Comment by illumin8 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by illumin8 | Hacker News Reader

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Contrast this to Amazon: during design of the original Echo at Lab126, an engineering discussion took place where they determined that implementing the mute function in software would be less expensive in terms of component requirements than implementing a physical disconnect of the mic circuit.

The engineering team refused to take the less expensive route, and insisted that the mute button physically disconnect the circuit, so that no future engineering team could decide to stealth "unmute" the microphone through software.

To this day, you can disassemble an Amazon Echo device and you will find a physical disconnect of the mic circuitry when you push the mute button. Don't want an "always listening" smart speaker? Just keep it muted, and a red LED circle informs you that the mic is physically disconnected.

I'm proud of the approach that Amazon takes to privacy. Privacy of customer data is considered the most important thing to Amazon, and this customer obsession (the #1 leadership principle) permeates the organization.

Disclaimer: I'm a principal engineer at Amazon.

In this story, it was only lower-level engineers that took a stand for user privacy. It was them against everyone above them at Amazon. Doesn't sound like Amazon-the-company deserves credit.

Update to clarify reasons for this characterization: Parent used the words "refused" and "insisted," which strongly suggest conflict between the pro-privacy engineers and others at Amazon involved in the project. And "so that no future engineering team could decide to stealth 'unmute'" suggests a lack of trust in long-term company management. Nothing in this story supports the later statement that "Privacy of customer data is considered the most important thing to Amazon."

The company fully backed their decision. They did not have to fight anyone.

This type of product design decision happens all the time. Whenever you're considering component costs, you have to evaluate all of the options. You're mischaracterizing it as a fight between engineers and management.

That's not fair. First of all, the OP didn't say it was only "lower level engineers", it could have been the entire engineering team, for all we know.

And second, Amazon did the right thing and listened to them, when they didn't have to. They could have given the project to a different team, reassigned people, or even fired them.

Instead, they had the sense to listen to their engineers, which was the right thing to do.

Doesn't matter if it's lower-level engineers or a janitor, So long as they worked at Amazon and Amazon finally agreed. Amazon deserves credit.

is this the same company that's shilling Rekogition to police departments and governments?

for some reason i'm thinking this point of view isn't held company wide.

>> shilling Rekogition to police departments and governments

That's a rather poor choice of words. I prefer "helping police departments catch criminals", myself. 'cuz, you know, police departments exist for a reason.

Both of these POVs are a bit extreme versus actual real-life implementation.

Police have a legitimate, important societal purpose, and have historically abused and over-surveilled minority populations in a way that's highly problematic.

There's a compelling use case for facial recognition in law enforcement. There's also a compelling case that it needs to be closely scrutinized and regulated.

Where I come from the police used to hunt and kill "undesirables", and bury the bodies up in the mountains. One of the first things my dad taught me was how to recognize those long skinny headlights on a cop car, you had to learn to avoid them at all costs to survive if you didn't have the appropriate skin color.

They aren't always good guys, and it's ok to have legitimate concerns about cooperation with law enforcement.

Police departments exist to perpetuate the interests of the state and those in power. They exist to defend private property. I would strongly disagree with your assertion especially in America. :)

> The engineering team refused to take the less expensive route, and insisted that the mute button physically disconnect the circuit, so that no future engineering team could decide to stealth "unmute" the microphone through software.

Who are these engineers? Have they ever spoken publicly about this stance?

That was a bit more dramatic than it should have been. The engineering team said a software mute button would be a security issue due to back door enabling, so they implemented it as hardware. This wasn't really dramatic, engineers said no and the higher-ups respected their expertise.

Good job. Thank you/the team for standing up for good basic principles.

Does this apply to the Sonos one, also? It has Alexa integration, but is a sonos project.

I don't believe this applies to any 3rd party products. Those manufacturers have to make their own design decisions.

One anecdote I remember from the Steve Jobs biography was how he'd discovered that a speaker could also be used as a microphone. Is there any risk of some of these devices using that capability to convert their audio output tech into audio input tech?

I don't have a direct answer to your question, but it piqued my curiosity so I did a quick search. I found this informative little post:

https://security.stackexchange.com/questions/154343/can-a-sp...

Some on-chip gyros/accelerometers can also work as microphones – and may be even harder to separate those via an external cut-off switch.

So can capacitors - a common factor to avoid in amplifier design - and at the limit, so can just about any semiconductor.

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