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Comment by madez | Hacker News Reader

I wish it were socially accepted to tell people to turn their Android device off while they are in company. I wish I could tell people that visit me to turn their device off or put it into rf and sound shielded containers.

I don't mind people using computers and their powers to ease their lives. I don't want to deny them that just because they are next to me or in my home. I just don't want them to use that power to collect and track and surveil everything at all times around them, wittingly or unwittinlgy.

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I have voice-activated assistant on my droid turned off, meanwhile Siri is active on all iDevices, and everyone with a laptop at your place is a mole.

Do you expect to altogether prevent people from bringing computing devices into your home? If you are not a state target, then that is just silly. Focus your malcontent on the real bad actors, not their victims.

The various states would love to have as much data as they can on every citizen. Therefore, we're all state targets.

Language is useless if we don't set boundaries.

In this case, as you already know despite wanting to twist its meaning, "State target" refers to someone whom the state is specifically, actively expending resources in order to target. Target being the key word. Being part of a giant nation-wide dragnet doesn't make you a target.

Actually this is interesting. Some US states require two party consent for recording. Doesn't that make a phone in your pocket illegal in those states, unless you say "I have a phone in my pocket, and it's recording."

Let's travel to such a state and find out for ourselves. We'll flip a coin on who gets to be the defendant.

> I have voice-activated assistant on my droid turned off, meanwhile Siri is active on all iDevices

This is not true, voice-activated Siri is a setting as well and turned off on my iPhone.

Also, 'Hey Siri' is supposedly processed locally on the phone using the Neural Engine part of Apples custom ARM chip so it should only upload voice data after you have said 'Hey Siri' or held down the home button to activate it. You can test this if you put the phone in airplane mode or go somewhere with no reception and say 'hey siri', it still recognises that you want to ask it something but just presents a message saying 'internet not available'

This is true on Pixel as well. It would be too slow otherwise.

Why are you carving out Android instead of all smartphones?

Also, you can turn off OK google in Android, although they don't make it as easy as they should.

What is actually the correct way to do this?

I don't use Android myself (I use https://ubports.com/ - it's great and you should try it), but several times I've had other people ask me to turn it off, and the best I can come up with is just dragging the Google search box off the home screen. But there's no feedback to suggest it's not still listening, only that shouting "OK GOOGLE" at the phone no longer does anything.

Hopefully somebody else will reply to you because it's been a while for me and I forget the details. There are settings in the Google App itself, settings in your Google Account in general and also I denied the relevant recording permissions for various google apps.

I'm using Lineage at the moment. I'd like to ditch Android entirely but I'm not sure ubports is where it needs to be yet. Unfortunately the open non-Android mobile OS's seem to die before they reach maturity. Obviously it's tough on them if they're competing with an existing app ecosystem, as they are.

Flashing it with something that has no google services is the most correct way to make sure you are not being spied on.

Actually, nevermind, I'll just go home again. Its been fun meeting you old friend

I assume you ask that because you are aware that any device with the capabilities of a smartphone can be made into a powerful surveillance device by whoever the entity is that has control over it.

I see variations of that argument very often. Its essence goes like this:

A: This is a proven threat.

B: But so could be this and that.

A: Right, could be.

B: But we can't get rid of them all, so let's just do nothing.

Here person B somehow convinced themselves that doing anything in that regard to be futile because they can't solve this class of problems once and for all.

There is a distinction between possible threats on one side and an existing threat based on evidence on the other side.

Any device with the capabilities of a smartphone can be nefarious, but doesn't have to be. Any Android device certainly is.

So I'd like to tell people to turn off their Android devices, but may they keep using their open hardware and software phone, because I don't see them as the threat, but the entity that controls their Android device.

They are most likely asking because the main competitor to Android devices also has an always listening assistant.

Capability, yes. Correct me if I'm wrong but I don't believe it's enabled by default?

Siri has been enabled by default since iOS 9[0].

[0] http://ios9news.net/setup-hey-siri/

The always-listening portion is not. Also “enabled by default” still requires active user consent and agreement to plain English privacy terms. It is a step that cannot be missed when setting up the phone.

"Voice Match", the always-listening functionality of Google Assistant, also needs to be enabled. It requires training to your particular voice in order to make it more difficult for someone else to try to access your information using the feature. When being enabled a warning regarding the potential security implications of doing so is presented.

Are you suggesting there's proof that Google Assistant on Android devices is always listening even if it's turned off in settings?

I would agree with the open hard-/software point, but that does not at all answer why you are purposely not mentioning the second most popular phone OS.

>I just don't want them to use that power to collect and track and surveil everything at all times around them

Unfortunately, the trend is to stick a camera and microphone (and compute/network stack) on every consumer device sold to you, including TVs and refrigerators. Not sure what the solution is, since the vendors can make a plausible argument for the convenience provided by voice control and additional features enabled by object detection. Perhaps some combination of local (rather than cloud) inferencing, immediate deletion of data, and privacy laws that clearly assign ownership of data to the consumer and dramatically limit what telemetry data can be sent back?

> Not sure what the solution is

A soldering iron?

We recently remodeled our kitchen and updated appliances. One microwave we looked at had Alexa built-in. I couldn't think of a single scenario where I would interact with my microwave without standing right in front of it.

I could maybe see it's usefulness for certain elderly or disabled people but I couldn't figure out why the majority of the population would ever want that.

With a little marketing, you can turn it into a key feature for your tinder app. Using the gesture recognition radar and microphone in the android phone near the bed to collect sexual performance statistics.

This is acceptable in some circles in certain circumstances.

Probably because it feels really bizarre to carve out one specific OS for a whole a suite of devices which all have the same basic capabilities.

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