Maybe because he finds it a useful and convenient tool to have around the house and that he's weighed up the pluses and minuses of having one in his home? He's a technical guy - he's not stupid.

I have an Echo and I mainly use it to set timers and check the weather. If that, plus a few questions about "How tall is the Eiffel Tower?" constitute a huge cache of data on me, I'm honestly fairly relaxed about it.

Compared to the vast number of tracking pixels, cookie sync firings and God knows what else that happens if I happen to load up a web browser without a VPN & ad blocker, it's really small beer. Not to mention the location tracking that happens by default and is mandated by law in every smartphone.

Also, the 1984 comparisons just don't bear fruit. We're not living in a violent, single-party totalitarian regime. We're just not. If anyone is really relevant to this, it's Weber and his concerns over the rise of unaccountable and powerful bureaucracies and social alienation.

Our tendency to pattern match will only ever pick out what someone predicted correctly, it often overlooks what a thinker got wrong and Orwell was wrong about a lot of things in obvious and not-so-obvious ways. Much of what he gets right relies on things like conflating the power of the state with the power of corporations, and equating businesses tendency to employ euphemism with the complete evisceration of language.

That's not to say that we shouldn't be mindful of privacy concerns and what we are allowing into our lives, but 1984 is a pretty blunt and emotionally charged instrument for critiquing something like Google Home.

I just don't see the big deal.

Currently the legal definitions around the uses of power such as search and seizure rely upon determining if a situation had an expectation of privacy. Police need a warrant to search your home because most people expect the home to be "private".

One particularly interesting example of this Kyllo v United States[1], where the use of infrared cameras to find grow lights inside a home was ruled a search (and thus needed a warrant) because infrared cameras were not common so the general public did not in practice see infrared emissions as "available to the public". The opinion of the court, however, did point out that their decision would be defunct when infrared cameras became generally available and used by the public. At that point the public would no longer expect infrared emissions to be private. (Presumably this expectation might create a market for e.g. ir-blocking paint? If that's even possible?)

Installing microphones that regularly send data to unknown 3rd parties normalizes the expectation that spoken word in the home is no longer private. When perceptions change, so will warrant requirements.

> We're not living in a violent, single-party totalitarian regime.

If that's you're criteria for when to act, you are always going to be too late to do anything. Some of us prefer the idea of detecting problems early - hopefully before the become violent.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kyllo_v._United_States

> If that's you're criteria for when to act, you are always going to be too late to do anything. Some of us prefer the idea of detecting problems early - hopefully before the become violent.

Your argument is different to, and stronger than the parent's though. The parent's argument was not that we were on the thin end of a wedge to a totalitarian state, but that in some senses we had already passed that point because there was a voluntary element to it.

Still though, IR cameras by their nature are always-on and always transmitting data. They'd be pretty useless if they weren't! That's not the case for Google Home or any of the solutions currently on the market. Google Home also no-more violates this condition than say, a set top TV box that sends data on my TV viewing back to a central server.

Always-on isn't required. The deciding factor is what the general public expects.

If the public expects that a home might be recording their speech and sending it to a 3rd party - and thus theoretically has the opportunity to not speak or employ some sort of defense being recorded - then then Kyllo v United States suggests 4th Amendment protection no longer applies.

Just look at how many people here on HN already claim to no longer expect privacy.

> voluntary element

That's my point - your choice to voluntarily normalize surveillance impacts my 4th Amendment protections.

> Still though, IR cameras by their nature are always-on and always transmitting data.

In the case of near-IR night vision CCTV cameras in common use, yes. The case of Kyllo v. United States specifically involved very expensive long-wavelength thermal imagers that are not typically used in civilian CCTV applications [0]. Furthermore, federal agents specifically pointed a mobile camera at the house to see temperature changes behind the walls, which differs from a static always-on installation.

[0] There are fixed thermal surveillance imagers (see http://www.flir.com/surveillance/display/?id=64664 for FLIR's latest), but they're typically used for military installation security. Unlike NIR cameras they require no external illumination, and are tuned to detect the black-body radiation naturally emitted by warm-blooded things.

This is an interesting and relevant point. However, I believe that the expectation of privacy could still be arguably maintained because of the contractual relationship between the user and the service provider. The EULA and privacy policy would limit data sharing. There remains an expectation of privacy between two parties, and only within the context of the 'trigger command' that starts the process. A warrant obviously by-passes this, but you are talking about warrantless searches.

Our wonderful government disagrees.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third-party_doctrine

Would that not still be different? The public doesn't have access to El Goog's recordings, so surely a warrant would still be needed as that precedent would not apply?

Google is part of the public. Yes, this would depend on the interpretation of the court, but the point is that the expectation of privacy no longer exists when you are explicitly sending that audio to a 3rd party.

I'd be very interested in how that would play out in a court. My gut instinct would be that there is a distinction between consenting to send voice data to a named company and conversations being deemed public. Of course, my profession is not in the legal domain.

No. You're just making things up. Law enforcement must have a valid and legal warrant to access Google voice logs.

I'm not talking about voice logs or anything else recorded by Google Home itself. Once people expect that their conversation can be recoded by a 3rd party, they no longer have the protections against other recordings being made.

> Law enforcement must have a valid and legal warrant

Kyllo v United States established a bright line test that the need for a warrant specifically depends on if the technology used is commonly available to and used by the general public.

Except that's not how any of these devices work. Nobody has any expectation that their words are being recorded until such time as they say "Okay google" or "Alexa".

This is about expectations. not technical features. If you walk into any random home, can you expect that your conversation is private? Today, that's already hard to answer because you first have to know if there are any Google, Amazon, Apple, or other devices that might start transmitting your conversation to a 3rd party. Do you know every possible wake word used by every devices with this kind of feature?

At some point it is impossible to know the list of possible words you cannot speak and the public will simply start assuming that they may be recorded anyway. When that perception changes, so will legal doctrines.

Not really, because every one of them gives an audiovisual prompt that speech is now being recorded. Nobody mutes those prompts because it makes the devices harder to use.

You can own every single smarthome device in existence today and quite rightly assume that you are not being passively recorded. These concerns amount to overblown FUD.

> Also, the 1984 comparisons just don't bear fruit. We're not living in a violent, single-party totalitarian regime.

... But we could be one day, and some people are. The transition to cloud listening devices in every house and the transition to totalitarianism each only need to happen once. The thing Orwell missed was that these devices could be made useful enough to consumers for that transition to be first.

It has been said many times before by commenters here on HN, and is worth repeating. Cloud-enabled listening devices already have saturated society and are nearly omnipresent. They have a form factor that fits in your pocket and also includes discrete surveillance-enabling conveniences such as: GPS tracking, always-on microphones, high resolution cameras, target-specific network graph data, and access to very large (and inconvenient to monitor) data storage.

If a person is concerned with the practical security implications of Amazon's Echo or Google's Home, I expect they should be terrified of the potential vectors for misuses that their mobile phone allows.

The future state of government regulation and the ability for those in power to use the digital tracks I've left do concern me, but I've found it very difficult to decide how to combat it without fully disconnecting and moving off-grid. There are ways to mask and obfuscate certain parts of that record, to be sure (Tor, proxies, not using Echo or Home, no connected devices, etc.) but I like the benefits that technology brings to me life and I don't really want to move into a remote, signal-free location to live a spartan life.

For sure. My argument is that, in general, consumers have found all of those listening devices more useful than terrifying.

I don't think Orwell imagined that universal surveillance would happen due to consumer demand rather than imposition by the totalitarian state.

I sympathise with your exasperation, but I think you're only considering half the story.

What 1984 didn't depict or foresee was that the same technology that can be used by corporations and governments to monitor citizens can be (and is) just as easily used by citizens to monitor the actions of the governments and corporations, and hold them to account.

To quote John O'Farrell of Andreessen Horowitz [1]:

“So, Orwell was partly right. The state uses ever more advanced surveillance technology to watch us, and our own ever-greater use of personal technology makes it possible. On the other hand, technology has fundamentally destroyed the state’s ability to control our access to information, and exposed its bureaucracy to unprecedented scrutiny. This may be the death of privacy, but perhaps it’s also the death of secrecy and impunity. In that respect, fortunately, Orwell was wrong. Thanks to technology, Big Brother may be watching us, but we’re watching him too.”

Whether or not society is overall healthier in this state than it was before the technology emerged, I'm undecided, but the powers of surveillance do seem rather more balanced than the dystopian view suggests.

[1] http://a16z.com/2017/05/15/andreessen-primack-dc-tech-policy...

I am not sure I agree (on a certain level) with that quote. On a thread yesterday a discussion about increased surveillance being a two way street played out and the idea from it that struck me the most was that technology is merely a force multiplayer and only increases the power divide. It increases "the people's" ability to hold state actors accountable but not as much as it increases the states ability to watch the populace. Basically I feel like it is likely harder today to hide something from the state than it is for the state to do things in secret.

I think it depends on the country too. Take russia and all the opposition candidates that end up dead.

Most people just find it convenient and don't want to think further. It's so disheartening, I've thought for hours and hours about how to fix this but can't come up with anything. People will be people.

Maybe people need an alternative that is as good, yet not spying on you? A device that won't ever record anything permanently, that won't ever call home / to the cloud.

I don't think we can revert the trend, but maybe at least try and redirect the stream to a solution that is concerned with privacy.

There's one that I know of, but as usual, less developed. Still, probably worth checking out: https://mycroft.ai/

I actually quite like the name of that!

Will not happen until it doesn't have to compete with a free, paid-for-by-spying option. So only if a law's passed outlawing massive, intrusive data collection.

Which will never happen because the government loves the control its surveillance buddies, Microsoft, Google, Amazon, and Apple provide. And the people will keep voting for the politicians who will "protect them" from "threats" like terrorism and drugs.

But at this point, it would be either A) limited in function, B) prohibitively expensive or C) too technically complex since you can't mine the data for advertising money.

The same goes for the Whatsapp dilemma.

I've been watching Star Trek my whole life and to me this is the natural extension of technology.

I can see some people not wanting this for themselves, but why care if I have one?

I've been watching Star Trek as well, but that's a local instance running on the very ship you rely on - and more a 'utility service' kind of thing.

I wouldn't compare that to Google Home (or Alexa or whatever).

1) The current solutions are plain stupid. They impress me about the same way that speech recognition to type a letter in the early 2000s impressed me. Some things work. Most don't.

2) The current solutions are backed by corporations and (as someone that really dislikes all things Apple) among these three only Apple might be considered somewhat trustworthy (they aren't a shop that tries to sell you every product this planet has to offer nor are they the biggest and scariest advertisement company).

I like the Star Trek visions. I'd also like a replicator and a holo deck, but won't argue that a 3d printer and Google Cardboard are kinda there yet.

(Obviously it doesn't make sense to complain about YOU liking these products. I assume the GP feels just cornered by the inexplicable mass appeal/success of these products)

As I wrote above:

Other people not caring about privacy equals governments not caring, equals big brother for everyone, like it or not.

I think it's under-appreciated how shifts in culture and behavior affect the practical liberty of the individual. We worry about government limiting us, but the mass choices of uncoordinated individuals can just as easily curtail our choices, sometimes opening up new ones, yes, but also cutting off others. To the extent that laws shape these things, our choice not to limit certain behavior or liberties can de facto limit some other behavior or liberties, and thanks to coordination problems this can happen even if everyone prefers the liberties they're losing to the ones they're gaining.

If government is the Leviathan, this undirected but quite strict framing of our choices is Cthulhu.

I have one, it's convenient and lets me control my home in what feels like a natural way. Personally, I don't see the downside of having it.

Note; I mean I don't acknowledge a downside from my perspective. I'm fully aware that it's always listening and sending data home when it hears a keyword. According to Google, it will only send voice data back when it hears the keyword. Now if it explicitly goes against its own stated privacy policy, that's a breach of trust I would not be happy with. That said, if they explicitly stated they send all audio back, I'd actually be fine with that too.

I certainly don't want big brother in my home. But my friends and relations visit my home, bringing their ever-listening AI assistants with them? Dare I be rude and ask them to leave big brother behind?

Only you can know if you want to do it or not. But at least when you are with your family or alone at home, you know you are not being spied on (at least not knowingly / voluntarily).

> In 1984 people were freakin' forced to have one.

Huxley always seemed to have a better handle than Orwell did on what makes people tick.

I think they were describing different societies, and the one you're living in just happens to resemble Huxley's more.

Yeah, for folks living in the USSR or East Germany it seems like Orwell was closer to the truth.

From the long view, no. Regimes that use pain as control inevitably break as at a certain point, people will no longer willing give that up. This is history.

Walk down to a local AA meeting and see people who at some point willingly made a decision and who are now, unfortunately controlled by it. This will always exist.

Thats not really the issue.

You are using the internet, you already have a big brother that can see everything you do.

Google at least show you what it have on you. It's a far bigger problem that governments don't.

> A device that records you and sends the data to a corporation! In 1984 people were freakin' forced to have one. In 2017 people WANT to have one.

As predicted by Brave New world.

To tag onto this, my father made my sibling and I read Fahrenheit 451 at one point before he would buy a flat-panel TV.

That's exactly why I liked Brave New World more: it's our own vices that do us in.

Amazing Iron Maiden album.

May I ask why that makes you angry? I see that you might not understand other people's motivation, but why does that cause this emotional reaction?

Because I'm a human, not a robot. Because I deeply care about society. I care about the world my child is growing up in. I want it to be a good place to live.

Other people not caring about privacy equals governments not caring, equals big brother for everyone, like it or not.

Agreed.

Also personally I don't like to give order by yelling, OK Google, Alexa, make me a sandwich...

Don't most households own multiple smartphones? What makes them fundamentally different?

You can disable those. The thing is: smartphones are more than dumb boxes that listen to you all the time. So you don't want to remove them completely from your life, yet still want to keep your privacy.

You can disable a Google Home device just as easily, and the rest of your comment is just you declaring by fiat that phones are OK because you personally find them useful, and the home devices are bad because you personally don't find them useful.

If someone finds their home device to be "more than a dumb box" and doesn't want to remove it from their life, you're at an impasse. No one granted you the authority to just decide where everyone else gets to draw their own personal line.

Personally, I let my phone's battery die, then charge it the next day.

It has nowhere near 24/7 uptime.

Also, I don't carry the phone around with me everywhere.

I shutter for your lithium ions.

Those are for calls. They need a microphone, you cannot do calls without that.

I'd argue that those (should not) transmit audio data to any random company, but then I've never understood what Google Now/Google Assist or whatever it's called nor what Siri is about..

"I just struggle with understanding what's wrong with people these days."

On one hand, it is fundamental human nature (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brave_New_World#Comparisons_wi...).

On the other hand, it is a trade off. Your post to HN can be mined, aggregated in a similar manner. Even a level before that, your access to the internet can be mined, aggregated and a profile built of you by your ISP. You are voluntarily cooperating with that are you not?

Landline phones had mics too :) How do we know that those could not be remotely activated? After all, we did not possess the same level of power to monitor the government back then. As noted somewhere above.

I personally think there is an age where people decide; everything that existed before now is useful and nice, and everything new is evil. Kind of a technological puberty.

The old ones had a mechanical switch that was easy to inspect.

Drop the handset on the recently inspected switch, the mic ain't connected to nothin'.

Sheep will be sheep no matter the generation.