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We need a full investigation into Siri's surveillance campaign

20 points by MindGods 6y ago

elliekelly 6y ago
Does this stem from the “Listen for Hey Siri” setting?[1] I’m assuming that means my phone is “listening” at all times in case I say the magic words. What I wasn’t assuming was that snippets of that “listening” would ever leave my phone. It’s unclear to me whether recordings being sent to Apple are a separate setting. If I allow Siri to listen but have turned off Siri analytics[2] was Apple still potentially listening? Even reading the description of the second setting though doesn’t make it clear Apple could be listening to recordings you never intended to make: > Help improve Siri and Dictation by allowing Apple to store and review audio of your Siri and Dictation interactions on this device. If my phone is in my purse and I say something that my phone thinks sounds like “Hey Siri” I wouldn’t consider that an interaction but perhaps Apple would. [1] General > Siri & Search > Listen for “Hey Siri” [2] General > Privacy > Analytics & Improvements > Improve Siri & Dictation
- tinus_hn 6y ago
  Siri voice recognition happens on Apple servers. The device continually listens for the trigger words. Recognizing these happens on the device. Once it thinks it recognizes these words the Siri ui appears, the chime plays, the recording starts and is streamed to Apple. The scandal the author is referring to is that to improve the speech recognition, they had humans listen to a random selection of the recordings and correct the automatic recognition. Apples mistake here was that these people were not Apple employees but contractors. One of these employees leaked information about the recordings. Sometimes the device will think it heard someone say ‘hey Siri’ when that wasn’t really the case. Typically the the recordings will be of a random part of a conversation but it may also be background noise of people having sex. Compounding this problem is that to improve recogniton the Siri servers know things you are likely to refer to, like the names of your contacts. That way it’ll know that where one person may refer to Tom where another may be referring to Thom. The contractors had access to this information. Is this spying? It isn’t particularly covert. Again, it was a mistake for Apple to outsource this task to people who clearly can’t be trusted. So now you can tell Apple to leave your recordings out of that process and they have stopped outsourcing the work. The fact that the contact information etcetera is used is clearly mentioned in the agreement.
  - toddmorey 6y ago
    I disagree that people even care if they are employees or contractors of Apple. There are way too many questions here: 1. Was this really only a problem of accidentally captured audio? 2. Why did this "improve voice recognition for Siri" program ever feel it was in scope to use any recordings accidentally captured? 3. Why weren't better controls in place on something so personal from a company that specifically markets a strong stance on privacy? 4. Does turning off "hey Siri" actually prevent ambient audio from ever arriving on Apple's servers? 5. Why can't they implement specific consent per recording rather than just do a stupid blanket "some of your captured conversations may be used to improve..." 6. What laws are needed to better protect consumers?
    - tinus_hn 6y ago
      It’s clearly stated that Siri runs on Apple servers and (now optional) that people may listen to the audio to improve the service. So audio that is not accidentally captured is not a problem, it’s sent with consent. If you don’t have ‘Hey Siri’ on it only listens when you press the button. Apple does have strong controls but they employ human beings. Control is not absolute, their own secrets leak all the time and of course yours are not immune either. They tried to improve control by making this optional and by moving it in-house where they can for instance make it harder for employees to record, screen employees etcetera. The point of the program is to improve voice recognition, if Apple could determine with certainty what is an accidental recording and what’s not they wouldn’t need to improve it. Specific consent, what do you expect? After every question to Siri a pop-up appears that asks you for consent? That’s just not practical. What laws do you feel were broken? How do you feel consumers were impacted? The thing they consented to happened. Now there’s even more options and control. What more do you want? Do you believe people at the phone company can’t listen in on your calls? Do you think bank employees can’t look at your statements? Do you think the people at your ISP can’t check your traffic? What kind of law would you want that mitigates that yet still allows these companies to provide their services?
matthewmacleod 6y ago
I know it’s a comment piece and all, but this kind of content really rubs me the wrong way. It’s totally fair to investigate and regulate companies’ privacy practices. Many of them are downright scary. But we don’t need to deliberately misrepresent them in order to do so. There is no “surveillance campaign”; abusing the term weakens the argument against all of those actual surveillance campaigns out there.
deeblering4 6y ago
This is why I would love to see more devices with physical disconnect switches for mic and camera. Software just can’t be trusted for this use case.

20 points by MindGods 6y ago

Does this stem from the “Listen for Hey Siri” setting?[1] I’m assuming that means my phone is “listening” at all times in case I say the magic words. What I wasn’t assuming was that snippets of that “listening” would ever leave my phone. It’s unclear to me whether recordings being sent to Apple are a separate setting. If I allow Siri to listen but have turned off Siri analytics[2] was Apple still potentially listening? Even reading the description of the second setting though doesn’t make it clear Apple could be listening to recordings you never intended to make: > Help improve Siri and Dictation by allowing Apple to store and review audio of your Siri and Dictation interactions on this device. If my phone is in my purse and I say something that my phone thinks sounds like “Hey Siri” I wouldn’t consider that an interaction but perhaps Apple would. [1] General > Siri & Search > Listen for “Hey Siri” [2] General > Privacy > Analytics & Improvements > Improve Siri & Dictation

tinus_hn 6y ago
Siri voice recognition happens on Apple servers. The device continually listens for the trigger words. Recognizing these happens on the device. Once it thinks it recognizes these words the Siri ui appears, the chime plays, the recording starts and is streamed to Apple. The scandal the author is referring to is that to improve the speech recognition, they had humans listen to a random selection of the recordings and correct the automatic recognition. Apples mistake here was that these people were not Apple employees but contractors. One of these employees leaked information about the recordings. Sometimes the device will think it heard someone say ‘hey Siri’ when that wasn’t really the case. Typically the the recordings will be of a random part of a conversation but it may also be background noise of people having sex. Compounding this problem is that to improve recogniton the Siri servers know things you are likely to refer to, like the names of your contacts. That way it’ll know that where one person may refer to Tom where another may be referring to Thom. The contractors had access to this information. Is this spying? It isn’t particularly covert. Again, it was a mistake for Apple to outsource this task to people who clearly can’t be trusted. So now you can tell Apple to leave your recordings out of that process and they have stopped outsourcing the work. The fact that the contact information etcetera is used is clearly mentioned in the agreement.
- toddmorey 6y ago
  I disagree that people even care if they are employees or contractors of Apple. There are way too many questions here: 1. Was this really only a problem of accidentally captured audio? 2. Why did this "improve voice recognition for Siri" program ever feel it was in scope to use any recordings accidentally captured? 3. Why weren't better controls in place on something so personal from a company that specifically markets a strong stance on privacy? 4. Does turning off "hey Siri" actually prevent ambient audio from ever arriving on Apple's servers? 5. Why can't they implement specific consent per recording rather than just do a stupid blanket "some of your captured conversations may be used to improve..." 6. What laws are needed to better protect consumers?
  - tinus_hn 6y ago
    It’s clearly stated that Siri runs on Apple servers and (now optional) that people may listen to the audio to improve the service. So audio that is not accidentally captured is not a problem, it’s sent with consent. If you don’t have ‘Hey Siri’ on it only listens when you press the button. Apple does have strong controls but they employ human beings. Control is not absolute, their own secrets leak all the time and of course yours are not immune either. They tried to improve control by making this optional and by moving it in-house where they can for instance make it harder for employees to record, screen employees etcetera. The point of the program is to improve voice recognition, if Apple could determine with certainty what is an accidental recording and what’s not they wouldn’t need to improve it. Specific consent, what do you expect? After every question to Siri a pop-up appears that asks you for consent? That’s just not practical. What laws do you feel were broken? How do you feel consumers were impacted? The thing they consented to happened. Now there’s even more options and control. What more do you want? Do you believe people at the phone company can’t listen in on your calls? Do you think bank employees can’t look at your statements? Do you think the people at your ISP can’t check your traffic? What kind of law would you want that mitigates that yet still allows these companies to provide their services?

matthewmacleod 6y ago

I know it’s a comment piece and all, but this kind of content really rubs me the wrong way. It’s totally fair to investigate and regulate companies’ privacy practices. Many of them are downright scary. But we don’t need to deliberately misrepresent them in order to do so. There is no “surveillance campaign”; abusing the term weakens the argument against all of those actual surveillance campaigns out there.

deeblering4 6y ago

This is why I would love to see more devices with physical disconnect switches for mic and camera. Software just can’t be trusted for this use case.