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Comment by grey-area | Hacker News Reader

Insane paranoia is hearing "cloud-based audio processing device and service" and instantly jumping to "the NSA" absent a single damned fact to support that conclusion.

Cell phones are routinely used as listening devices, what makes you think this device would not be? If I were a government agency intent on omniscience (i.e. the NSA), this device, along with televisions and computers with always-on microphones controlled remotely, would be a very welcome development - all it takes is one secret order to the company concerned, with a warrant covering the entire country, and their entire product line is useful for surveillance on demand.

Given the world we live in, where GCHQ for example claims the right to capture all information, including privileged communications between lawyer and client, wondering about how our devices protect against government intrusion is not insane paranoia at all.

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Yeah, but if anyone caught wind of it there would be hell to pay wouldn't there? You'd need some sort of secret court so that you could control exactly who has knowledge of what's going on and effectively subvert democracy. Good luck with that. You'd have to be pretty paranoid to believe the US would allow that kind of back room governing to go on.

You forgot your irony tags...

>Cell phones are routinely used as listening devices //

Citation? I'm really interested, presumably there's a hacker convention talk or somesuch where they install a hidden service on a standard phone and upload all voice input even when the phone is off?

Clearly I use burner non-smart phones for my criminal activities (that's a joke!) so they're going to have to use other means. Obviously they can still sniff the data at the operator for phone calls.

It's an interesting video for other reasons, but at 1:47 here Binney mentions it:

http://www.nytimes.com/video/opinion/100000001733041/the-pro...

Here's another article about real-world use:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/3522137.stm

Daniel Ellsberg [Pentagon Papers whistle-blower]: "Somebody told me that they can listen to what we're saying by my having this cellphone {waves what looks like iPhone} even though it's turned off."

William Binney [ex-NSA]: "Yes. [... goes off on a tangent about data analysis]

He doesn't really mention it. Indeed the vid is considering electronic communications and information which is put in to the public sphere. Other than that one question which Binney responds to only with "Yes" there's no other mention of private audio being covertly sniffed.

The BBC article is very sparse and jumps from being able to eavesdrop mobile->basestation and decrypt that to being able to listen in on all conversations within range of a phone. Clearly ludicrous.

I don't at all doubt that phones can be modified remotely to covertly listen and that some phones could enable this when switched off (though that seems unlikely to meet with normal design requirements, it seems that this covert listening would need to be designed in). I guess maybe you could make "off" only appear to be off whilst listening - my phone gets hot when doing anything extended like recording a talk or something and drains the battery quite a lot - even with the screen off. Seems that using this sort of surveillance on a widescale is highly unlikely.

>"all it takes is one secret order to the company concerned, with a warrant covering the entire country, and their entire product line is useful for surveillance on demand" [grey-area, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8569217]

Only, IMO, if it's already been designed in and you can hide the power usage (and data-store usage).

Anything better?

Only, IMO, if it's already been designed in and you can hide the power usage (and data-store usage).

That quote was about this Amazon device anyway, which doesn't have power usage or data usage requirements that would be noticed by the average user if recording was only for significant audio. You've jumped from there to cell phones.

The access is blanket given warrants like the FISA verizon one, and there's nothing to stop targeted surveillance like that which we know goes on on gmail/skype/etc accounts when requested. To be clear, I'm not suggesting that cell phones or this device are all constantly recording what we do and transmitting direct to the NSA right now, but that they could in a targeted manner be used to do so if someone became of interest, and that this Amazon device would be a particularly powerful bug given the great microphones, constant power and fixed location in a home.

Re cell phones, I don't think it would be very hard to present a blank screen and wake up only on significant audio to record/broadcast on a hacked phone. I'm sure a paranoid user would eventually notice, but the capability is certainly there - probably that sort of thing is very rare and sophisticated, it's not something I worry about personally, but I do think it is quite possible. If you control the software on the device, I don't see why it seems impossible to you that you'd be able to control the phone completely and use it as an audio bug (except when battery removed etc). You wouldn't even have to rely on faking switch-off - the majority of people leave their phone on and carry it around.

Anything better?

Well, I'm inclined to believe Binney (and others) when they explicitly say cellphones are used as bugs, but here's another example for you of actual use, they are not hard to find:

http://news.cnet.com/FBI-taps-cell-phone-mic-as-eavesdroppin...

I'm not suggesting that cell phones or this device are all constantly recording what we do and transmitting direct to the NSA right now

Thank you for the clarification, and I apologize if my tone earlier was excessively acerbic - the angle you just mentioned appears to be an undertone surrounding this discussion.

but that they could in a targeted manner be used to do so if someone became of interest

Here's where we diverge: This is an argument that can be applied to any internet-connected device, anywhere, anytime. We're dealing with a group of people that have proven themselves adept at twisting a device's programming to their own ends.

So: Why is this so special? Why are so many people sitting here in this thread slagging on this particular internet-connected mic when most of us carry one with us and work in front of one every single day?

I'm sure I'm not alone in growing weary of hearing the constant "NSA!!" bogeyman brought up anytime a new device featuring a microphone comes out. There's no new information here, no interesting discussion, just the same usual "X might do Y" scaremongering. With the previous paragraph in mind, these concerns ring hypocritical in addition to just hollow.

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