understand nor care about privacy. That said I am still ranting to my brother that he is using Alexa whenever I visit his home.