
Google banned from listening to Google Home recordings for three months in EU - olivegarten
https://techerati.com/news-hub/german-regulator-bans-google-from-listening-to-google-home-recordings-for-three-months-across-europe/
======
adrianmonk
I feel like this part of the article is a bit misleading:

> _it emerged the company had been listening to intimate conversations of
> customers, even when users hadn’t activated the device by saying the phrase
> “Ok Google”._ [ ... ] _In a blog post, Google later admitted the claims were
> accurate._

While not outright stating it, this makes it sound as if Google admitted that
listening regardless of whether the user said "OK Google".

Here's what the blog post ([https://www.blog.google/products/assistant/more-
information-...](https://www.blog.google/products/assistant/more-information-
about-our-processes-safeguard-speech-data/)) actually says:

> _The Google Assistant only sends audio to Google after your device detects
> that you’re interacting with the Assistant—for example, by saying “Hey
> Google”_ [ ... ] _Rarely, devices that have the Google Assistant built in
> may experience what we call a “false accept.”_

~~~
la_barba
Yeah, that is a bit of a stretch, but still, there are a number of problems
here. Google trumpets its artificial "intelligence" capabilities as they
always do, and it eventually comes out that that its not "just a harmless
computer algorithm" thats looking at your email or photos or whatnot, they
give access to humans too. Oh, but only in a small tiny negligible, really
just forget about this tiny tiny number, of cases.

"[...] confirmed that he worked for a sub-contractor, paid by Google, to
transcribe and annotate recordings, including presumptions of the speaker's
age and other demographics."[1]

We don't collect any personal data. Its just non-personal stuff to feed into
our algorithm. Promise!

Also Google: "We partner with language experts around the world to improve
speech technology by transcribing a small set of queries - this work is
critical to developing technology that powers products like the Google
Assistant"[1]

Seriously? What kind of BS logic is that. Let me just snoop on everyone so
that we can improve our products to make more money, after we just made money
selling you the product. They should be paying people to sign up for a study
where they put in a listening device in their home to train their algorithm.
Or purchase voice data from a corpus. Now they can ethically listen in on
whatever they want and whenever they want. Instead, they just bury this under
some opaque lawyerly language and spy on everyone. Is this the same company
that purports to employ the smartest genius level talent?

[1] [https://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/3078773/google-
ass...](https://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/3078773/google-assistant-
voice-data-third-party-transcription)

~~~
justinclift
> Let me just snoop on everyone so that we can improve our products to make
> more money ...

MS uses exactly the same twisted logic for their telemetry collection. :/

~~~
la_barba
Agreed, Any telemetry that touches personal documents or data should be an
opt-in.

