6 ms·

If you've already got an amazon smart speaker listening inside your home, surely this new mesh network is the least of your privacy worries?

matthewmacleod 6y ago
This is a dumb meme that needs to die now.
- joosters 6y ago
  Why? The smart speaker is designed to capture audio and send it to Amazon. The only dumbness is in the people who install it and THEN complain about their privacy. How did you think it worked?
  - pacifika 6y ago
    There's a difference between algorithms parsing data to people listening into conversations.
    - joosters 6y ago
      This the same argument that the NSA used when they claimed they weren't listening to everyone's phone calls: it was just algorithms parsing the data so that's 'ok' then.
    - uoaei 6y ago
      What's the difference then? Especially if it's recorded and stored somewhere for infinite analysis and replay.
  - matthewmacleod 6y ago
    The speaker is installed to capture audio according to a set of established and generally understood rules – i.e. not listening all the time, and sending audio when being interacted with by a user. This establishes some reasonable privacy expectations with users – I can be reasonably confident that an Amazon speaker in my home is not listening to me all the time, assuming that Amazon or a malicious third-party is not lying to me. It is possible to accept this set of trade-offs, and yet be unhappy with some other set of potential tradeoffs (like this new feature). This is not an inconsistent position and nor does it mean that a person who doesn't want to use this new feature is dumb. Do you have the same objection for anybody who carries a smartphone (i.e. literally billions of people worldwide)? They mostly offer the _exact same feature_ – does carrying a smartphone mean that none of those smartphone users are able to object to some privacy rules that they do not like? Obviously that would be ridiculous.
    - hansvm 6y ago
      This has been analyzed to death here on HN, but I'll highlight one of the many problems with that position. Amazon products (whether maliciously or not) capture far more audio than they need to do their job, they send it to Amazon, and Amazon sends it to third-party contractors to analze by hand as a step in building their NLP models and whatnot. Echoes are marketed as AI magic, and a reasonable consumer would not expect that hours of sensitive conversations are being listened to by anyone, much less an unknown third party that Amazon has little control over. In my mind, that scenario is qualitatively different from and worse than shipping small amounts of pertinent data to a machine which can't be bribed or manipulated.
      - matthewmacleod 6y ago
        Th audio that these devices capture that is "more than they need to do their job" is, to my understanding, the result of accidental activations. Not great, but one of the privacy considerations to be aware of when using one of these devices. But I, for example, have my Echo configured to automatically delete voice recordings, and to disallow manual review. I'm pretty comfortable with the privacy compromise involved. Maybe what you're actually driving at is the somewhat more dodgy practices involved around consent. Everybody should criticise Amazon for their processes here. Manual review is probably generally unexpected, and the default option for an Alexa speaker should be recording no data and allowing no manual review, with both features being explicitly opt-in. This is something it would be fair to pressure Amazon to do, if it's not already the case. But the point is – it's a dumb argument that "anybody who uses one of these devices doesn't get to complain" and I'm bored of it.
        kempbellt 6y ago
        > But I, for example, have my Echo configured to automatically delete voice recordings, and to disallow manual review. Let me see if I understand correctly. You bought a device from a third-party (Amazon in this case), which intentionally listens to audio in your home and sends that data elsewhere - literally a promoted "feature". You obviously don't trust said "third-party" with your audio, as shown by you admitting that you toggled a couple checkboxes to delete your voice recordings and disallow manual review. And you trust that these settings that you clicked on, on a settings page designed by said third-party, actually do what they say they do? I mean, your trust has some really odd boundaries. "I trust Amazon! Except not entirely... But I trust them when they give me the option to make them more trustworthy! Kinda..." OP has a point. It's literally a spy device designed to help you control music and order toilet paper. Cool, yes. But it's still what it is... People have a justifiable reason to not trust anything about these devices and go with the roll-your-own-sollution route. It's nowhere near a "dumb argument".
privseek 6y ago
Got this as present and couldn't resist trying it, sticked with it for 1,5 years now, but have blocked telemetry with pihole. However API has changed and sometimes you need to disable the firewall for things to work. Therefore I am currently planning n on getting something like respeaker.

matthewmacleod 6y ago

This is a dumb meme that needs to die now.

joosters 6y ago
Why? The smart speaker is designed to capture audio and send it to Amazon. The only dumbness is in the people who install it and THEN complain about their privacy. How did you think it worked?
- pacifika 6y ago
  There's a difference between algorithms parsing data to people listening into conversations.
  - joosters 6y ago
    This the same argument that the NSA used when they claimed they weren't listening to everyone's phone calls: it was just algorithms parsing the data so that's 'ok' then.
  - uoaei 6y ago
    What's the difference then? Especially if it's recorded and stored somewhere for infinite analysis and replay.
- matthewmacleod 6y ago
  The speaker is installed to capture audio according to a set of established and generally understood rules – i.e. not listening all the time, and sending audio when being interacted with by a user. This establishes some reasonable privacy expectations with users – I can be reasonably confident that an Amazon speaker in my home is not listening to me all the time, assuming that Amazon or a malicious third-party is not lying to me. It is possible to accept this set of trade-offs, and yet be unhappy with some other set of potential tradeoffs (like this new feature). This is not an inconsistent position and nor does it mean that a person who doesn't want to use this new feature is dumb. Do you have the same objection for anybody who carries a smartphone (i.e. literally billions of people worldwide)? They mostly offer the _exact same feature_ – does carrying a smartphone mean that none of those smartphone users are able to object to some privacy rules that they do not like? Obviously that would be ridiculous.
  - hansvm 6y ago
    This has been analyzed to death here on HN, but I'll highlight one of the many problems with that position. Amazon products (whether maliciously or not) capture far more audio than they need to do their job, they send it to Amazon, and Amazon sends it to third-party contractors to analze by hand as a step in building their NLP models and whatnot. Echoes are marketed as AI magic, and a reasonable consumer would not expect that hours of sensitive conversations are being listened to by anyone, much less an unknown third party that Amazon has little control over. In my mind, that scenario is qualitatively different from and worse than shipping small amounts of pertinent data to a machine which can't be bribed or manipulated.
    - matthewmacleod 6y ago
      Th audio that these devices capture that is "more than they need to do their job" is, to my understanding, the result of accidental activations. Not great, but one of the privacy considerations to be aware of when using one of these devices. But I, for example, have my Echo configured to automatically delete voice recordings, and to disallow manual review. I'm pretty comfortable with the privacy compromise involved. Maybe what you're actually driving at is the somewhat more dodgy practices involved around consent. Everybody should criticise Amazon for their processes here. Manual review is probably generally unexpected, and the default option for an Alexa speaker should be recording no data and allowing no manual review, with both features being explicitly opt-in. This is something it would be fair to pressure Amazon to do, if it's not already the case. But the point is – it's a dumb argument that "anybody who uses one of these devices doesn't get to complain" and I'm bored of it.
      - kempbellt 6y ago
        > But I, for example, have my Echo configured to automatically delete voice recordings, and to disallow manual review. Let me see if I understand correctly. You bought a device from a third-party (Amazon in this case), which intentionally listens to audio in your home and sends that data elsewhere - literally a promoted "feature". You obviously don't trust said "third-party" with your audio, as shown by you admitting that you toggled a couple checkboxes to delete your voice recordings and disallow manual review. And you trust that these settings that you clicked on, on a settings page designed by said third-party, actually do what they say they do? I mean, your trust has some really odd boundaries. "I trust Amazon! Except not entirely... But I trust them when they give me the option to make them more trustworthy! Kinda..." OP has a point. It's literally a spy device designed to help you control music and order toilet paper. Cool, yes. But it's still what it is... People have a justifiable reason to not trust anything about these devices and go with the roll-your-own-sollution route. It's nowhere near a "dumb argument".

privseek 6y ago

Got this as present and couldn't resist trying it, sticked with it for 1,5 years now, but have blocked telemetry with pihole. However API has changed and sometimes you need to disable the firewall for things to work. Therefore I am currently planning n on getting something like respeaker.