You probably have on in your pocket already, is the thing.
(I agree though, I don't want this in my house, and I turned off the "Ok Google" functionality on my phone)
(I agree though, I don't want this in my house, and I turned off the "Ok Google" functionality on my phone)
I guess what it comes down to is that while I recognize that I sacrifice a measure of potential for privacy with my phone, I judge the benefits to be worth it. I can't say the same for Echo/Home, and it somehow feels qualitatively different in that phones aren't designed to be always-on microphones constantly processing audio to send it off to a server somewhere else for analysis.
To be honest, I trust that Google and Amazon are probably acting in my best interests with these products, for the most part. I don't think it's all an evil conspiracy to get microphones and cameras into my inner sanctum or anything. I believe it's very possible for a product like this to be mutually beneficial for provider and consumer. And hey, if a state actor wants to surveil me, it's going to happen regardless of these devices being in my house. But as we've learned just how fragile security is, it seems foolish to me to rush off to install black-box monitoring devices all over and just hope that they do what we think they are doing. I love the idea of these things, but they are such potentially powerful windows into our lives that I think that we have to be really sure the value they provide is worth the security risk they entail.
The scenario that worries me is that years from now, Google and Amazon may be coerced into turning over what I said yesterday to a corrupt government fishing through the past for word-crime. And boy-howdy, it turns out they recorded everything and retained it forever. Surprise!
Amazon has said that they're only recording what happens after the hotword is triggered. That's why they can't do custom hotwords - listening for "hey alexa" is built right into the hardware and it doesn't do anything until it hears that. Unless they're flat-out lying, they can't provide any information about what you said yesterday to anybody because they don't have that data.
For most people, its a permanent fixture on their person: people these days leave their home more than they leave their phone.
> Echo/Home are explicitly audio surveillance devices, though ostensibly benevolent in their design.
Echo/Home are no more explicitly audio surveillance devices than cell phones are.
> I can't say the same for Echo/Home, and it somehow feels qualitatively different in that phones aren't designed to be always-on microphones constantly processing audio to send it off to a server somewhere else for analysis.
Modern phones (considering the hardware and software stack together) are, in fact, designed to do just that, both Siri and Google Now voice recognition works (though it is, IIRC, disabled-by-default in the latter case) from the lock screen. Its just as always-on as Echo/Home.
With something like Echo / Home, the always-on power source makes it technologically feasible for it to always be listening to you as well, without needing to wake up to a keyword. Now, they may as a feature only start processing based on a keyword, but you don't have the "comfort" of knowing that it is technological limitation rather than a software decision that may or may not be in your control.
Let's be real. You don't keep your phone in a Faraday bag and you probably never will.
I know some technophiles coworkers who have an Echo, and I couldn't for the life of me trust Amazon, Google (or even Apple) with potentially the always-on stream of audio from my house.
It just seems so obvious to me that I don't know why no one has done it. I guess needing a new button makes it harder to sell, but this seems like a great use case for smartwatches.
I'm not at all happy with the trade-off any more.
I've got a tablet, both cameras taped over. Killing the mics would be a Good Thing.
Sigh.
I'm aware of the risk and hypocrisy. I'm also far from happy with it (I increasingly dislike Android, Samsung, and with varying levels, Google).
But given the balance of something I can power down, that isn't always on me, and the portability and cost benefits over an alternative laptop, its a far-less-than-perfect satisficing solution for now.
I've come to resent carrying a phone all the time, I rarely answer it and resent that "I tried ringing but you didn't answer!" whine you get as though it's beyond incredulous that you would ever not answer the phone.
As a comms device, on a sufficiently fast WiFi/broadband connection, it's also useful. I've not done that often, but it's been done, and I was impressed.
The OS is a mess in many particulars.
It handles external storage poorly. It doesn't multi-taske well. Multi-window mode is specific to application. The default shell userland is unforgiveably anemic (Termux, one of a few available add-ons is much better). Lack of comprehensive privacy controls, or insight, is a huge issue.
The app "ecosystem" is pathologically broken. I've written on this at G+, my feeling is it needs to be scrapped.
Samsung's own tweaks are also pretty bad. The fact that the device is entirely locked down from a bootloader perspective (it was a bit of a panic on-the-road buy) has become beyond annoying. Inability to remove certain stock apps is a major concern.
Google's "Play" store is beyond annoying.
I'm watching for news of Firefox OS and Ubuntu's mobile offerings. I'm not particularly hopeful. A small laptop _might_ be a suitable replacement, if I can park Linux on it (without systemd).
Mostly it's a very effective advertisement against itself.
And more generally: the tech world very, very, very badly needs to find a non-advertising business model.
I've got one and although it is not ready for the general public yet, it's a little gem for us free software fans.
16 GB storage is far, far, far too little. That should be upgradeable. The problem with microSD expansion is vfat. That's crippled on both capacity and permissions. I'd also prefer encryptable removeable media.
Speakers. I want my devices to NOT have them. I'll attach via Bluetooth or a wired headset/mic combo. I'd also prefer cameras be shuttered. That's both for protection (lenses get scratched) and privacy.
Other than that, yes, it's headed the way I'd like things to go.
Input devices should be clearly and unambiguously disableable, or external.
When the first Android device shipped, all internal storage was dedicated to OS and apps. But OEMs wanted to advertise that they had X gigs onboard. And thus they started partitioning internal storage, and mounting one part as if it was removable memory.
Problem is that apps could not go on removable memory, so people bought a device only to find that a few apps was enough to max out that side of the partition.
And thus Google came up with "move to SD".
But then that got into trouble with USB data transfers, as the "SD" had to be unmounted on the Android side before it could be mounted by the PC over the cable.
So somewhere around 3.x Google adopted MTP, and union mounts to emulate a FAT partitioned SD (for legacy reasons).
But at the same time they introduced new access permissions, but reserved write permission to actual removable storage for system level apps. Thus you could use your PC to transfer music and such onto a SD, but you could not officially do so from within Android. Various OEMs, Samsung for example, modified the permissions file so that their devices retained the old behavior.
Since then Google has in fits and starts modified the MTP support so that it can also be used by internal apps to write to removable storage without having to deal with permissions. At the same time they have tried to lock down access to the "SD" even further as various dumb app devs have used it to store sensitive user data for any other app to see.
Thing is that going via the MTP subsystem invites DRM, as the apps talk to a database that then talk to the FS. And that database can be incomplete, or the subsystem can outright lie to the apps. And it so happens that Google adopted MTP along the same time as they introduced Play Music and Play Movies.
Then again, the consumer UI/UX designers have long been tilting the windmills over the whole files and folders thing. For some reason they see it as a failure of UX, and thus something that needs to be at least hidden from the user, if not outright abolished. See numerous attempts at replacing files and folders with a grand database of metadata, that will "magically" pull out everything you have stored related to that company project or aunt Tillie as needed.