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Read the sentence in context: https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/qj45kx/amazon-wants-alexa-to-move-into-your-apartment-before-you-do https://www.vice.com/en_us/

Read the sentence in context: https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/qj45kx/amazon-wants-alexa-to-move-into-your-apartment-before-you-do https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/qj45kx/amazon-wants-alexa... The sentence in question comes eight (8) paragraphs in, and reads: "While it’s natural to be chiefly concerned about privacy when your apartment comes with an Amazon microphone pre-installed, we should also be critical about where the data extracted from us ends up." In context, no other word makes as much sense, and the request would make the article worse.

glxxyz 6y ago
"Amazon microphone" sounds like the name of an Amazon product. "Amazon Echo and its built-in microphone" would be more accurate.
- kbd 6y ago
  “an Amazon microphone” is perfectly accurate and doesn’t sound like a product. Your suggestion is more explicit but no more accurate.
stingrae 6y ago
I think people assume that the (amazon/google/apple) microphones are continuously uploading audio to the cloud. Wake word detection on these devices would be terrible/expensive if it ran in the cloud.
- agentdrtran 6y ago
  This is correct, and yet it's still a microphone. My Google Homes and my iPad with Siri listening will trigger accidentally pretty frequently.
  - stingrae 6y ago
    ok, but it's not even close to continuous capture. Also Google/Apple/Amazon are trying to cut it to 0 accidental triggers because it is a pretty poor UX. edit for clarification: continuous capture to the cloud
    - alexbanks 6y ago
      How would you trigger a device with a sound without continuous capture?
      - Phillipharryt 6y ago
        They have chips in them only looking to match the activation words, which then passes the rest of the request functionality to the full device.
        alexbanks 6y ago
        So the company that repeatedly does bad things, and continually gets exposed as doing more bad things, tells you they're not doing a bad thing, you believe them?
      - low_key 6y ago
        I think they mean it isn't continuously transmitting the data to Amazon/Google/etc. The device does continuously monitor (capture) audio, but the detection is done locally and data is only transmitted to the respective service after the keyword match. This is reasonable as long as you trust that the device is performing as designed (and that the design doesn't include any undesired behaviors).
        jtriangle 6y ago
        > Data is only transferred The privacy concern is that it'd be trivial for someone to use amazon's firmware keys to sign a new firmware and flash the device remotely that would indeed make it upload continuously. Normally that'd be far fetched, but, with Amazon's connections to intelligence agencies, it's more of a valid threat than it appears on its face. Such a thing would be trivial to detect with proper network monitoring because an audio stream is pretty simple to trigger an alert on, but, almost nobody is doing that because typically if you're worried about something like that you're not going to buy a device like this.
        6y ago
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- coryfklein 6y ago
  Instead they can be continuously recording and selectively uploading.
- takeda 6y ago
  There was an article recently about Google service notifying owner that the batteries in smoke detector need to be replaced (based on the chirp sound noises the smoke detector does). This shows that at very least the "wake word" can be easily changed. I think that anyone installing device like that without having a complete control over it is just ignorant. And this is surprising, since many tech people don't see any problems with it.
  - OkGoDoIt 6y ago
    This seems like such a useful feature though. I wish there was a way to know for certain exactly what the device was doing so I could have this functionality but also have certainty that Google can’t arbitrarily add other wake words without my knowledge or consent.
- s1artibartfast 6y ago
  My understanding is that the word detection takes place on the device and text transcripts are uploaded to the cloud.
  - Crespyl 6y ago
    I'm pretty sure the speech recognition for those transcripts happens in the cloud (necessitating that the raw audio be uploaded), unless the devices have gotten substantially better since I last looked.
ballenf 6y ago
"surveillance and monitoring device" would also work. Since they also detect proximity and some capture device IDs of other nearby wifi devices (used for home/away in smart homes).

glxxyz 6y ago

"Amazon microphone" sounds like the name of an Amazon product. "Amazon Echo and its built-in microphone" would be more accurate.

kbd 6y ago
“an Amazon microphone” is perfectly accurate and doesn’t sound like a product. Your suggestion is more explicit but no more accurate.

stingrae 6y ago

I think people assume that the (amazon/google/apple) microphones are continuously uploading audio to the cloud. Wake word detection on these devices would be terrible/expensive if it ran in the cloud.

agentdrtran 6y ago
This is correct, and yet it's still a microphone. My Google Homes and my iPad with Siri listening will trigger accidentally pretty frequently.
- stingrae 6y ago
  ok, but it's not even close to continuous capture. Also Google/Apple/Amazon are trying to cut it to 0 accidental triggers because it is a pretty poor UX. edit for clarification: continuous capture to the cloud
  - alexbanks 6y ago
    How would you trigger a device with a sound without continuous capture?
    - Phillipharryt 6y ago
      They have chips in them only looking to match the activation words, which then passes the rest of the request functionality to the full device.
      - alexbanks 6y ago
        So the company that repeatedly does bad things, and continually gets exposed as doing more bad things, tells you they're not doing a bad thing, you believe them?
    - low_key 6y ago
      I think they mean it isn't continuously transmitting the data to Amazon/Google/etc. The device does continuously monitor (capture) audio, but the detection is done locally and data is only transmitted to the respective service after the keyword match. This is reasonable as long as you trust that the device is performing as designed (and that the design doesn't include any undesired behaviors).
      - jtriangle 6y ago
        > Data is only transferred The privacy concern is that it'd be trivial for someone to use amazon's firmware keys to sign a new firmware and flash the device remotely that would indeed make it upload continuously. Normally that'd be far fetched, but, with Amazon's connections to intelligence agencies, it's more of a valid threat than it appears on its face. Such a thing would be trivial to detect with proper network monitoring because an audio stream is pretty simple to trigger an alert on, but, almost nobody is doing that because typically if you're worried about something like that you're not going to buy a device like this.
        6y ago
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
coryfklein 6y ago
Instead they can be continuously recording and selectively uploading.
takeda 6y ago
There was an article recently about Google service notifying owner that the batteries in smoke detector need to be replaced (based on the chirp sound noises the smoke detector does). This shows that at very least the "wake word" can be easily changed. I think that anyone installing device like that without having a complete control over it is just ignorant. And this is surprising, since many tech people don't see any problems with it.
- OkGoDoIt 6y ago
  This seems like such a useful feature though. I wish there was a way to know for certain exactly what the device was doing so I could have this functionality but also have certainty that Google can’t arbitrarily add other wake words without my knowledge or consent.
s1artibartfast 6y ago
My understanding is that the word detection takes place on the device and text transcripts are uploaded to the cloud.
- Crespyl 6y ago
  I'm pretty sure the speech recognition for those transcripts happens in the cloud (necessitating that the raw audio be uploaded), unless the devices have gotten substantially better since I last looked.

ballenf 6y ago

"surveillance and monitoring device" would also work. Since they also detect proximity and some capture device IDs of other nearby wifi devices (used for home/away in smart homes).