nakedcapitalism | As the Philadelphia meetup, I got to chat at some length with a
reader who had a considerable high end IT background, including at some
cutting-edge firms, and now has a job in the Beltway where he hangs out
with military-surveillance types. He gave me some distressing
information on the state of snooping technology, and as we’ll get to
shortly, is particularly alarmed about the new “home assistants” like
Amazon Echo and Google Home.
He pointed out that surveillance technology is more advanced than
most people realize, and that lots of money and “talent” continues to be
thrown at it. For instance, some spooky technologies are already
decades old. Forgive me if this is old hat to readers:
Edward Snowden has disabled the GPS, camera, and microphone on his cell phone to reduce his exposure. As most readers probably know, both the microphone and the camera can be turned on even when the phone has been turned off. He uses headphones to make calls. This makes the recent phone design trend away from headphone jacks look particularly nefarious.
“Laser microphones” can capture conversations by shining a laser on a window pane and interpreting the vibrations. However, this isn’t really a cause for worry since there are easier ways to spy on meetings.
With a voice recording (think a hostage tape), analysts can determine the room size, number of people in the room, and even make a stab at the size and placement of objects, particularly if they get more than one recording from the same site.
But what really got this reader worked up was Amazon’s Echo, the
device that allows users to give voice instructions to a device that
will tell your TV to stream video or audio. order from Amazon or other
participating vendors, provide answers to simple search queries, like
“Tell me the weather,” perform simple calculations, and allow you to
order around smart devices in your home that are on the networks. like
tell your coffee maker to make some coffee. He said, “I’d never take one
of them out of the box.”
He was at a party recently with about 15-20 people when the host
decided to show off her Echo. She called across the room, “Alexa, tell
me the capital of Wisconsin,” and Alexa dutifully responded.
Based on his knowledge of other technologies, here is what he argues was happening:
The Echo was able to pick a voice out of a crowd engaged in conversation. That means it is capable of singling out individual voice. That means it has been identifying individual voices, tagging the as “Unidentified voice 1″, Unidentified voice 2” and so on. It has already associated the voices of its owners, and if they have set up profiles for other family members, for them as well, so it knows who goes with those voices.
Those voices may be unidentified now, but as more and more voice data is being collected or provided voluntarily, people will be able to be connected to their voice. And more and more recording is being done in public places.
So now think of that party I was at. At some time in the not too distant future, analysts will be able to make queries like, “Tell me who was within 15 feet of Person X at least eight times in the last six months.” That will produce a reliable list of their family, friends, lovers, and other close associates.
CNET claims that Amazon uploads and retains voice data from the Echo
only when it has been activated by calling to it and stops recording
when the request ends. But given the Snowden revelations that every
camera and microphone in computers and mobile devices can be and are
used as viewing and listening devices even when the owner thinks they
are off, I would not be so trusting. Even if Amazon isn’t listening and
recording at other times, the NSA probably can. CNET adds:
Amazon Echo is always listening. From the moment you wake up Echo to the end of your command, your voice is recorded and transcribed. And then it’s stored on Amazon’s servers….
It’s unclear how long the data is stored, but we do know that it is not anonymized. And, for now, there’s no way to prevent recordings from being saved.
Reread the first paragraph. The Echo has to be listening at all times
in order to respond to the “Alexa” command. So the only question is
whether Amazon or some friendly member of the surveillance state is
recording then too.
This scenario ties into a recent development I find alarming: banks
and other retail financial firms relentlessly offering to let you use
your voice as your identifier if you wind up calling them. Every time I
have called, I have to waste time rejecting their efforts to route me
into that system. I’ve told the customer reps I never want that done but
there is no way to override that even when I call in from a phone
number they recognize as belonging to a customer.
