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Comment by 0xmohit | Hacker News Reader

    Yesterday, news broke that Google has been stealth
    downloading audio listeners onto every computer that runs
    Chrome, and transmits audio data back to Google. Effectively,
    this means that Google had taken itself the right to listen
    to every conversation in every room that runs Chrome
    somewhere, without any kind of consent from the people
    eavesdropped on. In official statements, Google shrugged off
    the practice with what amounts to “we can do that”.

Source: Google Chrome Listening In To Your Room Shows The Importance Of Privacy Defense In Depth

https://www.privateinternetaccess.com/blog/2015/06/google-ch...

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"Listening in" is inaccurate. "Ok Google" was opt-in only, and did not record users without consent. Chromium downloaded but didn't run the binary blob.

Previous discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9724409

including Google's perspective: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9735795

Why download it in the first place?

A mistaken include in a build file, most likely.

I've removed all sorts of dumb stuff slowing down the build that was included by accident or unnecessarily on my project at work. Never attribute to malice ...

> A mistaken include in a build file, most likely.

Yea, "whoops we accidentally downloaded a surveillance device on your system!"... If that sort of negligence can happen, what else is the browser currently doing, or capable of doing in the future, "accidentally"?

Not to make light of the point you're making, but by far and large customers actively want this.

There's a large market opportunity right now for voice controlled systems. Controlling those systems with your voice means they have to be able to listen to you. Full stop.

While I think it's going to take a long time before we truly understand the repercussions of those systems (and I want to be clear, I say that not as an omen of fear and doom, but as a literal statement: We don't understand exactly what level of monitoring we're ok with or is appropriate as a society) I think complaining that google is acting in a solely nefarious way by attempting to incorporate voice control into the browser is disingenuous.

Windows (the literal glass ones) also allow people to see into your home. They let any random stranger on the street walk right up and view the things you own, as well as yourself and your family. But by far and large we've decided we like windows enough that the privacy loss is worth it.

You can shutter windows when you like

It was an intentional download so that Chromium users could use "Ok Google".

Even worse, though the comments I was replying to seem to indicate that you are wrong?

craftyguy was just speculating.

"Chromium does download hotword-x86-64.nexe on startup, but it has been carefully designed as an opt-in feature"

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9735795

> Never attribute to malice ...

This principle is heuristical and as such can result in down-side when one doesn't actually resolve the uncertainty within the heuristic (read: guess) with detailed evidence.

The obvious downside here is that you can accumulate a bunch of risks which each independently satisfy the heuristic, and so don't seem like risks, but in aggregate can result in a swing towards the opposite of what it says.

Meaning, yeah, sure, stupid thing added to the codebase. But with the accumulation of all the poor decisions Google has made surrounding privacy, is Google really that fucking idiotic, or, what?

Can you say what you mean in plainer words? Are you saying that the combination of many such incidents likely isn't an accident, but intentional?

Yes, it's maybe intentional, and just using the rule "Never attribute to malice that which cane be attributed" as an indication that there isn't any malice is stupid because it's getting you to change your mind about the kind of thing going on without evidence.

It's like saying Occam's Razor always gives you the right analysis of how things are. No, it only gives you the best guess given that you've taken everything possible into account. But here it's worse, because it's not taking into account all of the other times Google has infringed a common-sense understanding of privacy.

Whether or not it's more likely that Google is intentionally crossing this line, rather than it's just merely possible that they're intentionally doing it, depends on other information. In this case because it's unlikely that Google is really that's stupid, because they're good engineers with strong QC practices, so it's more like that there is some kind of intention involved. Not to be "evil" but to deliberately do things that deny the social value of avoiding surveillance.

Why would I assume that malicious actions in the world are outnumbered by stupid ones?

I always have my sound input/mic levels set to zero in settings. They can't bypass that.

I think they could do that if they wanted, if you're entering your root password during the install.

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