Alexa Is in Households–and Amazon Is Losing Billions

Re:Alexa Is in Households–and Amazon Is Losing Billions by ysacfanboi on Thursday July 25, 2024 @08:43AM (#41067991)

To be sure, it's not shadowy. You can track awarded contracts. You can track employment of persons from 3-5 letter agencies into private sector. You can look on Amazon Science page from 2019, where plans for "ambient intelligence" begin.

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Re:Alexa Is in Households–and Amazon Is Losing Billions by bryananderson on Thursday July 25, 2024 @01:22PM (#41071106)

If you’re right, they did a stellar job of hiding it from the engineers working on the devices!

Or maybe I’m one of the deep state cutouts. One never knows for sure.

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Re:Alexa Is in Households–and Amazon Is Losing Billions by 3np on Friday July 26, 2024 @06:09AM (#41077370)

Crazy true story: ANOM.

Engineers thought they were building a totally above-water secure corporate internal messaging app and service.

Actual users and customers were mostly organized crime.

Unbeknownst to anyone byut the founder and their lawyer, the whole thing was backdoored and all messages were forwarded in cleartext to the FBI (supposedly they started dark, got caught by the feds on something and struck a deal). They had an entire team of analysts with purpose-built tooling just to digest the material. Who knows what the same teams are working on today...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Trojan_Shield

https://www.theverge.com/2024/5/23/24163389/joseph-cox-dark-...

Put that next to the Snowden leaks and increasing global tensions - is the probability horizon widening?

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