A paranoid guide to fighting the 'bugging epidemic' | Hacker News Reader

A paranoid guide to fighting the 'bugging epidemic'

nytimes.com

43 pointsbookofjoe21 comments

> Tiny cameras have been found in places where they shouldn’t be, like Airbnb rentals, public bathrooms and gym locker rooms. So often, in fact, that security experts warn that we are in the throes of a “bugging epidemic.”

Even more concerning, I feel, is cameras in places where they "should" be, like on every street corner, in stores, or in drones. If you place a camera surreptitiously in a place it shouldn't be and someone finds it, you're going to jail, somewhat limiting their use. There are no consequences to the latter, which means they're everywhere and people have come to accept them, meaning they may end up more invasive overall.

I don't have any problems with security cameras that simply store their video for a few weeks and then delete it. In the case of a crime or other real need for the data the owner can pull that bit of video off.

The problem comes with cameras that will be constantly monitored by ai with facial recognition networked up to some mega tracking datacenter. We have no way of knowing which one the camera operates at.

I am seriously interested in a device which will spam garbage to the smart devices in my house so that the companies monitoring my data will not be able to extract anything useful.

E.g. some kind of speech synthesizer which mimics my voice and sends engineered requests to Alexa while I'm not around.

E.g. A GPS spoofer that will occasionally tell my phone that I am visiting places I don't.

E.g. A browser extension to send random browsing info to trackers.

The second two examples I can get onboard with. But the Alexa example? Throw the thing out the window. Is it really so useful that it’s worth having a separate device to talk to it?

Check out TrackMeNot for browser tracking obfuscation. https://github.com/vtoubiana/TrackMeNot

If/when I become bedridden, I imagine Alexa would be quite useful. Until then, no, I'll settle for heaving my sorry carcass out of the chair and pushing a button instead.

Having an Alexa and trying to maintain a positive feeling about privacy by spoofing it showcases one of the fundamental conflicts of our time: they want you to give up the rights yourself. Of course they will never tell you the full extent of what happens to your data or inform you in clear terms about changes — they just give you enough so you can lie to yourself about it probably not beeing soo bad.

In my eyes one of the few solutions you really have is to DIY these things, but while this has the pro of teaching you a lot, it costs time, patience and requires skill levels not everybody might have just to end up with something that might work okayish (depending on skill and time invested).

This is why I believe this has to be a law thing. Just like in other areas you can safely assume certain product standards (e.g. you can buy food in the supermarket and it won’t contain hard drugs that make you addicted) and these kinds of guarantuees need to exist for digital services as well. There needs to be a clear standard for what they are allowed to do and what not without me explicitly voiding those assumptions.

Sounds like you'd want this, but for it to truly work, you could also end up suffering. For example:

> A GPS spoofer that will occasionally tell my phone that I am visiting places I don't.

Sure, but the next time you want to see your Google Maps history, you'll question your own sanity.

> some kind of speech synthesizer which mimics my voice and sends engineered requests to Alexa while I'm not around.

Sure, but then you're liable for everything your spoofer says if it truly isn't distinguishable from your own voice. If it is distinguishable, then it defeats the purpose of hiding your true behavior in the first place.

> Sure, but then you're liable for everything your spoofer says if it truly isn't distinguishable from your own voice.

Liable in what sense? What kind of liability are you thinking about here?

The next time you or your spoofer jokes about blowing up a Mosque or you commit an illegal act. Alexa will call the cops on you.

All of Alexa's requests are monitored for keywords, it's pretty much the most amazing surveillance system ever.

Here's one example https://vt.co/news/us/amazon-alexa-calls-911-after-hearing-m...

That article says that he told it “did you call the sherifs?” ...then it called the sherif.

> Sure, but the next time you want to see your Google Maps history, you'll question your own sanity.

Indeed I'd question my sanity, as I can usually remember roughly where I've been yesterday and don't see much use in looking up where I'd been a year ago. Of course I might be missing out on something, since I don't use Google Maps at all. (I prefer OpenStreetMap.)

In what kind of situation is being able to look up one's own location history actually useful?

The major use-case IMO is for alibis if you get wrongly accused of a crime.

I once had a legal use for my location history that wasn't quite as dramatic. Someone damaged our car while it was parked. When the police asked at what time we arrived, I just pulled up my location history.

I was a bit frustrated when the police wrote down "around 8" instead of 8:14. :)

> In what kind of situation is being able to look up one's own location history actually useful?

  1. Remembering the name of a restaurant you went to two weeks ago.
  2. Tracing your steps to look for something you might have lost.
  3. Proving you were somewhere at a certain time.
  4. Documenting a trip you took in the past.

The more personal information you generate, the more technology can help you. But if that information is tarnished or does not exist, then so too are the insights and benefits.

And in the many years I have had a smartphone I have never once had a reason to look up my location history.

You're a single data point, so I'm not sure what your conclusion could even be.

That android should not be by default tracking every user and sending a of that data to google since most users aren't aware it is even happening and most users have no use for this data. They know where they have been.

You're cherrypicking. A user does not need to know what or how much data they produce in order for that data to do useful work for them. I've already explained why a recent location history could be useful to a location-suggestion algorithm.

It's useful when you start typing the name of a business into Maps and it auto-completes "Pla" into "Planet Pooch Dog Grooming" (where I take the dog frequently.) It can show me that result, instead of the 100 other businesses & addresses in the area that start with those 3 letters, because of this data.

>Sure, but then you're liable for everything your spoofer says

I've actually wondered about the potential for this as performance art. Spoof some peoples voices, and have a bunch of Alexas read the script to some kind of play to each other. The play, of course, worded in such a way to trigger some Alexa's "report to law enforcement" features.

Let’s not forget about smart phones with always on microphones, voice assistant speakers, IoT devices, and laptop webcams. What a world we’ve built!

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