I’ve dealt with many people from Amazon in my professional life and based on their handling of customer data I believe Amazon take seriously the trust customers place with them. Amazon believe the Alexa and Echo platform will grow their retail and service relationships with customers.
I don’t think they would throw that away to fool us all into believing a fake mute button - for what?
On the other hand, it's important to verify claims, and Amazon should be very happy about this verification. It proves that their claim could be trusted. Some other conclusion could have just as easily been true.
The fact that they used a hardware switch means they did it the right way.
By contrast my Logitech camera has a light to show when the camera is running - but the light can be disabled via their software which makes me uncomfortable with fully trusting the light.
No one I know would trust a software mute.
Not that I think you made the wrong choice, I think it's a good one, but I'm just curious how many consumers you thought would actually understand it, or how that information would be distributed
As an example, we were very clear and upfront in the original product detail page that users' voices went to the cloud, as we were not trying to hide that. Even so, some people tried to play a bit of "gotcha" and fear-mongering about the fact, as though we were not being transparent.
Particularly with software auto-updates, a software mute is simply untrustworthy.
#doppler4lyfe
Still proud of this product!
That they went ahead and implemented in hardware is encouraging. Someone over there took the feature seriously enough to take it this far. I am sure it added cost over a software-only solution.
True, but what is the incentive for Amazon to behave given their dominant market position? Customers might not have viable alternatives.
You really believe this? Still?
Amazon is so big that the loss of outraged users is a rounding error to them. Ford used to let cars off the line missing bolts. They're still here because their pockets are deep enough to wait until people forget.
I assume it's like reading the side effects of medication and think they are other people's problems somehow. How do people trade core privacy for setting the alarm or getting the weather report by voice command. I don't respect them. Same with off the shelf IP cameras in one's bedroom. Hello?
Air gapped speech recognition and FOSS, or this should never, ever become a thing.
Of course they both have microphones hooked to data centers, but the Alexas/Echos are almost worthless without the microphone enabled. Many people I know have turned off listening for trigger words on their phone.
That being said, I have a HomePod that I have to manually press the touch button on top for it to listen. I use it for music, an occasional family conference call and occasional for generic assistant stuff like weather.
I tried a Google Home but couldn't get it configured in that mode -- listen on physical touch only (that was 3-4 years ago). And doubly couldn't get it setup without deep integration into a google account. The HomePod complains occasionally that it can't answer because it hasn't been personalized to an account, but is otherwise totally fine operating without access to my every inner thought (web/location history, etc.).
I'm just as concerned about every modern car essentially being a microphone hooked to a datacenter on wheels. And new TVs. And a few refrigerators and kids toys. And light switches. At least phones (well iPhones -- haven't used the last few Android versions) are easy to setup without listening enabled. And on iPhones it's opt-in during the setup process (the Siri checkbox is default on, but you are prompted to decide with no other confusing decisions on the screen at the same time).
What's the difference? You trust it not to listen without the button press, I trust it to not listen without the wake word. To think that the distinction is meaningful is wishful thinking.
The only way to be sure these devices aren't listening to you is to not have one at all. Or, as the person in this article did, take it apart and de-cap the chips to make sure.
In the case of smart phones, I think it's a mistake to assume that switching some of these functions off in the settings will actually have the desired effect: preventing the phone from recording audio without making the owner aware of this recording.
Yes.
I can't really get away without having a cell phone. The slope has been slippery on this one; when I purchased my first smart phone this wasn't a big concern (but maybe it should have been). It's been several years and it's a bigger sacrifice, in my opinion, to give up a smart phone. Even if I wanted to, my employer might buy one for me, for instance.
I do think the expectation today is that everyone have a smart phone.
Back on topic, it's not a phones intended purpose to snitch on you, they usually do not listen into the room, without extremely malicious manipulation, and more so you simply can not realistically avoid having a phone in your reach, today. If I were talking business I would probably leave the phone outside too, for that matter, and I don't trust cheap communication hardware, either.
In real life drawing analogies by principle doesn't make for a good argument, most of the time, as life is adaptation and compromise, not a path through a logical circuit.
Do you honestly not see an obvious difference between a phone and an Amazon wired device intended to record and remotely analyze what's happening in the room?
I sure don't, from a security viewpoint. They are both cloud-connected microphones. Google is just as likely as Amazon to listen in surreptitiously. And my phone is 1000x more vulnerable to someone _other than_ Google listening in due to installable apps.
Do you honestly not see that there's no fundamental difference between the two? A CPU, ram, storage, wireless modems, microphones and a battery all running under software we don't control.
As far as intent, it's not possible to be sure about intent, you have to judge based on the information we have which is the features and capabilities of the device.
It's routine that I will just leave an item and forget where it is several times a day that I take it almost for granted up until it causes me to be late going out the door. Now I can yell "Find my phone" (or wallet, keys, etc) and my phone is there. Yes I could go to my computer, go to the find my phone page, but there's just more friction and these issues happen to me all the time. The more things I link up to voice control, the more options I have in regards to accomplish a task, and sometimes voice is the most efficient means of going about it.
I can get entertainment like a podcast or music without a single screen being involved, which given that I inherently have low impulse control, is a nice separation of things. Or I can again, find my stuff without looking at any screens. Voice input can act as a lesser evil to screens.
Saying to just use FOSS and air gaps, because of how immature such solutions are, is effectively saying you shouldn't use these systems at all. The benefits of using the systems that exist today makes it so that the average person, like yourself, judge me less because I appear more punctual and less forgetful and more productive and better rested and so on. Being human, you are likely to disrespect me for being late and disorganized no matter what my excuse is, whereas you'll only disrespect me for using voice assistants if you know I'm using them, so it's a winning tradeoff. Just like how some will judge me for taking medication but only if they know I'm using it.
But I have Amazon smart speakers in every room (on their own network that can see the network my smart lights are on.) They're great. I don't worry about Amazon listening in.
What we need a completely independent organisation like EFF to audit and certify basic guarantees around privacy/safety. The companies should also prefer this route as it would give take some heat off in EU/Congress without creating bureaucratic bottlenecks.
One problem I see that such an organisation can act as front for the cartel to prevent entry of new startups/players.
I'm pretty sure we already have laws to ensure honest advertising. The problem is that it's hard to tell the difference between malice and incompetence.
Of course, technically, not even this hardwired circuit is complete proof that there is no trickery going on. If Amazon really wanted, they could simply hide a second mic at some other place inside the device.
I think the only solution that would really solve this was public auditing of the whole device.
It's not a problem without prior art though, and other industries have had to find solutions such as certifications, regulatory bodies etc. Think of medicine, food, vehicle saftey standards and the like. I'm not an electrical engineer but I can trust my fridge to draw what it says it will, because I know it's been through the regulatory processes to get to market and be stickered with the 4 star energy rating.
I think at this point we might need a privacy and ethics regulator for technology, with a certification program.
The real problem is that we don't have something analogous for microphones. The best we could do is some kind of humming device that you could turn on near the sensor that would drown out any noises it might otherwise pick up (and also be unobtrusive).
It is definitely not low cost.
In the hardware business, we count pennies. We count fractions of pennies with the costs of various components.
A shutter means at least one extra mechanical part, and a more complicated housing and increased assembly time at the factory.
You might look at a piece of plastic and think it is only a few pennies of plastic. But by the time you get it integrated into the product, and shipped out to consumers, it can add up to a dollar of cost. That really eats into the profits of low-margin hardware.
Only if enough consumers care about hardware shutters does it make business sense to include it. If most don't, and it is not a part of their buying decision making, then you're just throwing away money. Especially if it leads to increased post-sales tech support costs: ("My camera doesn't work! Is the shutter closed? Oh it is!").
Note that this is not an argument not to have hardware shutters. They are a good thing. But they come at a significant (to the final price) cost.
In any case, I don't think that's relevant to my point: I specifically said "important for laptops to permit a physical slider to block the integrated camera". That phrasing was deliberate: you don't want to trust the OEM's slider in the first place, just be able to add you own.
So, am I addressing a strawman? What OEM impedes you from adding a slider? Well, actually, Apple says it's not recommended to use a webcam cover because of how they designed it. That is poor design and security practice.
Isn't it also the most obvious thing?
To be confident something is true, you need to confirm it. How else would the universe and human perception work?
Still, this is not how humans usually interact. I trust there is no poison in my food without analysing it, I trust people to no shot me as I walk in the street, I trust the shopkeeper to accept that I have paid if the card reader says so… As ethno points out [1], some social work is needed here for our collective trust no to be misguided. Crucially, if the social work to buy trust does no exist, it entirely falls on you.
I consider myself that trusting the Echo (or other home assistance devices) is too much work for the meager benefit it provides.
In my opinion, it's only in the case of electronic and software products where we are supposed to take so much functioning of the device on faith. Perhaps this is a bad idea and we need an organization to vet these products as well.
To be clear, I am not saying we should trust Amazon & Co, I'm saying that if that's the level of trust we have with home assistance devices, why even bother with the stuff ?