8 ms·

Key paragraph for our friends who don’t RTFA > iRobot … confirmed that these images were captured by its Roombas in 2020. All of them came from “special develo

Key paragraph for our friends who don’t RTFA > iRobot … confirmed that these images were captured by its Roombas in 2020. All of them came from “special development robots with hardware and software modifications that are not and never were present on iRobot consumer products for purchase,” the company said in a statement. They were given to “paid collectors and employees” who signed written agreements acknowledging that they were sending data streams, including video, back to the company for training purposes. According to iRobot, the devices were labeled with a bright green sticker that read “video recording in progress,” and it was up to those paid data collectors to “remove anything they deem sensitive from any space the robot operates in, including children.” Seems like the real story is that training data was leaked, rather than the attention getting “they’re watching you” narrative the title suggests

gretch 4y ago
I read the article and I don’t think your interpretation of the “suggested” narrative is there. The title is “ A Roomba recorded a woman on the toilet. How did screenshots end up on Facebook?”. That’s not really implying a “they’re watching you narrative” - who’s “they” and if it’s global syndicate why did they do something as innocuous as putting it on Facebook? But yes, the real story is that training data (and “real” data) does leak all the time and that most companies don’t take insider risk as seriously as they should.
- karmakaze 4y ago
  The part that's missing is that it isn't just "a Roomba", it's "a Roomba labelled with “video recording in progress”". Saying 'a Roomba' implies that it could've been done from any Roomba.
  - gretch 4y ago
    The article addresses this head on. Even though those users once consented to share data “It’s not expected that human beings are going to be reviewing the raw footage.” The meat of the article is that what technology and tech companies are doing is divorced from the expectations that we have as a society. It couldn’t have been done from any roomba, but it could happen to almost everyone who didn’t understand the exact ramifications (which we click through several of every year to try to get the vacuum up and running). That’s why a lot of ppl on HN put masking tape over their laptop webcam. Or are you calling those people paranoid?
    - adamrezich 4y ago
      how did we get to the point where people have Internet-connected cameras and microphones everywhere in their houses yet implicitly trust that anything recorded will never under any circumstances be viewed by another human being
      - waffleiron 4y ago
        I think the second part of your sentence is a least a partial answer to your first part.
  - nullc 4y ago
    Couldn't it have been? after all they can remotely update the firmware. They just weren't in this case.
- smohare 4y ago
- twelve40 4y ago
  it's great that you personally are thorough enough to dig into the article and see for yourself - my favorite data set size of 1 and conclusions from that - but half the people even here, let alone outside of hn, will just grab the headline and run with it, saying "I heard roombas spy on people", and that's a problem. And the people who wrote this article know this full well.
  - mikem170 4y ago
    What's the worst that happens, someone buys an older roomba without a camera, or gets some exercise using a vacuum? Is it a bad thing if people err on the side of being too private, for a change, instead of blindly trusting big tech tracking everything they do, or being completely uninformed about this sort of thing?
  - sofixa 4y ago
    > "I heard roombas spy on people" Precisely how the "Zoom is Chinese spyware!" stuff spread around.
echelon 4y ago
Everyone RTFA in this case! I did not expect to see actual photos of the woman sitting on the toilet in this article. But damn, they're real and published dead center. It's awful and voyeuristic to feature, but in a way it brings to life the freakishly perverse Orwellian horror of all of this. This piece hits hard, as it should. How did neither Roomba nor ScaleAI have safeguards against PII of this nature? This is inside people's intimate spaces. It could have been sex. Or children. How did they not think of this? This sort of disregard for privacy should be punished, and this woman should be able to sue Roomba and ScaleAI for a handsome sum. Maybe they did have some kind of internal data privacy policy or 3rd party policy, but it was wholly inadequate. My team once had a certain perennial Billboard chart topper's login credentials due to suspected mishandling by one of their team (I'm still afraid to say whom), but you'd better believe we treated it - and all of our customer data - as sacred taboo. Mishandling PII was fireable at minimum, and could probably land us in litigation with a permanent mark against our careers. We need GDPR/CCPA++ protections here. As an added bonus, the companies that play nice will get a comfortable moat in the form of their compliance.
- operator-name 4y ago
  If you read the article you'll also find the owners were specifically aware that these units are special in that they upload all data - commercial devices do not share any images or video without the users consent [0]. It's also absurd to think they didn't face safeguards. We can only speculate if the individual was fired, or if stronger policies were put in place since 2020, but it's naive to expect that whatever policy is put in place will stop a human data labeler from smuggling PPI for personal reasons. [0]: https://homesupport.irobot.com/s/article/964 https://homesupport.irobot.com/s/article/964
  - quantified 4y ago
    The owner who said ok probably was not the girl with her pants down. But as a guy, I don't know if girls pull them down farther if they think they're not being watched. She might be the one who agreed to it. Still, the owner of a space is making the decision for all people who come into that space.
bonestamp2 4y ago
I had a beta unit before they released the first AI powered model and my beta unit was set to upload to photos. The original goal was to use AI to recognize and avoid things that the vacuum can get caught up in, such as cords under desks and dog poop.
josephg 4y ago
> our friends who don’t RTFA I opened the article (on a phone) and no fewer than 3 separate popovers appeared over the content. “Hey! This is our cookie policy” “Happy holidays! We have a special subscription price!” And something else that was covered by the first two before I had a chance to read it. Thankyou for summarising. I noped right out of there out of disgust.
huhtenberg 4y ago
Here's a funny bit. Roomba iOS app refuses to go past its welcome screen unless its granted access to the location info. This is unreasonable, they don't need this info for their app to function. However their devices are all but unusable without an app, so they ultimately blackmail people into giving location data to them. Meaning they don't really give a sh#t about users' privacy, so it's not that "they are watching you", but that they won't think twice about hooking up to a random Roomba and shooting a video with it. Consent or not.
- renewiltord 4y ago
  I have a few Roombas and no app. I just hit the button and the robot does its thing.
  - huhtenberg 4y ago
    More often than not just one or two rooms need cleaning, but not the whole place. Can't do that with a button press.
    - renewiltord 4y ago
      I see. I don't live in big enough place, perhaps. I just fire it off and don't think.
    - mtone 4y ago
      I close a door or put a box in its way. No app.
- monocasa 4y ago
  Is iOS like Android where Bluetooth permissions are a part of the location info permissions?
  - huhtenberg 4y ago
    No. Out of spite I took the iPad to a friend's house, enabled location, clicked through the welcome screen and disabled it again. Then came back home and hooked up the device. So, no, it's not linked to its BT needs at all.
lowbloodsugar 4y ago
Oh a spokesperson said that? Must be true then. No spokesperson has ever pulled something like that out of their arse.
cptskippy 4y ago
AND if you were doing testing for them through CenterCode/Betabound, they made it abundantly clear what you were being asked to test before you agreed to an NDA or completed the Study Application. I participated in an iRobot Study in 2019, since then I have received multiple invitations that I have declined specifically because they mentioned streaming video or cameras.
crypster 4y ago
But then they also refused to let MIT review the consent agreement or contact the users to review their understanding of the agreement. At this point it's just iRobot's words that they were explicit about what people were gettin into. Here's the following para:- "In other words, by iRobot’s estimation, anyone whose photos or video appeared in the streams had agreed to let their Roombas monitor them. iRobot declined to let MIT Technology Review view the consent agreements and did not make any of its paid collectors or employees available to discuss their understanding of the terms."
1vuio0pswjnm7 4y ago
"Seems like the real story is that training data was leaked, rather than the attention getting "they're watching you" narrative the title suggests" Was the HN title changed. I am having trouble seeing how one who did not read the article would interpret the HN title to suggest a "they're watching you" narrative. For example, one could interpret it as posing a question about leaked photos, e.g., who leaked them and/or why. The idea that a "they're watching you" narrative is "attention-getting" is interesting seeing that many HN commenters repeatedly tell us that people outside of HN do not care about privacy or surveillance. If that is true, then why would a journalist/publication seeking the largest possible audience try to advance such a narrative. No one cares. That's what they tell us, anyway. NB. I am not suggesting that I believe the HN comments arguing that no one outside HN cares. They could be correct. However I believe the commenters making them could be biased if they are invested in the survival of the so-called "tech" industry, i.e., targeting internet users with data collection and surveillance and selling online advertising services as a "business model". The actual title is: "A Roomba recorded a woman on the toilet. How did the photos end up on Facebook" This website is a publication of MIT. A strange source for "they're watching you" narratives.
- Sirened 4y ago
  Do you truly believe someone would see the headline "How did Roomba-recorded photos end up on Facebook?" and not ask themselves "wait...is MY Roomba recording photos that might end up on Facebook???". This is clearly clickbait-y, the question is intentionally vague to encourage people to read more. A less clickbaity and more clear question would be "how did photos from research Roombas end up on Facebook?" but that's spoiling the story's punchline, now isn't it.
thefurdrake 4y ago
Seems like the real story here is that iRobot can't protect the data it records from its own internal reviews and R&D process, so the people who were paranoid about "they're watching you" are actually MORE justified, because not only do we need to worry about deliberate watching, but also the company's general incompetence with data security. Seems like the narrative's just as accurate as it was prior to reading the title.

gretch 4y ago

I read the article and I don’t think your interpretation of the “suggested” narrative is there. The title is “ A Roomba recorded a woman on the toilet. How did screenshots end up on Facebook?”. That’s not really implying a “they’re watching you narrative” - who’s “they” and if it’s global syndicate why did they do something as innocuous as putting it on Facebook? But yes, the real story is that training data (and “real” data) does leak all the time and that most companies don’t take insider risk as seriously as they should.

karmakaze 4y ago
The part that's missing is that it isn't just "a Roomba", it's "a Roomba labelled with “video recording in progress”". Saying 'a Roomba' implies that it could've been done from any Roomba.
- gretch 4y ago
  The article addresses this head on. Even though those users once consented to share data “It’s not expected that human beings are going to be reviewing the raw footage.” The meat of the article is that what technology and tech companies are doing is divorced from the expectations that we have as a society. It couldn’t have been done from any roomba, but it could happen to almost everyone who didn’t understand the exact ramifications (which we click through several of every year to try to get the vacuum up and running). That’s why a lot of ppl on HN put masking tape over their laptop webcam. Or are you calling those people paranoid?
  - adamrezich 4y ago
    how did we get to the point where people have Internet-connected cameras and microphones everywhere in their houses yet implicitly trust that anything recorded will never under any circumstances be viewed by another human being
    - waffleiron 4y ago
      I think the second part of your sentence is a least a partial answer to your first part.
- nullc 4y ago
  Couldn't it have been? after all they can remotely update the firmware. They just weren't in this case.
smohare 4y ago
twelve40 4y ago
it's great that you personally are thorough enough to dig into the article and see for yourself - my favorite data set size of 1 and conclusions from that - but half the people even here, let alone outside of hn, will just grab the headline and run with it, saying "I heard roombas spy on people", and that's a problem. And the people who wrote this article know this full well.
- mikem170 4y ago
  What's the worst that happens, someone buys an older roomba without a camera, or gets some exercise using a vacuum? Is it a bad thing if people err on the side of being too private, for a change, instead of blindly trusting big tech tracking everything they do, or being completely uninformed about this sort of thing?
- sofixa 4y ago
  > "I heard roombas spy on people" Precisely how the "Zoom is Chinese spyware!" stuff spread around.

echelon 4y ago

Everyone RTFA in this case! I did not expect to see actual photos of the woman sitting on the toilet in this article. But damn, they're real and published dead center. It's awful and voyeuristic to feature, but in a way it brings to life the freakishly perverse Orwellian horror of all of this. This piece hits hard, as it should. How did neither Roomba nor ScaleAI have safeguards against PII of this nature? This is inside people's intimate spaces. It could have been sex. Or children. How did they not think of this? This sort of disregard for privacy should be punished, and this woman should be able to sue Roomba and ScaleAI for a handsome sum. Maybe they did have some kind of internal data privacy policy or 3rd party policy, but it was wholly inadequate. My team once had a certain perennial Billboard chart topper's login credentials due to suspected mishandling by one of their team (I'm still afraid to say whom), but you'd better believe we treated it - and all of our customer data - as sacred taboo. Mishandling PII was fireable at minimum, and could probably land us in litigation with a permanent mark against our careers. We need GDPR/CCPA++ protections here. As an added bonus, the companies that play nice will get a comfortable moat in the form of their compliance.

operator-name 4y ago
If you read the article you'll also find the owners were specifically aware that these units are special in that they upload all data - commercial devices do not share any images or video without the users consent [0]. It's also absurd to think they didn't face safeguards. We can only speculate if the individual was fired, or if stronger policies were put in place since 2020, but it's naive to expect that whatever policy is put in place will stop a human data labeler from smuggling PPI for personal reasons. [0]: https://homesupport.irobot.com/s/article/964 https://homesupport.irobot.com/s/article/964
- quantified 4y ago
  The owner who said ok probably was not the girl with her pants down. But as a guy, I don't know if girls pull them down farther if they think they're not being watched. She might be the one who agreed to it. Still, the owner of a space is making the decision for all people who come into that space.

bonestamp2 4y ago

I had a beta unit before they released the first AI powered model and my beta unit was set to upload to photos. The original goal was to use AI to recognize and avoid things that the vacuum can get caught up in, such as cords under desks and dog poop.

josephg 4y ago

> our friends who don’t RTFA I opened the article (on a phone) and no fewer than 3 separate popovers appeared over the content. “Hey! This is our cookie policy” “Happy holidays! We have a special subscription price!” And something else that was covered by the first two before I had a chance to read it. Thankyou for summarising. I noped right out of there out of disgust.

huhtenberg 4y ago

Here's a funny bit. Roomba iOS app refuses to go past its welcome screen unless its granted access to the location info. This is unreasonable, they don't need this info for their app to function. However their devices are all but unusable without an app, so they ultimately blackmail people into giving location data to them. Meaning they don't really give a sh#t about users' privacy, so it's not that "they are watching you", but that they won't think twice about hooking up to a random Roomba and shooting a video with it. Consent or not.

renewiltord 4y ago
I have a few Roombas and no app. I just hit the button and the robot does its thing.
- huhtenberg 4y ago
  More often than not just one or two rooms need cleaning, but not the whole place. Can't do that with a button press.
  - renewiltord 4y ago
    I see. I don't live in big enough place, perhaps. I just fire it off and don't think.
  - mtone 4y ago
    I close a door or put a box in its way. No app.
monocasa 4y ago
Is iOS like Android where Bluetooth permissions are a part of the location info permissions?
- huhtenberg 4y ago
  No. Out of spite I took the iPad to a friend's house, enabled location, clicked through the welcome screen and disabled it again. Then came back home and hooked up the device. So, no, it's not linked to its BT needs at all.

lowbloodsugar 4y ago

Oh a spokesperson said that? Must be true then. No spokesperson has ever pulled something like that out of their arse.

cptskippy 4y ago

AND if you were doing testing for them through CenterCode/Betabound, they made it abundantly clear what you were being asked to test before you agreed to an NDA or completed the Study Application. I participated in an iRobot Study in 2019, since then I have received multiple invitations that I have declined specifically because they mentioned streaming video or cameras.

crypster 4y ago

But then they also refused to let MIT review the consent agreement or contact the users to review their understanding of the agreement. At this point it's just iRobot's words that they were explicit about what people were gettin into. Here's the following para:- "In other words, by iRobot’s estimation, anyone whose photos or video appeared in the streams had agreed to let their Roombas monitor them. iRobot declined to let MIT Technology Review view the consent agreements and did not make any of its paid collectors or employees available to discuss their understanding of the terms."

1vuio0pswjnm7 4y ago

"Seems like the real story is that training data was leaked, rather than the attention getting "they're watching you" narrative the title suggests" Was the HN title changed. I am having trouble seeing how one who did not read the article would interpret the HN title to suggest a "they're watching you" narrative. For example, one could interpret it as posing a question about leaked photos, e.g., who leaked them and/or why. The idea that a "they're watching you" narrative is "attention-getting" is interesting seeing that many HN commenters repeatedly tell us that people outside of HN do not care about privacy or surveillance. If that is true, then why would a journalist/publication seeking the largest possible audience try to advance such a narrative. No one cares. That's what they tell us, anyway. NB. I am not suggesting that I believe the HN comments arguing that no one outside HN cares. They could be correct. However I believe the commenters making them could be biased if they are invested in the survival of the so-called "tech" industry, i.e., targeting internet users with data collection and surveillance and selling online advertising services as a "business model". The actual title is: "A Roomba recorded a woman on the toilet. How did the photos end up on Facebook" This website is a publication of MIT. A strange source for "they're watching you" narratives.

Sirened 4y ago
Do you truly believe someone would see the headline "How did Roomba-recorded photos end up on Facebook?" and not ask themselves "wait...is MY Roomba recording photos that might end up on Facebook???". This is clearly clickbait-y, the question is intentionally vague to encourage people to read more. A less clickbaity and more clear question would be "how did photos from research Roombas end up on Facebook?" but that's spoiling the story's punchline, now isn't it.

thefurdrake 4y ago

Seems like the real story here is that iRobot can't protect the data it records from its own internal reviews and R&D process, so the people who were paranoid about "they're watching you" are actually MORE justified, because not only do we need to worry about deliberate watching, but also the company's general incompetence with data security. Seems like the narrative's just as accurate as it was prior to reading the title.