20 ms·

Google speakers are listening to more than just voice commands

321 points by kiyanwang 6y ago

sys_64738 6y ago
This abuse was always likely to happen. We’ve yet to discover what secret subpoenas that get filed to eavesdrop on possible felons or other persons of interest. A wireless mic to the cops is not what you want in the house.
- swebs 6y ago
  >A wireless mic to the cops is not what you want in the house. Yeah, that belongs in your pocket.
ilamont 6y ago
Original: https://www.protocol.com/google-smart-speaker-alarm-adt https://www.protocol.com/google-smart-speaker-alarm-adt
polote 6y ago
How could people on HN be surprised about that kind of thing ?
- dsr_ 6y ago
  We would all be surprised if it turns out that a giant corporation who sells you always-on networked microphones wasn't abusing it in any way, shape or form. Here's a slippery slope for you: 1. "OK Google, order pizza from Sal's." 2. "Broken glass detected in living room. Should I call police?" 3. "The baby has been crying for more than 60 minutes. Do you want assistance?" 4. "Shots fired. Calling 911 now." 2016-2020 has taught me that slippery slope arguments are not fallacious in and of themselves; they just aren't convincing by themselves. The sound of a Siamese cat in heat is extremely similar to a crying baby. Watching an unusually well-Foleyed action movie on a good sound system can probably fool any recognition system Google can jam into next year's $150 smart speaker. And that's how Google could swat you with the best of intentions.
  - guerrilla 6y ago
    > Logic and critical thinking textbooks typically discuss slippery slope arguments as a form of fallacy but usually acknowledge that "slippery slope arguments can be good ones if the slope is real—that is, if there is good evidence that the consequences of the initial action are highly likely to occur. The strength of the argument depends on two factors. The first is the strength of each link in the causal chain; the argument cannot be stronger than its weakest link. The second is the number of links; the more links there are, the more likely it is that other factors could alter the consequences." Indeed, many people don't realize that accusations of committing the (or any) fallacy need to come with justifications of their own. [1]. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slippery_slope#Non-fallacious_usage https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slippery_slope#Non-fallacious_...
  - michaelcampbell 6y ago
    > Watching an unusually well-Foleyed action movie on a good sound system can probably fool any recognition system Google can jam into next year's $150 smart speaker. Sure, but pair that with "Shazam!" style song recognition and now it knows you're watching a movie, and what movie it is, and can more easily filter for false positives there, no?
    - sukilot 6y ago
      Do you want to bet your life on whether someone found that feature idea exciting enough for a promotion project at work? Even if the feature works perfectly, were still talking about (hypothetically, as this isn't a real feature yet) automatically summoning a platoon of people with the de facto legal right to kill you if they send danger which is exactly the reason they were called just because a potentially dangerous noise was heard
      - Swizec 6y ago
        > the de facto legal right to kill you This seems like the bigger problem. Calling the cops shouldn’t be dangerous. It seems to me that if cops were better behaved a feature that automatically calls them when you might need help would be fantastic. Imagine if Google could detect that you’re alone and choking or having a medical emergency. Woule be cool if it could get you help.
- numpad0 6y ago
  The notion that many HN readers would know doesn’t devalue the news even a bit.
- sp332 6y ago
  A Google spokesperson told Protocol that the feature was accidentally enabled for some users through a recent software update and has since been rolled back. "Surprise" is not relevant. This is holding Google accountable for shady shit, which is something we should never stop doing.
  - 0134340 6y ago
    Ah, google and their hapless hardware updates accidentally spying on users, killing my friend's and others Nexus phones as well as my own Nexus Player (oops!). No more Google hardware for me.
nerdbaggy 6y ago
Wyze cameras do this too. I never throughly about it put apparently the noise a fire alarm or co alarm makes is standard https://support.wyzecam.com/hc/en-us/articles/360031134712-How-does-the-Smoke-Alarm-and-CO-alarm-work- https://support.wyzecam.com/hc/en-us/articles/360031134712-H...
- eli 6y ago
  Amazon Echo as well but I think you have to opt in
rahulchowdhury 6y ago
I unplugged my Google Home Mini long back because of this unethical spying.
- mark_l_watson 6y ago
  I am with you on this. Google sent me a free Google Home Mini a few months ago and I have an Amazon echo device. I sometimes like to experiment with both devices. I plug them in, use them, then unplug them. Interesting technology, but I would rather have everything on hardware and software that I control.
- botto 6y ago
  I've unplugged mine too but saying it's spying is mincing words a bit. I highly doubt they care what individuals say in their home but probably care a lot more about what your demographic talks about, watches on TV, listens to on the radio and any other data they can glean from sound. Think about it, distinct actions make certain sounds, (i.e. from washing dishes to sleeping) They probably have a lot more of a complete picture of your home than you realise.
- michaelcampbell 6y ago
  I have a big cognitive dissonance here of what led you to buy it in the first place? The gulf of knowledge or personal risk tolerance between those 2 stances is so vast that I can scarcely comprehend them being in 1 person. But, clearly they are so I'm obviously wrong.
  - fibers 6y ago
    because sometimes you might literally get the product for free when you buy a tv, same with amazon echos
popeathlete 6y ago
One company controlling all these electronics in my house. How do people not find that disturbing?
- JoBrad 6y ago
  I find a security system that only lets me know when it’s been triggered useless. My wife set off our alarm the other day. I used an external webcam to verify that it was my wife, and disabled the alarm before she could put her things down and disable it herself. You can’t do that with a system that isn’t connected externally.
  - est31 6y ago
    External connection != external control. Although with home security services, it's one of the areas where I think external control is advantageous because the best cameras don't help you when the thieves take the device that keeps the recordings with them.
    - acidburnNSA 6y ago
      > External connection != external control. Exactly this. Even in security contexts, my Home Assistant-based security system is running fully-local object detection and runs automations when "Person" shows up in an unexpected place at an unexpected time. It emails me the offending image (thereby offloading from the camera) and records video locally. If it happens at night while I'm asleep it runs a sequence of turning lights on to scare them off and then wakes me up if it didn't work. This is kind of a combo of local-only with a few pings to the outer world.
      - oauea 6y ago
        What software are you using for object detection? I'd like to extend my Home Assistant setup.
        acidburnNSA 6y ago
mttjj 6y ago
Sounds like a similar feature (“Sound Recognition”) that is coming in iOS 14. https://www.apple.com/ios/ios-14-preview/features/ https://www.apple.com/ios/ios-14-preview/features/ It’s not clear from the article but I assume the Google implementation was pushed out to users and turned on by default (likely without a notification that the device would now start doing this). Since the iOS feature is listed under “Accessibility” I would assume that it’s opt-in.
- mark_l_watson 6y ago
  I am running iOS 14 beta right now - certainly a good update. In my perfect world, there would be excellent open source software and hardware designs for home monitoring, etc., where we would have 100% control of our own data. We don't have a perfect world, and right now, Apple seems like the best bet (for me at least) for a company to trust (with healthy skepticism).
rvz 6y ago
These findings of Google spyware is getting pretty boring. I feel sorry for whoever is Google's Chief Privacy Officer to defend all these privacy violations in their own products. They must be facing daily privacy investigations at this point. Another day another Google listening device article. Get ready to comment on the next one.
- dannyw 6y ago
  Google, without notice, intentionally started listening to something that wasn't a wake word (glass breaking). How is this 'pretty boring'?
  - sukilot 6y ago
    It's an obvious enhancement to a home monitoring product users paid money for, specifically for this purpose. https://www.blog.google/products/google-nest/5-things-know-about-new-nest-aware/ https://www.blog.google/products/google-nest/5-things-know-a... Google added smoke alarm sound detection to a product that users bought specifically for "smart" smoke alarms and "smart" audiovideo recording of their home
    - itsoktocry 6y ago
      >It's an obvious enhancement to a home monitoring product users paid money for, specifically for this purpose. And yet it was turned on for people who did not pay for the service, or give permission to Google to do so. Which means they can listen in whenever they feel like and chalk it up to "whoops, pushed the wrong code, sorry!" apparently.
      - jdashg 6y ago
        Consequences are in line with what happened, not the least charitable possibility of what that class of error can be. Google absolutely has the technical ability to auto-update my phone to send deepfaked porn of me to all my contacts, but it's pretty reasonable for me to expect them not to.
paul_f 6y ago
There is a big difference between smoke alarm detection built into the wake-up-word circuitry, versus every sound sent to Google's servers for analysis. I am not bothered by the former, but would be aghast at the latter. Does anyone know for sure?
- Waterluvian 6y ago
  What does it matter? The bottom line is that once there’s microphones in your home, Google just has to wait out the normalization of deviance until nobody’s surprised or upset that they transfer everything to their servers for analysis. If they don’t today, they will one day. They don’t have a choice on the matter because it’s a money maker.
  - marricks 6y ago
    Google did this with “we don’t scan your emails for ads”. Initially, 2009 ish, that was a big line a lot of people cared about but years later here we are, Google scanning emails for targeted ads and that fight is over. EDIT: Thanks for the reply exittheone, I see GMail actually stopped this ad scanning practice in 2017[1], likely with google sign in on chrome and so many places it’s very possibly they just don’t that extra info. They still can let third party extensions read your email so I wouldn’t say we’re exactly in a better world...[2] 1. https://variety.com/2017/digital/news/google-gmail-ads-emails-1202477321/ https://variety.com/2017/digital/news/google-gmail-ads-email... 2. https://mashable.com/article/google-reading-your-emails-response/ https://mashable.com/article/google-reading-your-emails-resp...
    - exitheone 6y ago
      https://support.google.com/mail/answer/6603?hl=en https://support.google.com/mail/answer/6603?hl=en This is most definitely false. Google still states that they do not scan your emails for as targeting.
      - nkozyra 6y ago
        And why would they? The data we provide to Google in myriad ways across numerous devices and services is far more fungible.
jto1218 6y ago
I, for one, am _shocked_ that an advertising company would do such a thing.
feralimal 6y ago
How surprised would you be if in 5 years there was a Snowden-type revelation, that yes, the speakers and Facebook/Insta apps, Amazon echo, etc, etc, were listening all the time? Sorry. And that there was a secret court ruling that meant all that data was live-streamed to NSA Utah. Not surprised at all, is the answer.
- jasonvorhe 6y ago
  I'd like to see the calculation of that bandwidth peak.
  - feralimal 6y ago
    It might not be as high as you think, if they are processing the data and sending a summary over, rather than the raw sound file.
    - weehoo 6y ago
      Dragon Naturally Speaking ran on clients without network access in the 90s. A given household might have 20,000 words spoken in a day. With speech to text, then compression, this would be a 20kb network request. If you only sent data once a month the data/day could likely be reduced even further. This could easily be Trojan-horsed alongside valid requests without anyone noticing.
      - SV_BubbleTime 6y ago
        As a CE I’m glad some people get this. I see all the posts here about “we could it’s not listening by looking at encrypted traffic amounts” or “it can’t do local speech recognition” or “they wouldn’t do that!” and want to bang my head against the wall. These devices can absolutely be abusing trust - it’s not even unlikely to some degree.
        TeMPOraL 6y ago
        > “it can’t do local speech recognition” Yeah, I'm surprised about it too. ~13 years ago, I've been running my own completely off-line speech recognition system on a cheap PC to control music in my room. With a microphone mounted on a wardrobe. With very little pre-training, it worked pretty much flawlessly, and it could recognize commands over very loud music. And I built it in few afternoons using MS Speech API, which was included with the OS. That's why I don't buy "you need the cloud for speech recognition" arguments in general. And in context of this discussion, it means you could absolutely snoop on people through local speech-to-text on low-powered devices - particularly if you limit yourself to a set of keywords (vs. free-form dictation). And for usual profiling&advertising, a set of keywords (that can be updated over time) is more than enough - you could learn from it e.g. whether people talk about product X or politician Y in the household.
Havoc 6y ago
Hence me toying with respeaker setups. I'd rather have no voice control than have big brother voice control. Google already knows more than enough about me (gmail primarily)
criley2 6y ago
I can't even get Google Assistant to reliably work for commands they claimed to have rolled out years and years ago https://i.imgur.com/ucmKl5l.png https://i.imgur.com/ucmKl5l.png. I would literally never trust Google Assistant with anything remotely near my safety or security. "Google, call the police!!!" Playing the Police on Living Room TV "Google, lock my doors" The Doors were a psychedelic rock band formed in 1965...
ape4 6y ago
Too lazy to look it up. Didn't somebody without a pet talk about pet food around some speakers then get ads about it.
tjpnz 6y ago
I'm surprised that people are outraged by this. It's a given that you're losing some privacy by putting one of these devices in your home. Any argument otherwise assumes that the companies manufacturing these devices are trustworthy. Thankfully the solution to this problem is simple.
- Espressosaurus 6y ago
  Most people don't look at it that way, or they don't see the harm in doing so because it's all theoretical.
unixhero 6y ago
Of course they are
harha 6y ago
I had one of these when I worked for Google, I didn’t quite trust it though, so I had it in the bathroom to limit what my employer could listen to. Imagine discussing a product idea at home with friends, then having that stolen by an engineer at one of these companies (who figured out how to find the interesting conversations) for a promotion or new position. On a larger scale these might get hooked up with some advertising algorithms that manipulate you further based on conversations you didn’t know were recorded. I hope for more pressure to move these systems and other devices, that don’t necessarily need to be in the cloud to function, to a local solution or one that is closed to outsiders. Technologically this should be possible in so many cases.
- croutonwagon 6y ago
  I just dont have them in the house. Every now and then i get called paranoid. And sure, my phone can function the same (though i specifically have siri disabled on our iphones) Its just a cost benefit. I can get off the couch and flip a switch or use a remote to turn on a song. I really dont need speach recognition for those functions.
  - ineedasername 6y ago
    Many of the same benefits can be had without always-listening devices. You can control things from your phone. Or in my case, I usually have a pair of bluetooth earphones around my neck, I push a button and say something and that's all it listens to. The always-listening "okay google" can be disabled.
  - harha 6y ago
    Absolutely agree that the convenience doesn’t make up for the downsides. I do think that some cases can be covered without putting data out in the wild with some third party. Siri and similar apps don’t do well with complex commands, but just fine with simple things (light switch, calendar entry, alarm) that an offline tool might also understand. Same goes for fitness trackers, note taking apps, etc. We as consumers should choose such alternatives. As developers and entrepreneurs we should try to enable these solutions, so we don’t have to rely on apps that might monetize differently than advertised or turn off when some company decides it’s not profitable enough. There’s also work being done on decentralizing analysis and monetizing your own data, but I’m not sure it’s ready yet.
moreorless 6y ago
I get gizmos like this as gifts every now and then. I never bothered opening any of them up. What are some fun things that we can do with these things besides their intended use?
- harha 6y ago
  Would be a fun open source project to find the cheapest board that can fit in the box, ideally take some components (speakers, WiFi) and have similar functionality like controlling music, home devices, setting timers. I’d try to contribute if anyone is working on topics like this.
  - AsyncAwait 6y ago
    There's https://mycroft.ai https://mycroft.ai, https://www.home-assistant.io https://www.home-assistant.io & probably others.
    - harha 6y ago
      Thanks for sharing, from a first glance I like how mycroft sells hardware to match the open source software, Will give it a try.
- quantummkv 6y ago
  Smash them up as a sort of therapy when you get really frustrated and upload the video to youtube. You'll get rid of them and make some money as well
  - moreorless 6y ago
    Not a huge fan of Google.
- MarioMan 6y ago
  They can work as decent networked audio playback devices even with mute switch physically disconnecting the microphone.
sschueller 6y ago
Google sent me two of these home speakers for free. Why? I never asked for it and I will never use it.
- crocodiletears 6y ago
  In the abstract, this reminds me of the selfish ledger concept video, where they discussed pushing specific products on relevant customers in order to fill gaps in data collection. https://youtu.be/QDVVo14A_fo https://youtu.be/QDVVo14A_fo
- IshKebab 6y ago
  Probably because you signed up for or bought something else and it was a deal. Either that or they made a mistake. Google aren't in the practice of just sending free hardware to people for no reason so I'm not sure what your point is?
  - variable11 6y ago
    Why so hostile? Can't stand even a tiny bit of criticism of Google?
- fuzxi 6y ago
  I recall they ran a promotion where they gave units away to Spotify subscribers.
choeger 6y ago
I might sound like a grumpy old granddad to some of you (and I am not even that old), but did you really think that a huge company would offer to put microphones into your living room for your advantage? They are going to benefit from this and you are going to pay for it. How? For instance with dynamic pricing. Your loved ones tell you how much they want that vacation on that Greek island? Good luck finding a cheap flight. You are sharing your Netflix subscription? Sorry, but not while that person is in the same room. You are applying to that exciting position? Nah, with that statement we heard on your dinner table, we think you are a cultural bad fit for our team.
- ineedasername 6y ago
  Yes, sure, it could be a slippery slope, but there's a reason that phrase denotes a logical fallacy. As with most technologies, we don't need to ban something desirable, but we do need to develop a set of social norms and corporate transparency around responsible usage. We're at the very beginning stages of that process, because all of this stuff, at this scale, is relatively new. The GDRP is far from perfect, but it sets the stage for this sort of effort.
- eloff 6y ago
  Any of those things would be such massive trust violations that the fallout would almost certainly sink the product and badly tarnish the company. That's not saying a company wouldn't be stupid enough to try it, but it's very clearly a bad business decision - so logically they wouldn't do it.
  - asddubs 6y ago
    sure, it's company policy not to. but if you do it anyway and don't get caught, your risk-taking will be rewarded, so it becomes a numbers game/informal policy.
    - ineedasername 6y ago
      That just means we need more than company policy. Regulations w/ teeth and verifiable audits, for example.
tehjoker 6y ago
Just remember that Google's business model is a private intelligence agency and everything will always make sense.
theshadowknows 6y ago
For the folks who think your devices aren’t listening try an experiment: start talking out loud about a product you’ve never, ever searched for. Something you’ve never, ever needed or wanted. See how long it takes for ads for that very thing to start showing up in Facebook and in your targeted ads. I’ve done it and Started getting ads in a matter of days.
- TeMPOraL 6y ago
  I've always dismissed this as coincidence. But over the past few months, my wife reported to me several incidents of a relevant Facebook ad showing up a day or two after a conversation she had with me or her friends, and that was not followed up by any on-line searches on the topic. At this point, I'm starting to consider something may be going on after all - it seems to happen too often to be easily explained away as happenstance.
  - sircastor 6y ago
    Usually when I see this sort of coincidence, I think that it is a matter of information relevance/leakage. You read an article about bug spray chemicals and don’t think about it, but start seeing exterminator ads online. If you read the article because you’re looking for pest control, the it feels suspicious. If you’re not, you ignore the ads and go on your way. I don’t want to discount your experience. I haven’t seen it myself, but maybe I’m not paying enough attention.
    - TeMPOraL 6y ago
      That's a great point! Thinking about it now, I can't be sure why we started to talk about particular products (and then saw ads about them day or two later). It could've been because one of us saw an article or an ad about it earlier. So perhaps this is neither by coincidence nor surveillance - perhaps there's an earlier link in causal chain that we've missed. I suppose the only way to be sure is to start doing proper experiments.
  - fuzxi 6y ago
    My theory is that those friends did search for those topics/products, and Facebook decided it would be wise to advertise them to your wife because of her proximity to the people searching for them. "Proximity" determined either literally with geotracking, or simply with something like chat records.
mrbombastic 6y ago
Does any company or person do privacy audits of these smart home devices? At the very least doesn't seem difficult to sniff packets sent out on the home network? Seems like it is generally accepted that these things are a privacy nightmare but haven't seen a lot of actual analysis.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
svnpenn 6y ago
What the hell is going on in the comments here? It's like half the comments are edgelords with some version of "i am shocked that an advertising company would do such a thing" Has HN just turned into Reddit? Do people really not care that people's privacy is being dumped down the toilet? Google is known for shit like this. They even scan your emails and alert you when bills are due. Shit like that is not ok. Don't fuck with my privacy unless I opt in.
- Ijumfs 6y ago
  Obviously Google runs extensive damage control on the Internet, and Dang is powerless to stop it.
- escanda 6y ago
  I would even go further and tell from the younger a change in trends between our generation and those after: we understand privacy is a right won over tears and blood, but younger generations don't seem interested so far on this fight. Sadly we will need to fight twice.
- annadane 6y ago
  Apologists. I don't get it either.
- quantummkv 6y ago
  Hide from it, run from it, Eternal September arrives all the same. It was bound to happen. Honestly, it's a miracle and really hard work from dang to delay it for this long
silasdavis 6y ago
How long until insurers start coercing customers into installing intrusive smart home devices in order to get reasonable premiums? It might not happen tomorrow but if enough people are willing to opt into alarm surveillance you can see how they could lower the liability for insurers.
suddenexample 6y ago
People here are just as bad as those on Reddit. The article title is clickbait and the actual content describes alerts that Nest speakers could send you when they detect beeping smoke detectors or breaking glass. The top comment in this thread right now talking about presence detection to disable Netflix account sharing is so frustratingly ignorant. You can have privacy concerns all you want, but the bottom line is that Google has seen that people care about privacy and any funny business would surely tank their reputation.
Animats 6y ago
Big Brother is always listening. Next, "detection of patterns of harmful behavior".
arminiusreturns 6y ago
So when does bugfinding make a comeback? Let's start taking back control and desoldering these mics all over.
alfiedotwtf 6y ago
Where’s the executive order to ban Google
take_a_breath 6y ago
I took all my moms hand-written recipes and made dithechef.com after she died. Never added any features. [1] http://www.dithechef.com/ http://www.dithechef.com/
- teddyh 6y ago
  On first glance, this looks like spam, but perhaps it was meant as a comment in this other thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24091577 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24091577
  - take_a_breath 6y ago
    Absolutely, apologies.
gerash 6y ago
The HN post title is a click bait. TLDR: The google home device also listens for the sound of glass shattering and smoke alarms which is very useful. In fact I wish it would listen for dog barks too. I hope they add that.

321 points by kiyanwang 6y ago

This abuse was always likely to happen. We’ve yet to discover what secret subpoenas that get filed to eavesdrop on possible felons or other persons of interest. A wireless mic to the cops is not what you want in the house.

swebs 6y ago
>A wireless mic to the cops is not what you want in the house. Yeah, that belongs in your pocket.

ilamont 6y ago

Original: https://www.protocol.com/google-smart-speaker-alarm-adt https://www.protocol.com/google-smart-speaker-alarm-adt

polote 6y ago

How could people on HN be surprised about that kind of thing ?

dsr_ 6y ago
We would all be surprised if it turns out that a giant corporation who sells you always-on networked microphones wasn't abusing it in any way, shape or form. Here's a slippery slope for you: 1. "OK Google, order pizza from Sal's." 2. "Broken glass detected in living room. Should I call police?" 3. "The baby has been crying for more than 60 minutes. Do you want assistance?" 4. "Shots fired. Calling 911 now." 2016-2020 has taught me that slippery slope arguments are not fallacious in and of themselves; they just aren't convincing by themselves. The sound of a Siamese cat in heat is extremely similar to a crying baby. Watching an unusually well-Foleyed action movie on a good sound system can probably fool any recognition system Google can jam into next year's $150 smart speaker. And that's how Google could swat you with the best of intentions.
- guerrilla 6y ago
  > Logic and critical thinking textbooks typically discuss slippery slope arguments as a form of fallacy but usually acknowledge that "slippery slope arguments can be good ones if the slope is real—that is, if there is good evidence that the consequences of the initial action are highly likely to occur. The strength of the argument depends on two factors. The first is the strength of each link in the causal chain; the argument cannot be stronger than its weakest link. The second is the number of links; the more links there are, the more likely it is that other factors could alter the consequences." Indeed, many people don't realize that accusations of committing the (or any) fallacy need to come with justifications of their own. [1]. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slippery_slope#Non-fallacious_usage https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slippery_slope#Non-fallacious_...
- michaelcampbell 6y ago
  > Watching an unusually well-Foleyed action movie on a good sound system can probably fool any recognition system Google can jam into next year's $150 smart speaker. Sure, but pair that with "Shazam!" style song recognition and now it knows you're watching a movie, and what movie it is, and can more easily filter for false positives there, no?
  - sukilot 6y ago
    Do you want to bet your life on whether someone found that feature idea exciting enough for a promotion project at work? Even if the feature works perfectly, were still talking about (hypothetically, as this isn't a real feature yet) automatically summoning a platoon of people with the de facto legal right to kill you if they send danger which is exactly the reason they were called just because a potentially dangerous noise was heard
    - Swizec 6y ago
      > the de facto legal right to kill you This seems like the bigger problem. Calling the cops shouldn’t be dangerous. It seems to me that if cops were better behaved a feature that automatically calls them when you might need help would be fantastic. Imagine if Google could detect that you’re alone and choking or having a medical emergency. Woule be cool if it could get you help.
numpad0 6y ago
The notion that many HN readers would know doesn’t devalue the news even a bit.
sp332 6y ago
A Google spokesperson told Protocol that the feature was accidentally enabled for some users through a recent software update and has since been rolled back. "Surprise" is not relevant. This is holding Google accountable for shady shit, which is something we should never stop doing.
- 0134340 6y ago
  Ah, google and their hapless hardware updates accidentally spying on users, killing my friend's and others Nexus phones as well as my own Nexus Player (oops!). No more Google hardware for me.

nerdbaggy 6y ago

Wyze cameras do this too. I never throughly about it put apparently the noise a fire alarm or co alarm makes is standard https://support.wyzecam.com/hc/en-us/articles/360031134712-How-does-the-Smoke-Alarm-and-CO-alarm-work- https://support.wyzecam.com/hc/en-us/articles/360031134712-H...

eli 6y ago
Amazon Echo as well but I think you have to opt in

rahulchowdhury 6y ago

I unplugged my Google Home Mini long back because of this unethical spying.

mark_l_watson 6y ago
I am with you on this. Google sent me a free Google Home Mini a few months ago and I have an Amazon echo device. I sometimes like to experiment with both devices. I plug them in, use them, then unplug them. Interesting technology, but I would rather have everything on hardware and software that I control.
botto 6y ago
I've unplugged mine too but saying it's spying is mincing words a bit. I highly doubt they care what individuals say in their home but probably care a lot more about what your demographic talks about, watches on TV, listens to on the radio and any other data they can glean from sound. Think about it, distinct actions make certain sounds, (i.e. from washing dishes to sleeping) They probably have a lot more of a complete picture of your home than you realise.
michaelcampbell 6y ago
I have a big cognitive dissonance here of what led you to buy it in the first place? The gulf of knowledge or personal risk tolerance between those 2 stances is so vast that I can scarcely comprehend them being in 1 person. But, clearly they are so I'm obviously wrong.
- fibers 6y ago
  because sometimes you might literally get the product for free when you buy a tv, same with amazon echos

popeathlete 6y ago

One company controlling all these electronics in my house. How do people not find that disturbing?

JoBrad 6y ago
I find a security system that only lets me know when it’s been triggered useless. My wife set off our alarm the other day. I used an external webcam to verify that it was my wife, and disabled the alarm before she could put her things down and disable it herself. You can’t do that with a system that isn’t connected externally.
- est31 6y ago
  External connection != external control. Although with home security services, it's one of the areas where I think external control is advantageous because the best cameras don't help you when the thieves take the device that keeps the recordings with them.
  - acidburnNSA 6y ago
    > External connection != external control. Exactly this. Even in security contexts, my Home Assistant-based security system is running fully-local object detection and runs automations when "Person" shows up in an unexpected place at an unexpected time. It emails me the offending image (thereby offloading from the camera) and records video locally. If it happens at night while I'm asleep it runs a sequence of turning lights on to scare them off and then wakes me up if it didn't work. This is kind of a combo of local-only with a few pings to the outer world.
    - oauea 6y ago
      What software are you using for object detection? I'd like to extend my Home Assistant setup.
      - acidburnNSA 6y ago

mttjj 6y ago

Sounds like a similar feature (“Sound Recognition”) that is coming in iOS 14. https://www.apple.com/ios/ios-14-preview/features/ https://www.apple.com/ios/ios-14-preview/features/ It’s not clear from the article but I assume the Google implementation was pushed out to users and turned on by default (likely without a notification that the device would now start doing this). Since the iOS feature is listed under “Accessibility” I would assume that it’s opt-in.

mark_l_watson 6y ago
I am running iOS 14 beta right now - certainly a good update. In my perfect world, there would be excellent open source software and hardware designs for home monitoring, etc., where we would have 100% control of our own data. We don't have a perfect world, and right now, Apple seems like the best bet (for me at least) for a company to trust (with healthy skepticism).

rvz 6y ago

These findings of Google spyware is getting pretty boring. I feel sorry for whoever is Google's Chief Privacy Officer to defend all these privacy violations in their own products. They must be facing daily privacy investigations at this point. Another day another Google listening device article. Get ready to comment on the next one.

dannyw 6y ago
Google, without notice, intentionally started listening to something that wasn't a wake word (glass breaking). How is this 'pretty boring'?
- sukilot 6y ago
  It's an obvious enhancement to a home monitoring product users paid money for, specifically for this purpose. https://www.blog.google/products/google-nest/5-things-know-about-new-nest-aware/ https://www.blog.google/products/google-nest/5-things-know-a... Google added smoke alarm sound detection to a product that users bought specifically for "smart" smoke alarms and "smart" audiovideo recording of their home
  - itsoktocry 6y ago
    >It's an obvious enhancement to a home monitoring product users paid money for, specifically for this purpose. And yet it was turned on for people who did not pay for the service, or give permission to Google to do so. Which means they can listen in whenever they feel like and chalk it up to "whoops, pushed the wrong code, sorry!" apparently.
    - jdashg 6y ago
      Consequences are in line with what happened, not the least charitable possibility of what that class of error can be. Google absolutely has the technical ability to auto-update my phone to send deepfaked porn of me to all my contacts, but it's pretty reasonable for me to expect them not to.

paul_f 6y ago

There is a big difference between smoke alarm detection built into the wake-up-word circuitry, versus every sound sent to Google's servers for analysis. I am not bothered by the former, but would be aghast at the latter. Does anyone know for sure?

Waterluvian 6y ago
What does it matter? The bottom line is that once there’s microphones in your home, Google just has to wait out the normalization of deviance until nobody’s surprised or upset that they transfer everything to their servers for analysis. If they don’t today, they will one day. They don’t have a choice on the matter because it’s a money maker.
- marricks 6y ago
  Google did this with “we don’t scan your emails for ads”. Initially, 2009 ish, that was a big line a lot of people cared about but years later here we are, Google scanning emails for targeted ads and that fight is over. EDIT: Thanks for the reply exittheone, I see GMail actually stopped this ad scanning practice in 2017[1], likely with google sign in on chrome and so many places it’s very possibly they just don’t that extra info. They still can let third party extensions read your email so I wouldn’t say we’re exactly in a better world...[2] 1. https://variety.com/2017/digital/news/google-gmail-ads-emails-1202477321/ https://variety.com/2017/digital/news/google-gmail-ads-email... 2. https://mashable.com/article/google-reading-your-emails-response/ https://mashable.com/article/google-reading-your-emails-resp...
  - exitheone 6y ago
    https://support.google.com/mail/answer/6603?hl=en https://support.google.com/mail/answer/6603?hl=en This is most definitely false. Google still states that they do not scan your emails for as targeting.
    - nkozyra 6y ago
      And why would they? The data we provide to Google in myriad ways across numerous devices and services is far more fungible.

jto1218 6y ago

I, for one, am _shocked_ that an advertising company would do such a thing.

feralimal 6y ago

How surprised would you be if in 5 years there was a Snowden-type revelation, that yes, the speakers and Facebook/Insta apps, Amazon echo, etc, etc, were listening all the time? Sorry. And that there was a secret court ruling that meant all that data was live-streamed to NSA Utah. Not surprised at all, is the answer.

jasonvorhe 6y ago
I'd like to see the calculation of that bandwidth peak.
- feralimal 6y ago
  It might not be as high as you think, if they are processing the data and sending a summary over, rather than the raw sound file.
  - weehoo 6y ago
    Dragon Naturally Speaking ran on clients without network access in the 90s. A given household might have 20,000 words spoken in a day. With speech to text, then compression, this would be a 20kb network request. If you only sent data once a month the data/day could likely be reduced even further. This could easily be Trojan-horsed alongside valid requests without anyone noticing.
    - SV_BubbleTime 6y ago
      As a CE I’m glad some people get this. I see all the posts here about “we could it’s not listening by looking at encrypted traffic amounts” or “it can’t do local speech recognition” or “they wouldn’t do that!” and want to bang my head against the wall. These devices can absolutely be abusing trust - it’s not even unlikely to some degree.
      - TeMPOraL 6y ago
        > “it can’t do local speech recognition” Yeah, I'm surprised about it too. ~13 years ago, I've been running my own completely off-line speech recognition system on a cheap PC to control music in my room. With a microphone mounted on a wardrobe. With very little pre-training, it worked pretty much flawlessly, and it could recognize commands over very loud music. And I built it in few afternoons using MS Speech API, which was included with the OS. That's why I don't buy "you need the cloud for speech recognition" arguments in general. And in context of this discussion, it means you could absolutely snoop on people through local speech-to-text on low-powered devices - particularly if you limit yourself to a set of keywords (vs. free-form dictation). And for usual profiling&advertising, a set of keywords (that can be updated over time) is more than enough - you could learn from it e.g. whether people talk about product X or politician Y in the household.

Havoc 6y ago

Hence me toying with respeaker setups. I'd rather have no voice control than have big brother voice control. Google already knows more than enough about me (gmail primarily)

criley2 6y ago

I can't even get Google Assistant to reliably work for commands they claimed to have rolled out years and years ago https://i.imgur.com/ucmKl5l.png https://i.imgur.com/ucmKl5l.png. I would literally never trust Google Assistant with anything remotely near my safety or security. "Google, call the police!!!" Playing the Police on Living Room TV "Google, lock my doors" The Doors were a psychedelic rock band formed in 1965...

ape4 6y ago

Too lazy to look it up. Didn't somebody without a pet talk about pet food around some speakers then get ads about it.

tjpnz 6y ago

I'm surprised that people are outraged by this. It's a given that you're losing some privacy by putting one of these devices in your home. Any argument otherwise assumes that the companies manufacturing these devices are trustworthy. Thankfully the solution to this problem is simple.

Espressosaurus 6y ago
Most people don't look at it that way, or they don't see the harm in doing so because it's all theoretical.

unixhero 6y ago

Of course they are

harha 6y ago

I had one of these when I worked for Google, I didn’t quite trust it though, so I had it in the bathroom to limit what my employer could listen to. Imagine discussing a product idea at home with friends, then having that stolen by an engineer at one of these companies (who figured out how to find the interesting conversations) for a promotion or new position. On a larger scale these might get hooked up with some advertising algorithms that manipulate you further based on conversations you didn’t know were recorded. I hope for more pressure to move these systems and other devices, that don’t necessarily need to be in the cloud to function, to a local solution or one that is closed to outsiders. Technologically this should be possible in so many cases.

croutonwagon 6y ago
I just dont have them in the house. Every now and then i get called paranoid. And sure, my phone can function the same (though i specifically have siri disabled on our iphones) Its just a cost benefit. I can get off the couch and flip a switch or use a remote to turn on a song. I really dont need speach recognition for those functions.
- ineedasername 6y ago
  Many of the same benefits can be had without always-listening devices. You can control things from your phone. Or in my case, I usually have a pair of bluetooth earphones around my neck, I push a button and say something and that's all it listens to. The always-listening "okay google" can be disabled.
- harha 6y ago
  Absolutely agree that the convenience doesn’t make up for the downsides. I do think that some cases can be covered without putting data out in the wild with some third party. Siri and similar apps don’t do well with complex commands, but just fine with simple things (light switch, calendar entry, alarm) that an offline tool might also understand. Same goes for fitness trackers, note taking apps, etc. We as consumers should choose such alternatives. As developers and entrepreneurs we should try to enable these solutions, so we don’t have to rely on apps that might monetize differently than advertised or turn off when some company decides it’s not profitable enough. There’s also work being done on decentralizing analysis and monetizing your own data, but I’m not sure it’s ready yet.

moreorless 6y ago

I get gizmos like this as gifts every now and then. I never bothered opening any of them up. What are some fun things that we can do with these things besides their intended use?

harha 6y ago
Would be a fun open source project to find the cheapest board that can fit in the box, ideally take some components (speakers, WiFi) and have similar functionality like controlling music, home devices, setting timers. I’d try to contribute if anyone is working on topics like this.
- AsyncAwait 6y ago
  There's https://mycroft.ai https://mycroft.ai, https://www.home-assistant.io https://www.home-assistant.io & probably others.
  - harha 6y ago
    Thanks for sharing, from a first glance I like how mycroft sells hardware to match the open source software, Will give it a try.
quantummkv 6y ago
Smash them up as a sort of therapy when you get really frustrated and upload the video to youtube. You'll get rid of them and make some money as well
- moreorless 6y ago
  Not a huge fan of Google.
MarioMan 6y ago
They can work as decent networked audio playback devices even with mute switch physically disconnecting the microphone.

sschueller 6y ago

Google sent me two of these home speakers for free. Why? I never asked for it and I will never use it.

crocodiletears 6y ago
In the abstract, this reminds me of the selfish ledger concept video, where they discussed pushing specific products on relevant customers in order to fill gaps in data collection. https://youtu.be/QDVVo14A_fo https://youtu.be/QDVVo14A_fo
IshKebab 6y ago
Probably because you signed up for or bought something else and it was a deal. Either that or they made a mistake. Google aren't in the practice of just sending free hardware to people for no reason so I'm not sure what your point is?
- variable11 6y ago
  Why so hostile? Can't stand even a tiny bit of criticism of Google?
fuzxi 6y ago
I recall they ran a promotion where they gave units away to Spotify subscribers.

choeger 6y ago

I might sound like a grumpy old granddad to some of you (and I am not even that old), but did you really think that a huge company would offer to put microphones into your living room for your advantage? They are going to benefit from this and you are going to pay for it. How? For instance with dynamic pricing. Your loved ones tell you how much they want that vacation on that Greek island? Good luck finding a cheap flight. You are sharing your Netflix subscription? Sorry, but not while that person is in the same room. You are applying to that exciting position? Nah, with that statement we heard on your dinner table, we think you are a cultural bad fit for our team.

ineedasername 6y ago
Yes, sure, it could be a slippery slope, but there's a reason that phrase denotes a logical fallacy. As with most technologies, we don't need to ban something desirable, but we do need to develop a set of social norms and corporate transparency around responsible usage. We're at the very beginning stages of that process, because all of this stuff, at this scale, is relatively new. The GDRP is far from perfect, but it sets the stage for this sort of effort.
eloff 6y ago
Any of those things would be such massive trust violations that the fallout would almost certainly sink the product and badly tarnish the company. That's not saying a company wouldn't be stupid enough to try it, but it's very clearly a bad business decision - so logically they wouldn't do it.
- asddubs 6y ago
  sure, it's company policy not to. but if you do it anyway and don't get caught, your risk-taking will be rewarded, so it becomes a numbers game/informal policy.
  - ineedasername 6y ago
    That just means we need more than company policy. Regulations w/ teeth and verifiable audits, for example.

tehjoker 6y ago

Just remember that Google's business model is a private intelligence agency and everything will always make sense.

theshadowknows 6y ago

For the folks who think your devices aren’t listening try an experiment: start talking out loud about a product you’ve never, ever searched for. Something you’ve never, ever needed or wanted. See how long it takes for ads for that very thing to start showing up in Facebook and in your targeted ads. I’ve done it and Started getting ads in a matter of days.

TeMPOraL 6y ago
I've always dismissed this as coincidence. But over the past few months, my wife reported to me several incidents of a relevant Facebook ad showing up a day or two after a conversation she had with me or her friends, and that was not followed up by any on-line searches on the topic. At this point, I'm starting to consider something may be going on after all - it seems to happen too often to be easily explained away as happenstance.
- sircastor 6y ago
  Usually when I see this sort of coincidence, I think that it is a matter of information relevance/leakage. You read an article about bug spray chemicals and don’t think about it, but start seeing exterminator ads online. If you read the article because you’re looking for pest control, the it feels suspicious. If you’re not, you ignore the ads and go on your way. I don’t want to discount your experience. I haven’t seen it myself, but maybe I’m not paying enough attention.
  - TeMPOraL 6y ago
    That's a great point! Thinking about it now, I can't be sure why we started to talk about particular products (and then saw ads about them day or two later). It could've been because one of us saw an article or an ad about it earlier. So perhaps this is neither by coincidence nor surveillance - perhaps there's an earlier link in causal chain that we've missed. I suppose the only way to be sure is to start doing proper experiments.
- fuzxi 6y ago
  My theory is that those friends did search for those topics/products, and Facebook decided it would be wise to advertise them to your wife because of her proximity to the people searching for them. "Proximity" determined either literally with geotracking, or simply with something like chat records.

mrbombastic 6y ago

Does any company or person do privacy audits of these smart home devices? At the very least doesn't seem difficult to sniff packets sent out on the home network? Seems like it is generally accepted that these things are a privacy nightmare but haven't seen a lot of actual analysis.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

svnpenn 6y ago

What the hell is going on in the comments here? It's like half the comments are edgelords with some version of "i am shocked that an advertising company would do such a thing" Has HN just turned into Reddit? Do people really not care that people's privacy is being dumped down the toilet? Google is known for shit like this. They even scan your emails and alert you when bills are due. Shit like that is not ok. Don't fuck with my privacy unless I opt in.

Ijumfs 6y ago
Obviously Google runs extensive damage control on the Internet, and Dang is powerless to stop it.
escanda 6y ago
I would even go further and tell from the younger a change in trends between our generation and those after: we understand privacy is a right won over tears and blood, but younger generations don't seem interested so far on this fight. Sadly we will need to fight twice.
annadane 6y ago
Apologists. I don't get it either.
quantummkv 6y ago
Hide from it, run from it, Eternal September arrives all the same. It was bound to happen. Honestly, it's a miracle and really hard work from dang to delay it for this long

silasdavis 6y ago

How long until insurers start coercing customers into installing intrusive smart home devices in order to get reasonable premiums? It might not happen tomorrow but if enough people are willing to opt into alarm surveillance you can see how they could lower the liability for insurers.

suddenexample 6y ago

People here are just as bad as those on Reddit. The article title is clickbait and the actual content describes alerts that Nest speakers could send you when they detect beeping smoke detectors or breaking glass. The top comment in this thread right now talking about presence detection to disable Netflix account sharing is so frustratingly ignorant. You can have privacy concerns all you want, but the bottom line is that Google has seen that people care about privacy and any funny business would surely tank their reputation.

Animats 6y ago

Big Brother is always listening. Next, "detection of patterns of harmful behavior".

arminiusreturns 6y ago

So when does bugfinding make a comeback? Let's start taking back control and desoldering these mics all over.

alfiedotwtf 6y ago

Where’s the executive order to ban Google

take_a_breath 6y ago

I took all my moms hand-written recipes and made dithechef.com after she died. Never added any features. [1] http://www.dithechef.com/ http://www.dithechef.com/

teddyh 6y ago
On first glance, this looks like spam, but perhaps it was meant as a comment in this other thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24091577 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24091577
- take_a_breath 6y ago
  Absolutely, apologies.

gerash 6y ago

The HN post title is a click bait. TLDR: The google home device also listens for the sound of glass shattering and smoke alarms which is very useful. In fact I wish it would listen for dog barks too. I hope they add that.