Society is coming closer and closer to being Orwell's worst nightmare, complete with screens in the corner always watching, listening...
Ladies and gentlemen, get your aluminum-foil hats on, 'cause we're getting into some conspiracy theories! The only difference is that unlike a single grainy photo of a guy in a lake with a wooden carving of a cryptid on his back, we have some quantifiable evidence that your device is, in fact, listening to everything around it 24 hours a day.
Because smart speakers lack the necessary hardware for voice recognition, every single word said around it after (wake word) is streamed to (Overgrown corporation), where the command can be recognized. Unfortunately, smart speakers are notorious for their false positives, where the user says something close to the wake word, accidentally activating it. this accounts for a collective 30,000,000 false positives worldwide every week. And it gets worse; everything picked up by the microphone during recording can be used by their development team, meaning that it is just sitting there in storage where anyone can listen.
The camera on some models is worrying as well. While there are no reports of (overgrown corporation) snagging recordings of you getting a midnight snack, the same risks of webcams that you were constantly told about in cyber safety classes in elementary school still apply. Bad actors can easily take advantages of flaws in the design of your device, and blackmail you with the knowledge that you get up around 1 am and eat handfuls of shredded cheese.
One way that someone can use your device without your permission is, get this, shining a laser at it.
Imagine some guy with a van setting up a science fair project and getting your smart locks to open without even touching your front door, turning off any smart cameras you bought, then just walking in and nicking all of your stuff (except the smart speaker). Or tampering with your device so that they get in in the recording action. Because we all know that if you bought a smart speaker, you weren't smart enough to put an actual security system in. Don't get me started on "smart" locks that can be taken apart by any moron with a screwdriver.
Rao, Sonia. “In Today's Homes, Consumers Are Willing to Sacrifice Privacy for Convenience.” The Washington Post, WP Company, 12 Sept. 2018, www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/in-todays-homes-consumers-are-willing-to-sacrifice-privacy-for-convenience/2018/09/11/5f951b4a-a241-11e8-93e3-24d1703d2a7a_story.html.
Wang, R “Ray.” “Beware Trading Privacy for Convenience.” Harvard Business Review, 7 Aug. 2014, hbr.org/2013/06/beware-trading-privacy-for-con.
Ghosh, Dipayan, and Jim Steyer. “Kids Shouldn't Have to Sacrifice Privacy for Education.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 13 Dec. 2018, www.nytimes.com/2018/12/13/opinion/children-privacy-online.html.
Su, Jean Baptiste. “Why Amazon Alexa Is Always Listening To Your Conversations: Analysis.” Forbes, Forbes Magazine, 30 July 2019, www.forbes.com/sites/jeanbaptiste/2019/05/16/why-amazon-alexa-is-always-listening-to-your-conversations-analysis/#27ff00ca2378.
“Smart Speakers, Wake Words and Ghoul Oil.” Vocalize, 1 Nov. 2018, www.vocalize.ai/2018/11/01/wake-words-false-positives/.
Moore, Clayton. “What to Know About Smart Camera Privacy.” Digital Trends, Digital Trends, 29 Aug. 2019, www.digitaltrends.com/features/what-you-should-know-about-smart-camera-privacy/.
Dormehl, Luke. “Your Alexa Speaker Can Be Hacked with Malicious Audio Tracks. And Lasers.” Digital Trends, Digital Trends, 11 Nov. 2019, www.digitaltrends.com/cool-tech/new-vulnerabilities-smart-speakers-so-smart/.
You bring up a lot of the security concerns people should be worried about. What TED talk led you to this topic? Remember that your posts should reflect some thinking about the TED talks too.
ReplyDeleteAlso, you have an impression list of citations, but where did you use those sources?
This blog was based on "We're building a dystopia just to make people click on ads", however I got slightly sidetracked and focused on the breaches of privacy and security she brings up.
ReplyDeleteLiam I thought that The way that you used humor in your blog post shows a real lack of respect for the human race. And I LOVE IT. The idea that people can really just shine a laser at a camera and its disabled is completely unforgivable!
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