Offtopic Amazon Echo // Re: [qubes-users] Re: High spec laptop for Qubes OS

[799]

Am 07.03.2018 8:08 nachm. schrieb "Yuraeitha" <yura...@gmail.com>:

(...)
So who wants a proprietary, backdoored, error-prone, computer in their brain in contrast to open source, open hardware, which can be trusted? Even before all this, some people who didn't care before, are starting to care now when technology is increasingly getting closer to their lives. Like The Amazon Echo, which is always listening to its environment, and now it's happening to TV's and many other gadgets as well. Eventually even toasters can spy on us.

To be fair:

The problem is not that it is always listening, as this is only be done to simplify the use as you can say Alexa <Command> without having to wait for until the the echo is ready.

As soon as it recognized "Alexa" it will use the part afterwards as command.

More details in the FAQ:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=201602230

[...] 2. How does Alexa hands-free on my Fire tablet recognize the wake word?

Alexa on your Fire tablet uses on-device keyword spotting to detect the wake word, even when your device is in standby mode. When the wake word is detected, Alexa on your Fire tablet streams audio to the Cloud, including a fraction of a second of audio before the wake word [...]

What is much worse:

In the default configuration it storing every command you have ever said at Amazon. With this data you can create a perfect profile and this shouldn't be enabled by default.

The regarded voice command should be transferred to the voice recognition server for analysis and the data should then be deleted as there is no technical reason to store it.

I have doubts that they only do so in order to improve their service by analyzing the voice data to give more accurate results.

This should be something that is done via opt-in and maybe with a reward:

"thank you for being completely transparent, you'll get a 10eur Amazon Voucher and a free copy of '1984'".

I agree that it is dangerous to have such a device at home which doesn't have a hardware kill-switch for the microphone.

But much worse is what they're already got doing without hiding it from their users.

I was shocked when a friend showed me his Amazon echo and then said:

"Here look at the list about every command I have used so far, isn't this cool?" 

The danger is clearly the user who even agrees and likes this kind of "feature" and the usability of those products is so easy, that everything with adds more security feels complex.

That's a main motivation for me willing to contribute documentation so that Qubes is easy to use do use, for those who are interested in privacy but are not technical experts / Linux powerusers.

[799]

[Yuraeitha]

definitely scary as hell... the cost to turn to reliable trustworthy hardware/software will only get bigger as time go on too, just like global warming costs has been building up all these years, and we're now paying a huge bill with extra big interests back to un-do the harm. The same could be seen with software/hardware too, to some extent, although probably less costly (unless people don't realize these companies really are not doing anywhere near the best they can to protect us consumers and society...)

Have you seen this btw? https://mycroft.ai/ it's open source altenrative to the echo. I've been thinking about implementing it as an offline based voice control with QubesTV later on, but it'd be great help if someone can get Mycroft up and running in Qubes, before merging projects. If we can offer more reliable, offline and secure voice control, then Qubes might remain more attractive in the future when keyboards and mouses starts to disappear in favour for new modern controls like voice control and similar futuristic but close to mainstream tech in the upcoming years. It definitely won't hurt to prepare Qubes early for this, and if we as a community can help the developers to save some time, then all the better too right.