This article reminds me of this excellent tongue-in-cheek piece of writing by Jonathan Zeller in McSweeney's:
Calm Down—Your Phone Isn’t Listening to Your Conversations. It’s Just Tracking Everything You Type, Every App You Use, Every Website You Visit, and Everywhere You Go in the Physical World
https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/calm-down-your-phone-isn...
There is so much time spent “debunking” audio recordings being shared with various entities it makes me more suspicious.
Just like Facebook’s “we never sell your data (we just stalk you and sell ads using your data)”. I’m sure there’s a similar weasel excuse… “we never listen to your audio (but we do analyze it to improve quality assurance)”
It’s similar with the TSA facial recognition photos. “We delete your photo immediately” but what they don’t say is that they don’t delete the biometrics from that photo.
It's a crime that were compelled to concede our 4th Amendment rights in order to travel.
It literally says right on the facial recognition sign that you're free to opt out, just let the TSA employee know
Depends on the type of travel right? I took Amtrak weekly for several years and never even had to show ID.
Same with drivers licenses and passports having a photo requirement too
The TSA photos are worse. They use a stereoscopic camera to take a 3d image of your head, which makes facial recognition up to 10x more accurate.
You can opt out, just say you do (and preferably cover the camera with your hat or bag)
WiFi 7 Sensing is bringing similar functionality to consumer routers and many laptops, with the bonus of passing through walls.
>drivers licenses and passports having a photo requirement too
You're free to take the bus, or hire a chauffeur. A private pilots license doesn't have any pictures either.
For better or worse, we didn’t have to make such hard choices for the first 80 years of aviation. And Greyhound etc require photo ID these days as well
Literally not compelled in this case, the TSA signage says that the image capture is completely optional.
More generally, having your stuff screened for security to get on a commercial plane isn't a 4th amendment violation, the word "unreasonable" is right there in the amendment for a reason. You're in public in an enclosed flying object bringing your goods onto someone else's plane with 100+ strangers aboard, it is completely reasonable and necessary for the freedoms of everyone involved for the TSA to ensure that your stuff doesn't have dangerous objects aboard.
Don't forget that freedom also involves the freedom of other people to not be negatively impacted by you exercising your "freedom."
Image capture is optional, your other option is something possibly unpleasant and may make you miss your flight
That is not the other option at all. The other option is essentially just the traditional screening process.
> Standard ID credential verification is in place – Travelers who decide not to participate in the use of facial recognition technology will receive an alternative ID credential check by the TSO at the podium. The traveler will not experience any negative consequences for choosing not to participate. There is no issue and no delay with a traveler exercising their rights to not participate in the automated biometrics matching technology.
My goodness this thread is just the most annoying tinfoil hat thread I've seen all day. Y'all are spending too much time online.
Amtrak and Greyhound do not require those biometrics, nor does renting a car and driving (or driving your own).
Some of us want to be able to cross the country in an afternoon, and not have to spend days on a slow, uncomfortable train to make the same trip. I don't think that's unreasonable.
Certainly not unreasonable. But it does require you to commission your own transport subject to the rules that that private entity seeks to impose. Public entities which indiscriminately service residents and visitors of a given territory would obviate this requirement. But if you're in the US, good luck convincing taxpayers to agree to pay for that.
> subject to the rules that that private entity seeks to impose.
It's not the private entity taking a 3D face scan, nor are they necessarily wanting for that scan to be taken. It's federal laws and regulations being done by federal agents in spaces controlled by the federal government.
Private and charter aviation exists and is free from those constraints.
Some of us are not billionaires.
You can also walk. Lovers of freedom can walk from Manhattan to LA in 40-50 days. Of course if you look “wrong”, you’ll probably get rounded up in some flyover town.
> There is so much time spent “debunking” audio recordings being shared
Not really. 99% of the time it's someone claiming that it happens.
And it's always an anecdote, never clear proof that it happened. Let alone that it happened because of the audio and not web activity. And that the conversation was actually the cause for the ad and not the other way around.
Is it technically possible? Sure. But if so many people are so certain that it definitely happens, why didn't dozens of people already prove it with a fresh Google/Apple account and phone?
Here is an example that just happened today. I talked to my partner about me going to a city directly (via one state) or indirectly (via another state). All I said was "so you want me to go directly to X".
Boom, Illinois tourism ad shows up the next time I hit the internet. Scary thing is I didn't even say the state name, just the destination, and SOMETHING calculated that Illinois is in the middle.
This stuff has now happened far too many times in the last 10 years of my life, it is simply implausible to call it coincidence at this point. You are being listened to by your phone.
Ad firms have no ethical boundaries, and have lied about their data collection over and over.
What is really frightening is that if the ad companies know everything about you, then multiple state actors also know everything about you.
Except for the fact that if you read the debunkings, they go into great detail as to why that is empirically not the case.
There is a small list of reasons why it needs to be "debunked:"
1. Your phone is gathering data that you don't realize that it gathers.
One of the biggest examples of this is real-time location data that is brokered by cellular carriers and sold as aggregated marketing data. You don't have to give your apps permission to do anything like that because your cellular carrier can get that data regardless of your phone's OS.
2. Your phone is gathering data that you gave it permission to gather, perhaps gathering it in a way you didn't think it would do.
For example, let's say you give an app permission to read your entire photo library so that you can upload a photo. But since you gave it that permission on the OS level, it might be uploading more images than you explicitly select. Another example used to be clipboard data before the OSes asked permission for use of the clipboard. One last example is text that you enter but do not submit.
Another big aspect of this is that people don't realize how these ad networks work in real time. It's not a slow thing for an advertising company to learn something about you and react accordingly, it can happen in a few short seconds.
2. The average person doesn't have any comprehension of how easy it is for data science practices to uncover information about you based on metadata that seems benign or that you don't know exists.
Most people don't understand how your behavior in an app can be used to tell the company things you like and dislike. The TikTok algorithm is a great example, it can tell what you like just by extremely subtle inputs, how you swipe, how long you watch the video. A lot of people don't realize how many things about them aren't particularly unique and how many preferences can be tied to a really specific persona that you fall into.
A real world example of all of this put together is that I was spending a lot of time browsing appliances because I just bought one, and I went to physically visit a friend. We were talking about my new appliance, and later they got ads for that specific appliance. So, the person's reaction would naturally be "it was listening to us!!" but in reality, it is more likely that our cellular carrier or carriers knew we were physically in the same place and reported that piece of information to some kind of data broker. Consider how there are a limited amount of cellular carriers, that location data may not have needed to even exit the cellular carrier to sell this data to someone. I.e., if we both have the same cellular carrier , our company already has that information and it isn't selling it to another company, it's perhaps just telling a data broker that Person A and Person B interact with each other.
Just note that I'm not claiming this is exactly how it all works as I'm not in that industry, but the general ideas here apply. The general takeaway is that literally recording audio with a microphone just isn't necessary to derive hyper-specific things about people.
That's much worse compared to listening for keywords. You're looking up men's enhancement products and everytime you enter a room all ads on everyone's phone change to those products?
We don't "listen" to your audio, the microphone does, and your phone transcribes it to text on your device. You cannot listen to text. Therefore we don't listen to your phone audio.
I can just say that I knew an entrepreneur in early post Y2K who developed apps to track music played in clubs in SF for folks like ASCAP, BMI, and SESAC. They gave out "free" phones (these were the small expensive candybars and nice flip/slideups) to the influencers of the day. They compressed the audio for orthogonality, and had a huge number of hashes to match. If they got more than a few consecutive matching hashes at a location that wasn't paying royalties, they got an enforcement call.
So the idea that it takes a huge amount of computing resources, battery life, permissions, or bandwidth to do matching of keywords is hilarious. That's what "siri", "hey google", "alexa" etc are all doing 24 hours a day. Just add another hundred and report them once an hour. You don't need low latency. It's just another tool in the bag!
Of course the cat food example is bad, because if they weren't looking for that you wouldn't get a response. Who would be willing to pay big for clicks on cat food. Now bariatric surgery? DUI? HELOC? Those pay.
>That's what "siri", "hey google", "alexa" etc are all doing 24 hours a day.
You might have just convinced me that the “phone is listening” is total bunk, because these dedicated devices are just so bad at recognizing the very specific, short, phrases when explicitly directed at them that I can’t imagine they are listening for much more. Listening to my in-laws try to activate their Alexa and Google Homes is something the CIA might consider for their next torture method.
You expect 95% accuracy matching activation phrases. You don't need that for ads. It only needs to work some of the time for some of the people, especially if it makes $/click.
Reminds me of something that a Telco exec once said in jest - “A bank can track which hotel you stayed at last night, the Telco knows who you slept with”
The article omits a real, serious source of microphone data though: your smart TV. I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that my TV (a Toshiba Fire TV, although I’m sure many do it) is listening to every conversation I have within earshot, even when I am not using the voice remote, and selling it to ad networks.
And of course it is also doing screen recognition (the kind of stuff OP article mentions), but that is not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about microphone data picking up live conversation from people in the room.
Who would even want a microphone in a TV?
It's like that old Soviet Russia joke, except it's not a joke.
Privacy-seeking users have physically removed microphones from phones. This should also be possible with laptops and televisions.
If Toshiba Fire TV is related to Amazon Fire TV, then it may include Alexa for voice recognition, which could be optionally disabled. In theory, Alexa is only activated after on-device recognition of the configured wake word.
Removed microphones from… phones? How do you use the phone then?
Most things people use phones for nowadays don't need a microphone. And in the rare case you do, you plug in/connect a headset.
I am suspicious of all “smart” devices, much more so than phones because phones have a lot more scrutiny on them.
If your smart toaster, light bulb, or fridge was listening to you, would anyone even notice? Does anyone examine these devices in depth?