Hacker News Reader

Comment by cortesoft | Hacker News Reader

I mean, that is technically impossible? You have to record a voice to be able to analyze it to determine if the voice is of a person that consented.

This basically would outlaw ANY device that is voice activated, because it has to constantly be 'recording' to be able to be activated.

View on HN

No, it's not. We can use facial recognition, we can use voice signatures. It doesn't even have to be recorded, as the device setup can record those signatures of consenting users and refuse to transmit or save any data that does not match those signatures.

Tell me, which of these do Alexa and the like perform?

Would it be more difficult? Yes! This is the reality for any company where rights and laws actually matter. If you can't abide, you can't release. Very simple.

Ok, you are using a different definition of recording than me. I would say your definition is "recorded and stored"

I was thinking that in order to fingerprint a voice, you have to "record" it to a digital format that you can process to determine if it is the user who has consented. Even if it is deleted after processing, it was still "recorded" for a few milliseconds at least.

Does the law as written make that distinction? Would recording locally to check a fingerprint not still break the law?

the law on "copying" was abused by the music industry to try to get royalties on the buffering in dismal music devices and computers. The law eventually caught up and now there is no copyright violation in transient cacheing and buffering. I imagine the same will eventually happen for de minimums "recording" used to figure out if you may record or not (e.g. face recognition, voice printing and the like).

You don't need to record it, or at least you only need to record locally the part being spoken while you're doing the analysis; if they've consented you upload the recorded section and then realtime info; if they aren't one that consented you discard the cached snippet and stop recording that person.

Right, but that is still recording, even if it is only temporary and local.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com