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Our household (and I suspect many with us) bought a Roomba specifically to not give the Chinese government a roving camera in our home. Ouch!
by kqr 11mo ago
Our household (and I suspect many with us) bought a Roomba specifically to not give the Chinese government a roving camera in our home. Ouch!
- mkagenius 11mo agoSince this can be a significant security issue for the state, why doesn't the government sponsor a security audit of the software. Does it upload the data or everything is done on the device? (Also, will have to keep up with the updates)
- grosswait 11mo agoHow does that provide any assurance against future changes that the public wouldn’t have any ability to know about.
- hackernewds 11mo agoSo the govt implements rules and a panopticon for penalties. this works for the FDA, why wouldn't it for the FCC
- pintxo 11mo agoBecause regulation is bad, according to the current executive? Politics aside, the FDA applies a very generous amount of regulation (mostly justifiable), not sure we want to pay multiples for our consumer electronics, as it (mostly) shows acceptable behavior and rearely kills anybody.
- trimethylpurine 11mo agoIt is bad. Regulations have been historically hijacked to benefit corporate interests. See Intuit and tax policy for example. Voters on the right naively thought he'd work to fix it. (Wrong!) But it is very much bad for a very large number of issues. Maybe next executive will fix it? (Wrong!)
- kspacewalk2 11mo agoBetter yet, why not pick a security auditor and have the bidder pay for it, as a condition for approval?
- IAmBroom 11mo ago"Why doesn't the state protect everyone from ___?" is a naive question. Almost anything can be a significant security issue for the state. They have to carefully choose where they are going to spend effort & money. And they pick whatever will keep them safely in power... which never ever includes "strict regulation of vacuum cleaners".
- PaulDavisThe1st 11mo ago> which never ever includes "strict regulation of vacuum cleaners but has routinely included "network and encryption related technologies". It's just that these two worlds now, amazingly and probably incorrectly, overlap.
- CamperBob2 11mo agoThe government's idea of regulating encryption-related technologies is to prohibit anyone but the government from using them. No, thanks.
- Tangurena2 11mo agoWe don't regulate/protect the SCADA systems that run utilities like water treatment plants and the power transmission system.
- Tangurena2 11mo agoThe NSA has a bad historical reputation for this sort of thing - intentionally weakening crypto standards to make things easier for themselves to break, while keeping them "strong enough" that other agencies outside of NSA/GCHQ/GRU can't. The Crypto AG scandal [0] was pretty bad, with Clipper/Skipjack & Dual_EC_DRBG [1] being more recent ones. The NSA could do what you are asking to do, but they probably won't let us know what the really bad holes are because they want to keep using them. Notes: 0 - https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2020/world/national-security/cia-crypto-encryption-machines-espionage/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2020/world/national-... 1 - https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/nsa-nist-encryption-scandal/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/nsa-nist-encrypti..., https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dual_EC_DRBG https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dual_EC_DRBG
- anymouse123456 11mo agoThis! I was a very early customer of Roomba and loved them when they came out. I had pets at the time, and the machine would consistently fail in about 14 months. I finally figured out that I needed to buy them from Costco, so that I could get them replaced. Rather than taking their lead and improving the product, they just sat there with the exact same product for like 10+ years. It was outrageous. I guess Rodney Brooks got busy with other interests, and whomever ran things didn't realize that Tim Ferris is full of shit. It was extremely frustrating to watch these assholes destroy the company right from the outset. All they needed to do, was to slowly walk forward and iterate with improvements. The only surprise in this news is that it took SO LONG for them to dismantle the company. I do not think it's appropriate for an organization holding this much deeply personal data can be sold to any foreign entity.
- horsawlarway 11mo agoThis is my take: If the EU was concerned enough about Amazon taking them over in early 2024 to block the deal, I'm still concerned about a foreign owner in 2026...
- lumost 11mo agoI remember the "upgrade for pets" option, which... didn't work. After buying the maxed out version I realized that the product simply had a long, long way to go - but iRobot did nothing with it other than launch new segments like "upgrade for vision based mapping" etc.
- foobarian 11mo agoThe promise didn't pan out for us. You have to prepare and cordon off the floor, and the unit gets stuck half the time. Somehow it's exactly the right height to get wedged under furniture.
- rpcope1 11mo agoMy wife got one to try and automate away the vacuuming. We went through the same thing, and it still needs to be babysit anyways. For the sheer amount of time and frustration of basically all robot vacuums, it has been easier to just get a nice Kenmore upright bagged vacuum and do it yourself anyways (and the results are basically always way nicer).
- lotsofpulp 11mo agoWhat is not for sale today, can be for sale tomorrow. Even Apple and Alphabet, should their leaders see greater market value in selling data rather than not selling it.
- jtbayly 11mo ago[flagged]
- jmyeet 11mo agoAt this point I trust the Chinese government way more than almost every US tech giant. I don't own a "smart" speaker. I've never liked the idea of having an always-on cloud-connected microphone in my house. Like, it's just asking for trouble. I don't necessarily assign malicious intent here. It's just a recipe for disaster. But if you made me choose between an Amazon or Meta "smart" speaker and a Huawei speaker, I'm choosing Huawei. As for robot vacuums, I don't see a reason they need to have a microphone. I wouldn't want one that did. I think I'd also prefer they had a LIDAR rather than a camera too but I can see that cameras can do things that LIDAR can't. Anyway, I find these deep distrust of the Chinese government to be very... selective, given what our own governments are doing and I'm sorry but our tech giants are out of control.
- yesiamyourdad 11mo agoThis reminds me of the line from "Jackie Brown": "You can't trust Melanie. But you can trust Melanie to be Melanie". I owned an early Roomba an it would just bump into things and "bounce" off. There was some sort of rudimentary fencing devices you could use to keep it in an area. I guess they decided cameras and things work better but I feel like the original worked well enough. You still had to vacuum but especially with pets it kept the disorder under control.
- fredfilz 11mo agoLol agreed. Btw if you're into sensor, keen to chat. I'm the founder of crewline.ai, just raised our seed and are bringing on a couple key founding engineering hires.
- olalonde 11mo agoWhy not? Unless you are a Chinese citizen, it arguably makes more sense to grant access to the Chinese government rather than the US government. The PRC generally shows little interest in non-citizens while the US government frequently goes after people beyond its borders (e.g. Meng Wanzhou, Changpeng Zhao, Sam Bankman-Fried, Julian Assange, Kim Dotcom, etc.).
- btown 11mo agoThe general thing about state actors is that they have every incentive to have a dossier of compromising information on every foreign national regardless of current relevance, for potential use in the future. You could, for instance, someday be in a position where you have privileged access to data that becomes relevant to them, and thus your history becomes useful.
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- olalonde 11mo agoTrue, but the US has a long track record of pursuing both foreigners and citizens—through prosecutions, extraditions, sanctions, or asset seizures—often years later and regardless of nationality. In practical terms, the risk of being targeted by the US for breaking a law is far higher than being blackmailed by a foreign state like China. The consequences are asymmetric as well: blackmail usually amounts to little more than embarrassment, whereas being pursued by the US government can carry lengthy prison sentences or worse. This is not to mention that the US also engages in data collection for coercion purposes.
- TeMPOraL 11mo agoState actors also have finite budgets and do cost/benefit analyses. They don't really gain much for creating and maintaining deep dossiers on hundreds of millions of random foreigners.
- BigTTYGothGF 11mo agoWhy do you think they want to see the inside of your house, and what do you think they'd be able to do with the information?
- gitremote 11mo agoWhy would the Chinese government want to regularly launch cyber attacks against US infrastructure, except it's been happening for years? US security companies and governments have been defending against it for years and have even cataloged the state-sponsored attack groups. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_persistent_threat#China https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_persistent_threat#Chi... It's very easy to think other people are being paranoid when you're ignorant about the topic.
- gosub100 11mo agoBlackmail for one: "I'll wage a campaign to flood the Internet with pics of your half dressed wife unless you....". That will work on some people, discovering extramarital affairs, or proving you know intimate details about the inside of someone's house, along with threat of physical violence will work on others. You just need to be sufficiently creative. You can parlay the successes from one target to the next: "I can get both of you divorced unless you install the rootkit on your work's network" I will reference a quote I originally heard on HN years ago, though: the audio surveillance is magnitudes more valuable than the video.
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- dylan604 11mo agoMaybe I'm just not paranoid enough, but when people are having sexy time, they are not really likely to be running the roomba. Having that thing running is the opposite of sexy. When the thing is parked on the base station, it is facing the wall. So exactly how frequently do people think a roomba is running to be capturing all of this explicit footage? To be clear, I'm not saying footage can't be captured, but some of these examples are just bat shit crazy well beyond paranoid
- vultour 11mo agoWhy didn't you just buy one with no camera at all?
- AndrewKemendo 11mo agoGenuine non snarky question: Did you weigh data collection, persistence and transferability before purchase and then conclude that the risk/benefit was there?
- fredfilz 11mo agoLol was thinking the same. Btw if you're into sensors, keen to chat. I'm the founder of crewline.ai, just raised our seed and are bringing on a couple key founding engineering hires.
- AndrewKemendo 10mo agoSend me a note andrew@gambit.us
- jijijijij 11mo agoWell, I hope you learned your lesson and now won't blindly trust any corporation again, but rather demand open code and full control over the device you bought. Especially if it is a moving camera in your home... At least in the US, the Chinese government realistically should have been the least of your worries. What's China gonna do, if they caught you reading the Quran, or snorting crack? They could livestream your marriage proposal in WeChat to a billion people and you wouldn't ever notice. Meanwhile Snowden revealed, covertly watching random people through webcams is a leisure activity at the NSA, a national institution incidentally sharing jurisdiction with you. And evidently, your wife's death in a car accident may become a trending video at Tesla headquarters, while they deny your claims for a lack of such evidence.
- cj 11mo ago> demand open code and full control over the device you bought What do we do with companies/products like Tesla, short of shutting them down? Fully open code and absolute full control seems like it's going too far. Idealistically I like it, but practically I can't see it working.
- jijijijij 11mo agoI was making a point about trust, not what to do about it. If you are American, you should worry about Americans spying on you, as that actually could have consequences for your life and there is well know evidence and a legal foundation to justify such worries. As non-car owner, I also dislike the Tesla cameras around me. Maybe one solution would be to not have fucking cameras everywhere, if the owner's exclusive access can't be guaranteed, abuse can't be prevented and legal consequences are not enforced. Maybe there should be standards and certification.
- toddmorey 11mo agothis age, feels like the most dangerous thing the Chinese government could do is sell that data back to our government.
- brandensilva 11mo agoI figured this would happen given how crap Roombas have been since they fired or lost all their engineering talent years ago. So I went with a roborock since it is superior but completely blocked it from ever communicating outside my home. Works great, there are plenty of ways to modify roborock vacuums and load up other software even.
- jamesrr39 11mo ago> modify roborock vacuums and load up other software even. Can you provide more info/got any links? I would love to try some open source software on it
- fredfilz 11mo agoLol was thinking the same. Btw if you're into sensors, keen to chat. I'm the founder of crewline.ai, just raised our seed and are bringing on a couple key founding engineering hires.
- hedora 11mo agoBack when Amazon was going to buy Roomba so they could use the cameras to sell us crap and/or sell the feed to law enforcement, I unplugged ours. They were unimaginably unreliable compared to our older Roombas, and I was kind of shocked how little we missed them. Anyway, I looked into getting a secure (or at least not malicious) alternative. At the time, the best bet was to get a Chinese model, then MITM its connection to the cloud + run your own server locally. At that point, I realized it was less effort to just manually vacuum the house and moved on. I'm certainly not the only one, given the size of the modder community for the Chinese competitors. Now, I wonder how far the modders are from buying a handful of commodity components + just 3d printing the rest of the robot, since that's less effort than dealing with enshittification.
- DANmode 11mo agoHow far did you take this? (did you check out the Roomba supply chain at all?) Thanks
- jamesrr39 11mo agoIronically we bought a Roborock (Chinese brand with close links to Xiaomi) and didn't connect it to the internet (checked this would work before we bought it). If you don't want the scheduling and other app features, and are happy switching it on when you need it, it works fine. Motivation for an offline one was more than just cameras, also that it wouldn't be bricked by an update one day, but still...
- fahhem 11mo agoThey were so proud of how they were one of the early ones to move their entire manufacturing process to China. Sorry, they always (could have) had a camera in your home