
Is Anyone Listening to You on Alexa? A Global Team Reviews Audio - minimaxir
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-04-10/is-anyone-listening-to-you-on-alexa-a-global-team-reviews-audio
======
Despegar
Well what a coincidence

[https://twitter.com/matthewstoller/status/111599165366219571...](https://twitter.com/matthewstoller/status/1115991653662195713)

~~~
ipsum2
I don't work for Amazon or Google, but I agree with them in this case.

I read through the full text of the bill
([http://www.ilga.gov/legislation/fulltext.asp?DocName=&Sessio...](http://www.ilga.gov/legislation/fulltext.asp?DocName=&SessionId=108&GA=101&DocTypeId=SB&DocNum=1719&GAID=15&LegID=&SpecSess=&Session=))
and it seems like it sounds like the companies can be sued if one user agrees
to a written policy, but then is used by another user (e.g. a spouse or
sibling or friend), which makes smart speakers basically impossible to exist.
(User identification isn't good enough, and even if it were, mistakes can
happen)

> No private entity may turn on or enable, cause to be turned on or enabled,
> or otherwise use a digital device's microphone to listen for or collect
> information, including spoken words or other audible or inaudible sounds,
> unless a user first agrees to a written policy informing the user[..]

~~~
subway
> which makes smart speakers basically impossible to exist.

Then perhaps in their current form, they shouldn't exist. It's already illegal
to record people without their consent in many states. We shouldn't give up
this right to privacy for a bit of convenience.

~~~
bduerst
By that logic, any device with a microphone and potential to record should not
exist.

Smart speakers are not telephone calls, and even if they were, federal law
only requires consent of one party to record (11 states require all-party
consent).

In public spaces, you generally lose any right to consent to recording. If
you're in someone else's home and they record you with their smart speaker
device, then your beef is with that person whose private property you're being
recorded on. Same as if they were recording you with their phone's camera in
their private residence, vs recording you in a public space.

~~~
ridgeguy
I don’t agree. In your example, being in someone else’s home doesn’t put you
in a public space for purposes of recording consent.

A dumb recording device can’t do something illegal without its owner’s/user’s
affirmative action. If the homeowner uses the recording thing illegally
they’re liable for that use.

In contrast, Alexa and similar devices operate on rules built-in by their
builders. They do what their builders intend, not what applicable law or their
owners require. Liability should rest with the builders.

~~~
bduerst
Right - being in someone else's home is their private residence. If they break
the law using devices there then they are liable, not the device manufacturer.
Maybe I didn't specify that enough.

------
qiqing
A few choice excerpts:

"Sometimes they hear recordings they find upsetting, or possibly criminal. Two
of the workers said they picked up what they believe was a sexual assault.
When something like that happens, they may share the experience in the
internal chat room as a way of relieving stress. Amazon says it has procedures
in place for workers to follow when they hear something distressing, but two
Romania-based employees said that, after requesting guidance for such cases,
they were told it wasn’t Amazon’s job to interfere."

"Amazon, in its marketing and privacy policy materials, doesn’t explicitly say
humans are listening to recordings of some conversations picked up by Alexa.
“We use your requests to Alexa to train our speech recognition and natural
language understanding systems,” the company says in a list of frequently
asked questions."

~~~
mirimir
People sometimes say alarming things as part of sex play.

~~~
starpilot
Sometimes they don't.

~~~
mirimir
Sure.

And if there's any question, that's why we agree on safe words.

------
nathankunicki
I mean, is this really news? We know that Amazon records the clips of what you
say to Alexa for the purposes of improving the recognition. Everything after
you say "Alexa..."

How would they tell whether their models are right or wrong without listening
and having someone compare?

I see nothing in this article to suggest the clips they're listening to are
related to an always-on microphone.

~~~
Anechoic
_Everything after you say "Alexa..."_

It's everything after the product _thinks_ you said "Alexa".

~~~
meowface
That's probably one of the only competitive advantages of Bixby. That's likely
not going to get misheard very often. Though I guess "OK Google" is probably
hard to mishear, too.

~~~
macintux
Not so sure about that. Google has now become a verb, not hard to imagine
false positives.

~~~
meowface
True, I imagine its false positive rate is higher than Bixby's. But I think
the specific combination of "o-kay-goo-gull" probably doesn't clash with too
many things; even when talking about Google. But my Alexa seems to pick up all
sorts of words vaguely sounding like Alexa when I play videos.

~~~
ridgeguy
So I’m sitting in my office, talking with a colleague…

“OK, Google patent 9,876,543 and see if we’re infringing.”

or if my colleague is named Alexa…

“Alexa, let’s hammer those idiots.”

I think the first would wake Google Home. I guess Alexa lets you change the
wake word to ‘echo’ or ‘computer’. It would be better if it let you use
something arbitrary like ‘Rumplestiltskin’

IP leakage or potential misunderstandings don’t seem so improbable to me.
Especially if the listeners in (from OP Bloomberg article) in Costa Rica,
India, or Romania aren’t au courant with “hammer those idiots” as English
idiom in context.

------
tomrod
Hotels in Seattle used for flyins by $bigtechco have Alexas.

I unplugged it for one flyin.

The housekeeper plugged it back in while I was out.

I unplugged it again.

Why in the world would I want any of these smart speakers?

~~~
leetbulb
There are "smart-apartments" going up in my area that have Alexas and whatnot
preinstalled. They're some of the nicer apartments in the area and I'd love to
live there. However, it's against the leasing agreement (which is pretty firm)
to remove / disable them. Insane.

~~~
mirimir
> However, it's against the leasing agreement (which is pretty firm) to remove
> / disable them.

I find that hard to believe. In fact, I can't imagine how it's not illegal. Or
if it's not, how it can remain legal.

~~~
leetbulb
IIRC they are doing some kind of tech study which got them a grant to build
the place. There's an entire suite of things from "smart-solar" to the Alexas.
The thing about the lease is not fact, it's just what the leasing office told
me when I asked about it, I did not read an actual legal document.

~~~
thatoneuser
If that's true then the hype about tech companies being literally Hitler is
pretty much right. That's fucking insane.

------
paulcarroty
Facebook is using smartphones to listen to what people say:
[https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-
tech/ne...](https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-
tech/news/facebook-using-people-s-phones-to-listen-in-on-what-they-re-saying-
claims-professor-a7057526.html)

A lot of people said Facebook ads suggest them products or services debated on
phone calls.

If you have Echo or Kindle Fire TV, guess it can be easily reproduced when
Amazon really listening and analyze your voice.

~~~
skocznymroczny
"A lot of people said" is not enough for a proof. What might be happening, is
that Alice and Bob are friends. Bob spends some time researching a topic, say
looking for a new car of brand X. He calls Alice and tells her about him
wanting to buy a car of brand X. Some time later, Alice sees ads for car of
brand X. Now, it could have been FB listening on the phone call. But there's
another possibility - FB knows that Alice and Bob are friends, and it knows
Bob likes brand X, so it assumes that a friend of Bob will be interested in
brand X.

~~~
paulcarroty
> "A lot of people said" is not enough for a proof.

Agree. Here's something like video proof from BBC:
[https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-35639549](https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-35639549)

~~~
pavel_lishin
This sounds like a technological proof of concept that someone _could_ build
such a thing, and a few anecdotes.

------
jpm_sd
People in the sixties: "I better not say that or the government will wiretap
my house."

Today: "Hey, wiretap, do you have a recipe for pancakes?"

[https://twitter.com/andreacoravos/status/999761670540025856?...](https://twitter.com/andreacoravos/status/999761670540025856?lang=en)

~~~
booleandilemma
The joke doesn’t really make any sense though. How will they know to wiretap
your house because of what you’re saying unless it’s wiretapped already?

~~~
gscott
That is pretty much the way it works now using parallel construction to make
up a reason to make the wiretap official.

------
torqueTorrent
Shouldn't people be having fun with or trolling these always-listening systems
by speaking gibberish, in tongues or reciting custom sea shanties that reenact
purely fictional accounts of high crimes on the open seas?

------
sys_64738
It's usually good for a company to listen to what their customers are saying.
This time, not so much.

------
PherricOxide
It’s called “supervised” machine learning for a reason...

The important part is that tens of millions of people used Alexa everyday and
the utterances are anonymized before being used as training data, so you don’t
know who said what, just that somewhere someone said “blah”.

~~~
jammygit
I'm sure their anonymization policy is un-misleading as their terms around
whether employees listen to Alexa commands

~~~
jstanley
How have we got to the point where someone listening via a microphone inside
my house is fine as long as it's not real-time?

~~~
kevinsundar
Everyone who owns one of these devices has given express permission and must
know. Its fine since they have told Amazon its fine

~~~
happytoexplain
It's antagonistic and obviously misleading to state that a person has given
explicit permission to a company without any further explanation when the
reality you're basing that on is that the permission was in the wording of a
contract that person clicked "agree" on.

You may insist all day that this person was irresponsible in examining the
contract, which I will also disagree with, but claiming that they have given
explicit permission is a lie on your part, and I would have a hard time
believing that you don't know that.

------
whyaduck
Apologies to the poor folks reviewing audio, but the only room my Echo is
allowed in is the bathroom.

~~~
culturestate
No joke, part of me believes that bathrooms (and kitchens, to a lesser degree)
are the first places voice-controlled smart home tech will _really_ take off.
My place is about as smart as it can be today but it's still mostly a novelty.

Once people can perform actually useful tasks with their voice - "hey siri,
turn the shower on to 40 degrees" or "alexa, preheat the oven to 300" \- while
their hands are full doing something else it'll kickstart the whole field.

~~~
julienreszka
This sounds dangerous.

~~~
culturestate
How so? The device could always require confirmation for hazardous commands -
"are you sure you want me to turn the oven on?" Most already do this for e.g.
deleting calendar appointments anyway.

~~~
julienreszka
This could be hacked and burn you.

~~~
culturestate
I mean....there will be a future in which voice data is processed locally
rather than in the cloud. Nobody said this stuff has to be connected to the
internet.

~~~
gourou
Snips' home assistant does local processing

[https://www.home-assistant.io/components/snips/](https://www.home-
assistant.io/components/snips/)

~~~
culturestate
Oooh, thanks for the heads up - I've been playing around with HA but hadn't
seen this component. I'll check it out.

------
throwawayjay01
There's an interesting disconnect from pieces like this and those demanding
that tech companies monitor every piece of content on their networks.

~~~
glhaynes
Is there? Seems like a massive difference between recordings in the privacy of
one’s home and, say, tweets intentionally published to the world.

------
matz1
As a user its not just I don't mind but I expect them to do so, at least to
improve the product.

~~~
AlexandrB
As I bystander, I expect them to never record my voice since it's against my
express wishes. Only one of us ever gets what he wants. Doesn't seem fair.

~~~
cortesoft
This is the case all the time, though. You get recorded by CCTV cameras
everywhere you go, even if you don't want them to.

~~~
baroffoos
In a public place I expect some level of privacy intrusions. CCTV cameras
aren't so bad in public as long as the recordings are only stored for a few
weeks and the data is not analyised unless there is reason to believe it
contains evidence.

For example its acceptable to access the video to prove someone stole from
your store but it is not acceptable to use facial recognition on your cctv to
see who your best customers are.

------
sp527
It is in my opinion absolutely unacceptable that this submission was
originally the article title and that was subsequently changed, presumably to
defuse it. Someone needs to clarify when the norm of using the submission
title applies, when it’s thrown out, why it’s thrown out, and who gets to
decide.

In my opinion, the only sensible approach is for the title policy to be
unilaterally enforced. Any departure from it will invariably involve someone’s
subjective ‘political’ stance on a matter.

As it stands, it looks as if someone at Amazon applied pressure to have this
changed. I really hope that isn’t the case because it’s almost too shady to be
believed.

~~~
whoisjuan
I agree with you to certain extent. I think the problem with titles directly
out of the article is that many times they are bait.

The writers of those articles are purposefully leaving key information out, to
grab people's attention and likely force them to read the entire article to
find the missing information or fulfill the title entice.

In this case I think the change of title is definitely defusing the article,
but it's also giving the key information that was left out in the bait title.

I agree with you because changing the original title feels like a disruption
of the discourse and opens a bias door for whoever changes the title. But, I
also believe that bait titles erode the quality of the content and make harder
to consume and evaluate information. It's a hard problem.

~~~
sp527
I disagree almost entirely on the basis of that being a ludicrous sort of
infantilization, as if this community can’t be trusted to sort fact from
fiction and must instead be coddled towards the “correct” interpretation.

------
dekhn
I think this sort of process, assuming the privacy and security teams have
their say, is an absolutely legitimate part of product improvement.

~~~
neilv
Don't the people developing these speech/AI methods generally have advanced
degrees?

In that case, shouldn't they be aware, from the same grad school training that
prepared them for this work, that a (genuine) human subjects board would
require informed consent for this, at the least?

Do they have informed consent?

~~~
dekhn
I am both an Ex-Googler and a PhD researcher (working with human data). You
don't require informed consent in this case, it's not human subjects research,
and the terms of service cover this already. What is being done is completely
legal and if people don't like it, they're free not to use the service.

~~~
neilv
How is this not human subjects research?

And is modern consumer "terms of service" the human subjects ethical standard
for corporate researchers?

~~~
dekhn
because humans aren't the subject of research here, instead they are data
providers. The alexa product is the subject of research here (and it's not
research, it's product improvement).

I don't understand your question about terms of service and ethics here. I
work with real human subjects research data and it's a completely different
field that does not apply to this situation.

------
rogerdickey
Is this supposed to be sinister? They need to QA the product they are building
so it's a better experience for customers.

------
Simulacra
I accept that Amazon, Google, etc. are likely listening to me with computer
AI, but the fact the employees could pass these around causes some worry. It's
like when I worked my first job at AOL and people would read Rosie O'Donnell's
mail and chats. The human element is more troubling than the AI.

------
davidhyde
The Bloomberg cookie banner is such a dark pattern (literally) it’s laughable.
Can’t tell yes from no with the buttons.

------
api
I was reading a while ago about how many nukes we set off in the 50s and 60s
and thought: what are we doing today that future generations will think "what
were they thinking?"

Surveillance capitalism was the first thing to come to mind.

~~~
gipp
For better or worse, I expect the opposite will happen. Future generations
simply will not have the same expectations and fears around privacy.

The modern Western conceptions of privacy are relatively anomalous from a
historical perspective. There's nothing to stop them from changing again.

~~~
api
What's happening now is totally different from the lack of privacy experienced
in a tribe or a close knit village. This is top down panopticon surveillance
where an opaque eye spies on everyone on behalf of a complex of corporations,
advertisers, criminals, and governments. The lack of privacy in a village was
reciprocal. This is completely asymmetrical and exploitative.

------
OrgNet
Amazon products are the worst if you are concerned about privacy (their
tablets are awful)... Google probably comes at a close 2nd and Huawei maybe
20th? (that's a wild guess but Amazon is hard to beat)

~~~
SmellyGeekBoy
Presumably Apple are the best in your totally impartial and unbiased opinion,
right?

~~~
OrgNet
Apple is better at PR for sure... but we have seen in the past that they lie
about sharing your information with the government...

------
gerbilly
Ai is so pnambic right now.¹

We are flooded with hype about AI, but they seldom mention the armies of
people it takes to get it working and to keep it working.

Even members f the public are recruited to train AI system without their
knowledge, i.e.: captcha google translate suggestions.

Sounds more like a smokescreen for normal human intelligence to me.

1:
[http://www.jargon.net/jargonfile/p/pnambic.html](http://www.jargon.net/jargonfile/p/pnambic.html)

------
lfaoro
Have you thought how funny it is that Amazon is using people in order to train
AI to get a competitive advantage?

~~~
visarga
No, I haven't, because that's how all ML models learn. It's called supervised
learning and supervision comes in the form of labels produced by human
taggers. It's not something special that only Amazon Alexa does. Tagging is as
necessary in ML as data entry in accounting.

------
Arn_Thor
Another reason to support on-device audio processing _cough_ Apple _cough_

------
b_tterc_p
I know someone who does this. Some people use Alexa to text so they get a
bunch of sexts. Many, many people just like to say the worst things they can
think of to try and get Alexa to say something anti Semitic or what not.

------
make3
I don't mind not buying a Google Home it whatever, but is Google listening on
my "Ok Google" enabled Android phone as well?

~~~
_underfl0w_
How else would it catch the words "Ok, Google" in the first place?

~~~
gipp
All these things have dedicated low-power hardware that just listens for the
trigger phrase and has no network access. That's why you can't choose your
trigger phrase.

------
thatoneuser
Idk about everyone else here but for a while now and forever more when I see
people in the comments justifying tech companies immoral behavior I assume its
shills. Whether directly paid or whether the companies have propaganda
campaigns that just get idle commenter on their side.

~~~
whoisjuan
Amazon apart, what's inmmoral about labeling data that you got with the
consent of the user?

It's hard to appreciate what you are saying when you're basically judging the
incentive of economic/technological progress as an inmmoral behavior (in this
case the intention of improving a technology)

Labeling data and training a machine learning model sounds far from inmoral.
Perhaps for some people the idea of companies developing machine learning
models and capturing data to train them is an ethically gray concept.

~~~
codedokode
Does Amazon clearly says that everything you say to Alexa will be recorded and
reviewed by its employees? Or they prefer to hide this somewhere in the legal
documents using vague wordings? That's what is wrong. They know that if they
say about it explicitly, their product will look worse than competitors', so
they try to hide it.

~~~
Analog24
Everything you say is not reviewed by employees, that would be impossible
given the scale. It clearly says in the article that a very small sample are
chosen for human annotation. Every single voice assistant uses supervised
machine learning algorithmns, which require labeled data. It won't look better
or worse than any of the others in that regard.

~~~
codedokode
Yes, I meant "everything you say is recorded and _might be_ reviewed by
employees". But Amazon doesn't have to make every customer a beta-tester. And
Alexa could give a warning when setting up for the first time, something like
"Look, we are recording everything you tell me so please don't say something
too embarassing or something that might get you into a trouble with police".
While this is what any honest person should do, no way Amazon or any other
major tech company does this.

~~~
Analog24
I don't disagree, it probably should be made more explicit to customers that
someone could listen to certain things said to the device. I just wanted to
point out that there is a big difference between reviewing everything a
customer says and having the possibility of certain phrases reviewed.

------
rocky1138
Earlier today someone made a tongue-in-cheek comment about
[https://notnews.ycombinator.com](https://notnews.ycombinator.com). I thought
it was flippant, but here this article's title proves that it was prescient,
instead.

------
masko
No surprise there

------
monochromatic
I’m shocked. Shocked!

~~~
anitil
I don't think the sarcasm is warranted, because as technical people, we
already implicitly understand how the system works.

I was listening to Reply All [0] yesterday, and one of the hosts had to
explain to the other that, of course, the device has to listen to you to
constantly in some fashion in order to know if you've said 'Alexa' or 'OK
Google' or whatever.

It hadn't even occurred to me that people wouldn't know that.

[0] [https://www.gimletmedia.com/reply-all/139-the-reply-all-
hotl...](https://www.gimletmedia.com/reply-all/139-the-reply-all-
hotline#episode-player)

~~~
codedokode
I think the problem is not that the device is listening. The problem is that
users' recording and seacrh queries are saved to the cloud, stored
indefinitely and reviewed by other people. And some users might even not
realise it and think that they are just talking to a robot, not to a team of
Amazon's employees.

~~~
anitil
You're right, of course. I think I was just reacting to the tone of the
earlier comment

------
intopieces
>Millions more are reluctant to invite the devices and their powerful
microphones into their homes out of concern that someone might be listening.

Sometimes, someone is.

This wording is misleading, because it sounds like someone is listening
through the device as the speech is being picked up by it, but in fact it's
recordings.

~~~
jakevn
What is a recording? Does a 10 millisecond delay mean it is a recording? What
is the legally binding lock-out time for this audio stream before a human can
listen to it?

~~~
intopieces
A recording is end pointed audio captured and stored on a server and reviewed
later.

There is no legally binding lock out time because there doesn’t need to be.
Live-listening is impractical at scale and also worthless for what the article
is describing they do with the data.

Remember, this work is being done to make it so humans _don’t_ have to be in
the loop.

~~~
jakevn
Why is live-listening impractical at scale? How can Discord provide such a
service? You seem to be conflating Amazon's intent with the unknowable intent
of anyone that can touch such data, which is a common fatal flaw in reasoning.

~~~
intopieces
>Why is live-listening impractical at scale?

Because there is no value in doing so. A person could collect all the spare
change thrown into fountains at shopping malls, but they don’t.

~~~
julienreszka
If I worked on voice search I would wish to have full context to train my
models on. Full context could be year long. Ethics are an issue here for sure.

~~~
intopieces
Sure. But the devices don’t do that.

