
Google Home Breaks Up Domestic Dispute by Calling the Police - ronack
http://gizmodo.com/google-home-breaks-up-domestic-dispute-by-calling-the-p-1796755905
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morganvachon
While I'm happy this was a (reasonably) positive outcome, my concern is that a
family is watching an action movie or police procedural, a character on TV
says "call 911" or "call the cops!", and suddenly a SWAT team is breaking down
the door and pointing guns at everyone, maybe even shooting the family dog who
rightfully barks at the intruders.

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dpkonofa
Yeah... I'm curious what part of the conversation triggered the Google Home
action because, typically, there's a trigger word/phrase or something that has
to be used. If the trigger phrase is the standard "OK Google" or something
along those lines, then I wonder what was said before "Call the sheriff" that
was incorrectly interpreted as "OK Google" (or whatever the actual phrase
was).

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morganvachon
It's my understanding that you can also say "Hey Google" to issue commands,
and it's possible in this case that in the heated discussion the device heard
"Hey did you..." as "Hey Google". I've activated my iPhone's Siri assistant
before by saying "Hey Sir" to a boss who walked into my office.

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DrScump

      Google Home called 911 and the operator heard a confrontation in the background
    

I wasn't aware that it was legal for any unattended device to directly call
911 by itself in any USA jurisdiction. That's why alarm companies have human
operators that discern whether local 911 is to be called.

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closeparen
This is a matter of getting the police to take it seriously and actually
respond, and mitigating nuisance fees for calling with too many false alarms.
The laws don't (generally) prohibit calling the police without a human in the
loop, you'll just get better results if you have a human in the loop.

It's actually soon to be mandatory for new cars to automatically dial 911
using their onboard GSM when they detect a collision.

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greglindahl
Tesla currently has a human in the loop -- they'll call the owner a few
minutes after a collision is detected.

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EADGBE
_Correction: ABC News has amended and editor’s note to its story clarifying
that the Bernalillo County Sheriff’s Department did not specify the type of
smart device that called them to the home. An earlier version of this post
cited ABC’s story and claimed a Google Home called police._

They were house sitting. It's not a stretch to think that homeowners had other
smart devices to listen in and see what's going on remotely, and call police
if necessary. Nest cam possibly? It works with Google Home.

Also, there was a daughter (no mention of age) who may have been able to
trigger an alarm system or call herself (though a traditional call negates the
"smart device" claim by the sheriff's department).

I'm concerned if smart devices will start intervening with human arguments.
When they're necessary, it's indeed a lifesaver. When they're not it can
really break up otherwise healthy homes and cause a lot of stress.

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mike_h
The numbers around domestic violence are staggering:

[http://ncadv.org/learn-more/statistics](http://ncadv.org/learn-
more/statistics)

It's also a notorious blind spot for law enforcement – even when restraining
orders are issued, they're nearly unenforceable, and once the aggressor is in
your house you're a sitting duck.

Ambient audio-UI devices could be the biggest technological break ever in
monitoring for the presence and emotional state of the subject of a
restraining order. It's not obvious like a security camera or alarm system,
and opt-in to a monitoring app would be invisible.

