
Siri records fights, doctor’s appointments, and sex, and contractors hear it - vatueil
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2019/07/siri-records-fights-doctors-appointments-and-sex-and-contractors-hear-it/
======
romwell
> “These recordings are accompanied by user data showing location, contact
> details, and app data.”

This should be in the title.

Media was focusing on contractors listening to Google Assistant snippets not
long ago — and those were _anonymized_. Private and identifying information
was in the snippets, not metadata (the article mentioned this).

~~~
zaroth
I think the story is possibly confusing this bit. When recorded, and
transmitted to Apple, the location, Apple ID, etc. of the recording device is
known. The same (similar) would be true for any voice assistant.

When the contractors are reviewing snippets for training purposes, this data
is anonymized. In the case of Apple;

> _Apple has said that it takes steps to protect users from being connected
> with the recordings sent to contractors. The audio is not linked to an Apple
> ID and less than 1% of daily Siri activations are reviewed. "_

~~~
occamrazor
1% is an unexpectedly high number.

~~~
eitland
In fairness gp says _less than_ 1%.

~~~
benj111
I would expect 'less than 1%' to be 0.1% to 0.99%. 0.1% is still a high
figure.

~~~
schuke
I would bet it’s closer to 0.99% otherwise wouldn’t they have phrased it
something like “slightly more than 0.1%” to make it sound smaller?

~~~
Symmetry
If I was talking to a reporter and the real number was .01% I would still say
"less than 1%" to make sure I was properly understood. The whole reason we use
percentages and say "one percent" instead of "point zero one" is that some
people tend to get confused with decimals but not with integers.

EDIT: And part of this is just how we say things. "Twenty" is just easier to
parse in a conversation than "Two Oh" even though the later is perfectly
comprehensible when written out.

~~~
jklein11
1% vs .01% would be overstating the truth by 100x. If you were a spokesperson
for apple you would want to make that number seem as small as possible.

------
forgotmyhnacc
Many HNers have a weird belief that Apple is somehow a privacy focused
company, despite it actually being no more private than Facebook or Google.

The main concern people have (voice assistants beside) is data gathering for
ads, which Apple does for their app search, among other places. Also, their
data centers are in China, which gives Chinese authorities full access to
their iCloud account.

If you want privacy, don't rely on corporations. Host everything yourself, and
encrypt your data at rest and in flight.

~~~
Aloha
Their datacenter for Chinese customers are in china.

I expect them to take reasonable precautions, mistakes do get made. I'm not a
user of voice assistants, I'd rather use the device directly, its faster
anyhow.

To quote from the article "Voice assistants appear to be yet another instance
where a technology has been developed and adopted faster than its consequences
have been fully thought-out."

~~~
j2bax
There are at least a few instances where using a voice assistant is far faster
than using the device directly. An example that I use frequently is something
like “hey Siri remind me to change my furnace filter in 3 months”. In many
cases using a voice command/shortcut is quicker than navigating to an app and
locating the ui to do it.

~~~
kemayo
I'm particularly fond of "hey Siri, when I get home remind me to take out the
trash" as a shortcut.

------
jtbayly
I think the most important piece of info isn't even in this article. The Verge
article I submitted[0] had this quote:

"Additionally, as The Guardian notes, while Amazon and Google allow customers
to opt out of some uses of their recordings, Apple doesn’t offer a similar
privacy protecting option, outside of disabling Siri entirely. That’s a
particularly bad look, given that Apple has built so much of its reputation on
selling itself as the privacy company that defends your data in ways that
Google and Amazon don’t."

I was shocked by this because I opt out of sending analysis data to Apple at
setup of my devices. I figured that would also prevent sending Siri
recordings. Apparently not, though.

[0]: [https://www.theverge.com/2019/7/26/8932064/apple-siri-
privat...](https://www.theverge.com/2019/7/26/8932064/apple-siri-private-
conversation-recording-explanation-alexa-google-assistant)

~~~
akseln
Does disabling Siri severely affect accessibility and usability for physically
impaired people?

Also how is this on other platforms, are disabled people forced to unfairly
compromise their privacy to properly use IT today?

------
jbverschoor
The thing is, I don’t even want siri to do anything smart.

It needs to: dial a number, and keep a lot of frequently dialed people so it
doesn’t think I meant someone else

Set the alarm / timer

Understand the street I want to navigate to.

The whole smart thing, looking up things on the internet or contextualized
answers don’t work, and they’re frustrating as hell.

Also, I want Siri to work offline. So basically I want voice recognition with
a short set of instructions I’m happy to memorize.

~~~
linuxftw
Sadly, most phones used to have this exact technology before the 'ok, google'
stuff became ubiquitous. My older android did exactly these things and it was
great. I could even send text messages that weren't terrible.

------
xiphias2
It would be great if people could review what voice recordings were sent to
the companies past week. After that people could make a decision whether they
want to continue using the product.

~~~
amelius
This would be a security issue. What if your SO's private conversations are
reported to you?

~~~
jtbayly
You seem to be implying it is safer to send a recording from my phone to a
huge corporation where it will be heard by any number of people I don't know
than sending the recording to myself, the owner of that phone.

Surely not. Perhaps that's not what you meant?

~~~
amelius
I suppose, if given the choice, most people would prefer their most intimate
secrets to be leaked to a total stranger than to the people closest to them.
Of course, both situations are bad, but the latter is arguably worse.

------
Aloha
The original Guardian article makes it clearer that the metadata isnt
accompanying the audio, this article does not. That said, this article closes
with a poignant and telling quote.

"Voice assistants appear to be yet another instance where a technology has
been developed and adopted faster than its consequences have been fully
thought-out."

------
theshadowknows
One thing that happens to me is sometimes I’ll accidentally send people random
texts from my watch while I sleep. I’ve started putting it in “water mode” and
also airplane mode just before I go to bed to help keep that from happening.
All I need is to accidentally text my boss an audio from having sex with my
wife.

------
bredren
This may be tangential but I’m regularly amazed at how bad Siri is at basic
things still.

I’ll try to use it for things in front of guests on the HomePod and Siri is
embarrassing half of the time

~~~
Aloha
I've never quite gotten the allure of voice assistants myself, it just seems
like a really frustrating way to use a computer.

~~~
ben_w
I use it sometimes. For household use I pretty much agree: my partner has
Alexa set up to turn lights on and off, and it only works about 70% of the
time. Apple doesn’t, I think, say it’s Siri which is running this keyboard
which I am using right now to “write” this content, but I assume the voice
recognition engine is the same one, and it’s significantly more useful than
Alexa. For example the only edits I have made while dictating this have been
where I change my mind about what I wanted to write, not any transcription
errors. It is certainly much more useful, when I wish to take notes, than the
on-screen keyboard.

~~~
sorokod
"my partner has Alexa set up to turn lights on and off"

Do you really need the help of a megacorp to turn lights on and off?

~~~
bredren
Smart light systems are really good. You can be in bed and say “goodnight” and
all of your lights turn off. It is convenient. Schedules are also helpful. I
use them on grow bulbs for plants.

~~~
sorokod
> You can be in bed and say “goodnight” and all of your lights turn off

Well that is qute, but the flip side is that FANGs and gods know who else may
be listening in.

> Schedules are also helpful. I use them on grow bulbs for plants.

Timers for turning appliances on and off have been around for decades.

------
writepub
Apple is marginally better than the rest at privacy, but their marketing
centers around it. If you're naive enough to fall for their marketing, this
should be a wake up call.

This, and the zero resistance Apple offers China, when they demand iCloud data
of Chinese citizens.

~~~
chronogram
> If you're naive enough to fall for their marketing, this should be a wake up
> call.

I admit that I was naive enough..

------
justapassenger
Apple is playing fairly dangerous game, positioning themselves as some kind of
saint, or tron, fighting for the user.

Firing shots at all tech companies for collecting data can backfire at them.
Like it does in this case. It shows that they’re likely overselling what they
can do without your data, and to deliver they your data anyway - they just try
to be quiet about it.

Of course there are different level of data collection, and I’m not making a
call if what Apple is doing here is bad. But they have spent last few years
building narrative that any data is bad, as it allowed them to differentiate
themselves.

They built their marketing around it in last few years. But it’s likely that
they won’t be able to deliver on it. With AI being hot and constantly needing
more data to improve it, Apple needs to get this data somehow, and their
narrative makes it hard, unless they’re willing to mislead their customers.

~~~
thekyle
I have a theory that Apple chose the privacy route because it was their only
serious way to compete. Apple simply doesn't have the AI chops to compete with
Google.

They were already years behind in ML when they started their privacy marketing
and possibility even further behind now. Since they can't compete on ML
features their only other option was to compete on privacy.

Apple is taking the calculated risk that people will be willing to sacrifice
features in exchange better privacy. If they're right it will pay off
massively. If they're wrong it could be very bad for them.

------
eob123
The librem cannot come fast enough.

~~~
indalo
I'm overdue for a phone and I am at this moment reaching religious faith
levels of hope for this librem phone.

please release it!

------
gremlinsinc
Why doesn't Apple et al let users know what they're sending and at least have
a way to view and delete sensitive data before it's reviewed. Maybe store it
online a month before it's reviewed and pop up a notification that you have
Siri data queued for review. Most people would listen if it's something simple
like directions would leave it but anything private they could remove.

Or have an audio queue when audio is being recorded some heartbeat like click
so every few seconds while recording you hear a click and are like oh shit and
can tell Siri not to send that recording.

------
IshKebab
Let's do this again next month for Alexa!

------
Havoc
Ordered a nice far field microphone and raspberry 4. Gonna try to build my own
voice assistant with Mycroft.

~~~
jwatt
Does Mycroft need a network connection for voice recognition to work? I wasn't
able to conclusively tell from a quick scan of their website but their Get
Started document[1] says "Mycroft devices need to be paired with your Mycroft
Home account to work", which sounds like it does.

I had been intending to do something similar to you, but using Snips[2] since
it supposedly has on-device voice recognition (and use of Rust, which I like).

1\. [https://mycroft.ai/get-started/](https://mycroft.ai/get-started/) 2\.
[https://docs.snips.ai/getting-started](https://docs.snips.ai/getting-started)

~~~
Vendan
The Mycroft Home stuff covers Google Speech to Text, so I'm betting that
overall speech processing is done in the cloud, though I'm sure wake-word
detection is done locally.

[https://mycroft.ai/documentation/home-mycroft-ai-
pairing/](https://mycroft.ai/documentation/home-mycroft-ai-pairing/)

~~~
Havoc
Yeah - but not google - they switched to mozilla deepspeech. You can run
deepspeech locally, but needs something reasonably powerful

------
mettamage
Wait, isn't it possible to research this by setting up a hotspot that shows
the traffic on your computer?

Or would it be an issue because it's encrypted? Couldn't you then still at
least correlate traffic with sound/voice?

~~~
jtbayly
Audio has to be sent to do the recognition. The only question is whether the
company then turns around and saves it and sends it for further analysis. You
can't track that step.

------
guessmyname
Dupe:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20537960](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20537960)

------
mcdramamean
Someone needs to invent a soundproof phone case. When it's closed; no light or
sound is let it.

------
firecall
Quelle surprise; Tim Cook has acted in a hypercritical and sanctimonious
fashion to further the capitalist aims of his company.

I am disappointed in Apple. Very.

------
forofdo
> Voice assistants appear to be yet another instance where a technology has
> been developed and adopted faster than its consequences have been fully
> thought-out.

What a rubbish. This is totally expected and thought-out. It's even worse,
this is probably the #1 reason voice assistants exist at all, to provide these
companies with even more valuable data. I cannot imagine the existence of Siri
(or any other voice assistent) without a business model behind it.

~~~
kdmccormick
Um, could the business model be to provide value to users in order to make the
systems they are loaded on more attractive products?

Sure, a huge part of the Siri/Alexa/Assistant business model is probably data
collection. But does that mean _all_ voice assistants _ever_ inherently have
no real end-user value? I don't regularly use them, but I would be very happy
to find a reliable way to change music and send messages with my voice while
driving.

Before the era of mass data harvesting, arguably useful utilities like the MS
Office suite were loaded onto OSs to make users more likely to stay on that
platform.

------
droithomme
If Siri reviewers encounter evidence of certain crimes such as murder, sex
trafficking, pedophilia, or domestic abuse, it is obvious they have a basic
moral duty to report the crime and turn over the evidence to investigators.

~~~
matt-attack
As an aside, it’s highly ignorant to refer to pedophilia as a “crime”. Please
be aware that pedophilia is not in fact a crime at all. It in fact refers to
the _attraction_ one had toward pre-pubescent children. Be aware that this is
_entirely_ different than being a child rapist. I assume you meant to say
“child rapists” in your statement.

In the same way it’s generally accepted that homosexuals and heterosexuals
don’t _choose_ their sexual identity, neither do pedophiles. One could say
they’re “cursed” to be given that sexual preference they were born with. Since
most are not both pedophiles _and_ rapists, most are doomed to live a life of
unfulfilled attraction. The majority of pedophiles recognize that rape is
wrong and would never consider it. To equate pedophilia and rape is flawed as
equating all neck-beards as obviously rapists (since presumably they’re so
sexually repulsive they could never get a woman to agree to consensual sex).
Obviously the majority of sexually repulsive males don’t just feel entitled to
rape at will, neither do pedophiles.

~~~
dao-
> One could say they’re “cursed” to be given that sexual preference they were
> born with.

Were they, though? I did some light research for a university course many
years ago and from what I understand/remember, many pedophiles were themselves
abused in their childhood, which can really mess up a developing brain. Still
cursed, just in a slightly different even more tragic way.

~~~
matt-attack
> Were they though?

I suspect the propensity to rape is what is learned. I’d question whether the
pure attraction is formed by the abuse you describe.

We should recall those a decade ago, suggesting that homosexuality was a
“disorder” needing to be cured. A disorder implying that it was _caused_ by
some incident. Clearly that line of thinking is outdated and offensive to
many.

Either way the source is of the attraction is moot. The fact is we live
amongst pedophiles and there’s no reason they should be reviled.

~~~
throwanem
CSA survivor here. Can you _fucking not?_

Maybe you're even right, and there's no reason they should be reviled. But
there's no reason they should be _normalized_ , either. Not to themselves, not
to anyone else.

Your comparison with homosexuality is false and invidious, because
homosexuality exists among consenting adults and can therefore be expressed
without harm. This is not true of pedophilia. Nor will it ever be. So your
efforts at normalization cannot lead to anything other than an increased
likelihood of harm. Having experienced that harm firsthand on multiple
occasions, I have no problem whatsoever in saying that it is heinous to act in
ways which make it more likely that others will suffer the same.

~~~
matt-attack
> homosexuality exists among consenting adults

No it doesn't. I'm gay, and I could be on a desert island with not a soul in
sight, or I could be the last man alive on planet Earth and I will still be
gay. I do not need _anyone_ else to have my identity. This is because
homosexuality is a trait of _one_ person and his/her attraction. I am
attracted to men whether or not there is a consenting man present on the
planet.

Just like you may be heterosexual but never have a date in your life. Not
being able to attract a partner does not cause you to change who you're
attracted to. One does have to stop calling oneself heterosexual just because
they're ugly and no one will go out with them. You see? There is no consent.
Because there isn't _anyone_ else.

You've missed the entire point of my post. It's this: __One 's attraction
needs to be de-coupled from the sex that a person may or may not partake in.
__You 've conflated attraction and the act of sex.

Pedophilia is about the former not the latter.

~~~
throwanem
Even granting everything you've just said, which I do only for the sake of
argument, I see no good end to normalizing the idea that even pedophilia _qua_
attraction, as you have it, is in any way _okay_.

Sure, I can see where that'd be a cross to bear. Bearing it in public silence,
with the support of others who share your affliction and are willing to offer
understanding, seems like a strongly preferable option. I don't understand
what you hope to gain by this crusade, and I am unconcerned with whatever
judgment you may make of me for saying that I doubt the rectitude of your
motives in pursuing it. Even the people who molested me never argued to anyone
that the urge which helped move them to do so _wasn 't a problem_. They'd be
as horrified and disgusted as I am to hear you argue that it's not. They were
ashamed not only of what they'd done, but also of why they'd done it. They
should have been, too. But even after what they did to me, I have more respect
for them than for you.

(I'm gay, too. Don't conflate that with this. We had enough problems being
associated with NAMBLA through big-tent naïveté back decades ago, and no one
will thank you or think well of you for arguing we should make the same
damnfool mistake another time.)

~~~
dragonwriter
> I see no good end to normalizing the idea that even pedophilia qua
> attraction, as you have it, is in any way okay.

Just as with drug and alcohol addiction, destigmatizing the condition as a
moral failing removes a barrier to acknowledgement and seeking (and
continuing) treatment, which reduces the likelihood and severity of the
condition producing socially harmful behaviors.

In the case of pedophilia, I think that's a pretty big win, but obviously
that's a matter of the relative priority of expressing moral revulsion
compared to preventing harmful action.

> They were ashamed not only of what they'd done, but also of why they'd done
> it.

Clearly that shame associated with the orientation didn't do any good in
preventing the harmful action, so maybe it's worth considering whether the
stigma around the orientation is useful or counterproductive. “People feel
shane about having pedophilic orientation but still go out and molest
children” doesn't seem to me to be as compelling an argument as you seem to
think it is for the social utility of the stigma it references.

~~~
throwanem
Even I don't believe that having pedophilia makes someone a _bad person_ ,
irredeemable. It's not a moral failing; it's a dangerous paraphilia. And so I
don't think you are wrong in saying that reducing barriers to treatment is
worthwhile, and that a carefully titrated degree of destigmatization is likely
to serve that end.

The person with whom I've been arguing in this thread has shown no sign yet
that his thesis is like your own. His argument hasn't been about treatment. It
has instead been that no more doubt, concern, or askance should by default
attach to someone with pedophilia than to, for example, someone who is gay.
That's not mere destigmatization. That's outright normalization, and I won't
apologize for my reaction to it any more than I would apologize for demanding
the same justification from someone who came begging similar consideration at
par for those "cursed" with the urge to rape grown adults.

------
rgovostes
Apple has extensively annotated iOS with understandable information about how
data is used. The user has the ability to review this info when they enable
Hey Siri, or any time in the Siri & Search settings. It lists the data that is
sent to Apple when you activate Siri.

Personally, I’ve only ever seen Hey Siri falsely activate once, from something
a character on TV said. (I could get Ok, Google to trigger on a friend’s phone
by talking in a ridiculous falsetto that sounded nothing like the friend’s
voice.) Per the law of large numbers I’m sure it does trigger in doctors’
offices and so on but I’m skeptical that it’s a widespread problem.

I do use Siri to dictate text messages all the time while I’m driving, and I’m
sure I’d be embarrassed by one or two that human reviewers have heard.

~~~
hug
Siri activates almost any time I say “are you serious?!”, which is a phrase I
say with some regularity.

I’ve definitely had it activated a number of times by the TV or when watching
YouTube or Twitch.

~~~
freehunter
I had it trigger while watching an episode of Archer. I even went back and
played it a few more times to double check it wasn’t a fluke.

~~~
dhimes
I no longer see a way to turn Siri "off", only to not respond to "hey Siri"
but rather the home button. Does this mean she's not listening unless I've
activated, or is she listening anyway? (I can't seem to help
anthropomorphizing Siri it seems...).

~~~
pkroll
If you turn off all the options, you'll get a dialog that asks if you want to
turn Siri off altogether. (As I just did.)

~~~
dhimes
Excellent! Thank you. (They also promised to remove the info they use to
analyze my requests from their servers).

