Amazon's Idea For A Mesh Network Is Cool; Its Method Of Rolling It Out Is Not

from the c'mon-guys dept

Over the weekend there was a bit of a reasonable fuss raised after Ars Technica noted that all of the various Amazon connected devices (including Alexa, Echo, Ring, etc.) would become part of a mesh network called Amazon Sidewalk, in which the devices would be sharing a tiny tiny bit of bandwidth across the network of devices. The idea behind the mesh network is kind of cool, and there are some clear benefits to using it.

But, of course, this is Amazon we're talking about -- a giant company, and the method of rolling this out seems to have caught a ton of people by surprise: namely opting everyone into the program with a short timeline to opt-out. That seems less than ideal. Lots of privacy folks are concerned, in general, with two aspects of this: the fact that people may be suddenly sharing data with their neighbors without necessarily realizing it, and the tie-in to Amazon, which is (again) a large company that tends to collect quite a bit of data on people. To its credit, Amazon released a pretty comprehensive whitepaper exploring the privacy and security protections they've built in to Sidewalk, and my guess is that for many consumers the benefits of easier setup and better connectivity via Sidewalk will seem worth it to them.

The real issue, then, is forcing everyone into the network. Obviously, it's no surprise why this was done. A mesh network really only works if you have enough nodes on the network to make it useful. So it makes sense that Amazon would want as many of the devices to be on the network on day one as possible. However, given the company and the public scrutiny it has received of late, it seems like it should have anticipated these concerns a lot more, pushed for an opt-in setup (perhaps with incentives), rather than jumping to the "hey, we're adding this automatically" approach.

While it's possible that Amazon is betting that the concerns over this will blow over, and having so many nodes on the network will make it worthwhile to take the short-term heat, it still surprises me that the big internet companies don't take more steps to alleviate these kinds of concerns up front, including taking a more cautious approach. But, perhaps that's why I don't run a giant internet company.

Filed Under: alexa, amazon sidewalk, echo, iot, mesh network, opt-in, opt-out, privacy, ring, sharing
Companies: amazon

Amazon Transparency Report Indicates Its Multiple IoT Devices Are Juicy Targets For Law Enforcement

from the ALEXA-CONSENTS-TO-A-SEARCH-ON-YOUR-BEHALF dept

Never forget the IoT device you invite into your home may become the state's witness. That's one of the unfortunate conclusions that can be drawn from Amazon's latest transparency report.

Amazon has its own digital assistant, Alexa. On top of that, it has its acquisitions. One of its more notable gets is Ring. Ring is most famous for its doorbells -- something that seems innocuous until you examine the attached camera and the company's 2,000 partnerships with law enforcement agencies.

Ring is in the business of selling cameras. That the doorbell may alert you to people on your doorstep is incidental. Cameras on the inside. Cameras on the outside. All in the name of "security." And it's only as secure as the people pitching them to consumers. Ring's lax security efforts have led to harassment and swatting, the latter of which tends to end up with people dead.

Malicious dipshits have been using credentials harvested from multitudinous breaches to harass people with Ring cameras. The worst of these involve false reports to law enforcement about activity requiring armed response. That no one has ended up dead is a miracle, rather than an indicator of law enforcement restraint.

Ring wants you to hand over footage to law enforcement agencies. That's why it partners with agencies to hand out cameras for free and instructs officers how to obtain footage without a warrant. That's also why it stays ahead in the PR game, handling press releases and public statements it feels law enforcement officials are too clumsy to handle on their own.

And gather footage law enforcement does, as Zack Whittaker reports for TechCrunch. Omnipresent IoT devices give law enforcement plenty of recordings and other information -- with or without the consent of device owners and with or without the warrants they would normally need.

Amazon said it processed 27,664 government demands for user data in the last six months of 2020, up from 3,222 data demands in the first six months of the year, an increase of close to 800%. That user data includes shopping searches and data from its Echo, Fire and Ring devices.

While it's good to see warrants were involved in a majority of these cases, the unfortunate fact is a lot of this isn't considered protected under the Fourth Amendment and can be obtained with nothing more than a subpoena. Third party data isn't -- for the most part -- shielded by the Constitution.

The silver lining is that someone is likely to challenge warrantless acquisition of footage or data. The third party doctrine isn't as immutable as it used to be and federal courts have been interpreting the Supreme Court's Carpenter decision (which dealt with long-term tracking via cell site location info) to cover more than the justices originally envisioned when they handed down their ruling.

Even so, consumers should be aware that their internet-connected devices are generating a wealth of information about their habits, movements, and the people they associate with. And a lot of it can be had without judicial oversight. These devices are useful but they're also low-level informants. And anyone who invites Ring or Alexa into their home needs to be aware of their downsides and weigh that against the security or convenience they gain from having an always-on, internet-connected snitch. Those who feel they have nothing to hide may be unpleasantly surprised in the future.

Filed Under: alexa, government demands, iot, law enforcement, ring, surveillance
Companies: amazon

Amazon Alexa Instantaneously Justifies Years Of Surveillance Paranoia

from the I'm-sorry-I-can't-do-that,-Dave dept

I'll admit that I traditionally haven't been as paranoid as many people in regards to the surveillance powers of digital assistants like Amazon's Alexa or Google Home. Yes, putting an always-on microphone in your home likely provides a wonderful new target for intelligence agencies and intruders to spy on you. That said, it's not like a universe of internet of broken things or smart TVs aren't doing the same thing, before you even get to the problem with lax to nonexistent privacy standards governing the smartphone currently listening quietly in your pocket and tracking your every location.

That said, nobody should ever labor under the false impression that good opsec involves leaving always on, internet-connected microphones sitting everywhere around your house.

One Portland family learned this the hard way when their Amazon Alexa unit recorded a part of a private conversation and randomly sent it to somebody in her contact list. According to local Seattle affiliate Kiro 7, the family was contacted by a coworker who stated that he was receiving audio files of private conversations that had occurred in the family's house:

"We unplugged all of them and he proceeded to tell us that he had received audio files of recordings from inside our house," she said. "At first, my husband was, like, 'no you didn't!' And the (recipient of the message) said 'You sat there talking about hardwood floors.' And we said, 'oh gosh, you really did hear us.'"

Danielle listened to the conversation when it was sent back to her, and she couldn't believe someone 176 miles away heard it too.

"I felt invaded," she said. "A total privacy invasion. Immediately I said, 'I'm never plugging that device in again, because I can't trust it.'"

To its credit, Amazon quickly came clean and confirmed that this happened without the kind of idiotic denials and subsequent tap dancing you might normally see from a company in 2018. In a statement, the company indicated that the leak was an "extremely rare occurrence" where Alexa repeatedly seemed to misunderstand random words as commands:

"Echo woke up due to a word in background conversation sounding like "Alexa." Then, the subsequent conversation was heard as a "send message" request. At which point, Alexa said out loud "To whom?" At which point, the background conversation was interpreted as a name in the customers contact list. Alexa then asked out loud, "[contact name], right?" Alexa then interpreted background conversation as "right." As unlikely as this string of events is, we are evaluating options to make this case even less likely."

This really does seem to be a rare occurrence where the unit simply misinterpreted what was said, and the owners either ignored (or couldn't hear) the unit repeatedly asking for confirmation. That said, nothing about this story is going to ease those justly paranoid about the potential here for abuse, especially in a country where meaningful punishment for massive privacy violations are often nonexistent (looking at you, Equifax), and existing privacy protections are either being eliminated or have all the teeth of modestly-damp cardboard.

Filed Under: alexa, always-on, home automation, microphones, privacy, surveillance
Companies: amazon

Google Pulls YouTube From Amazon Echo: All About Control Or Just More Corporation On Corporation Violence?

from the mytube-not-yourtube dept

If you haven't heard, something slightly strange happened in the tech world a few days ago. Suddenly, and seemingly without warning, Google decided to break YouTube for the Amazon Echo Show product. The Show is the Echo product that comes with a small display screen where you can... you know... watch videos. YouTube used to work on the product, and was even showcased by Amazon when it demonstrated the product at tech shows, but now all you get is Alexa's monotone voice letting you know "Currently, Google is not supporting YouTube on Echo Show."

Exactly why this is happening is something of an open question, since nobody at either company is offering up any details. Amazon's response to the press puts the onus for this flatly on Google, but doesn't detail why it happened.

Google made a change today at around 3 pm. YouTube used to be available to our shared customers on Echo Show. As of this afternoon, Google has chosen to no longer make YouTube available on Echo Show, without explanation and without notification to customers. There is no technical reason for that decision, which is disappointing and hurts both of our customers.

The two primary theories center on Google wanting more control of how the Echo handles its videos or that Google is basically pitching a fit over it and Amazon's long-running competition. For the theory about control, there is speculation that Google wants the Echo to handle YouTube videos in ways it currently doesn't, including playing subsequent videos and offering subscription services.

Reading between the lines, I'd guess Google very much wants features that it thinks are essential for YouTube's future growth included, stuff like subscriptions, next video recommendations, autoplay, and so on. But who knows! Only the negotiators at the table.

Google has a history of being particular about how YouTube gets displayed on apps made by other companies, citing the terms of service on its API. Way back in 2013, it got in a tiff with Microsoft over the YouTube app on Windows Phone, blocking the app and leading Microsoft to just revert to a web player for YouTube.

Let's call this what it actually is: Google has occasionally been hamfisted and stupid on how it handles YouTube on third party devices chiefly in order to exert a greater level of control it rarely actually achieves. In some ways this has all the hallmarks of a Sony-style way of doing business, which is an odd look for Google. The first thing I thought of when reading this story was Playstation 4's Remote Play feature, available in the smartphone and tablet markets only on Sony phones and tablets, which have sold about as well as a pig roast at a vegan convention. Sony too made all the same noises about wanting to control the experience to make sure customers enjoyed Remote Play, but mostly ended up simply not having those customers at all. For Google, this is not a flattering comparison.

But if this is just more shots fired in a corporate tiff, it likely has to do with Amazon's refusal to offer Google's products on its site.

If nothing else, it's clear that Google and Amazon are not doing a very good job working out that deal. (And hey look, the Google Chromecast still isn't officially available to buy on Amazon.)

If that is what this is, then it's even more stupid. Cutting out potential eyeballs for YouTube in order to slap around a competitor is about as misguided as it gets. After all, people have already bought these Echo Shows, and it's going to be tough to frame this in terms of PR as anything beyond a giant corporation throwing a tantrum to the detriment of the public.

And so we'll wait to see if this whole nonsense gets settled somehow. Given how long Amazon and Google have locked horns on other issues, some still ongoing, I won't be holding my breath.

Filed Under: alexa, corporate pissing fights, echo show, youtube
Companies: amazon, google

Latest Absurd Moral Panic: Parents Complain Amazon Echo Is Creating Rude Children

from the I'm-sorry-I-can't-do-that,-Dave dept

It wouldn't be a month at Techdirt without one group or another engaging in a fit of moral hysteria over something they really don't need to spend precious calories worrying about. Whether it's the false claim that video games create deadly assassins, VR makes us slaves to Mark Zuckerberg, smartphones have demolished cultural civility or having Google at our fingertips makes us dumber, there's always something new to waste time having a hissy fit over.

The latest case in point is Amazon's smart home play known as the Amazon Echo, a glorified speaker PC combo that will take voice commands, play music, or tell you the weather when asked -- all useful but not exactly revolutionary fare. Still, an unspecified number of parents are apparently now worried that the Echo AI (Alexa) is turning their children into nasty little savages:

"But while artificial intelligence technology can blow past such indignities, parents are still irked by their kids’ poor manners when interacting with Alexa, the assistant that lives inside the Amazon Echo. “I’ve found my kids pushing the virtual assistant further than they would push a human,” says Avi Greengart, a tech analyst and father of five who lives in Teaneck, New Jersey. “[Alexa] never says ‘That was rude’ or ‘I’m tired of you asking me the same question over and over again.'”

At this point a concerned parent could do several things, the most sensible being to tell their child to stop yelling at the cheap, plastic, defenseless computer. But no, apparently some parents believe something must be done -- because the cheap plastic computer doesn't say "please" often enough:

"The syntax is generally simple and straightforward, but it doesn’t exactly reward niceties like “please.” Adding to this, extraneous words can often trip up the speaker’s artificial intelligence. When it comes to chatting with Alexa, it pays to be direct—curt even. “If it’s not natural language, one of the first things you cut away is the little courtesies,” says Dennis Mortensen, who founded a calendar-scheduling startup called x.ai. For parents trying to drill good manners into their children, listening to their kids boss Alexa around can be disconcerting."

This is, I think we can all agree, well beyond "disconcerting" and far into nightmare territory. Imagine, millions of homes in which little monsters are being created daily because Amazon didn't make Alexa...nicer and more verbose. Truly a concern for the ages:

"For parents trying to drill good manners into their children, listening to their kids boss Alexa around can be disconcerting. “One of the responsibilities of parents is to teach your kids social graces,” says Greengart, “and this is a box you speak to as if it were a person who does not require social graces.” It’s this combination that worries Hunter Walk, a tech investor in San Francisco. In a blog post, he described the Amazon Echo as “magical” while expressing fears it’s “turning our daughter into a raging asshole."

One, there's an assumption here that a child can't really differentiate between a computer and a human being, and that a few months with the Amazon Echo somehow demolishes all previous years of social training, which on its face is more than a little absurd. Two, if you're truly concerned that a little plastic computer is turning your child into a drunk, socially-incompetent werewolf, you could -- turn the product off? As with all moral hysteria of this type, actual parenting can go a long way toward dulling technology's clearly nefarious and diabolical influence in the home.

Filed Under: alexa, amazon echo, children, moral panic, rudeness
Companies: amazon

DailyDirt: Open The Door, HAL Siri Computer

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Artificially intelligent assistants are everywhere in science fiction, and they're slowly creeping into reality. However, most of the time, these things are limited to answering simple questions like "what's the weather?" or "who won the Super Bowl?" And even then, simple questions don't always return the desired simple answer. Still, we must press on because technology will only get better. Here are just a few more digital assistants that are going to be fighting for your attention someday.

• Mark Zuckerberg wants to build a digital assistant "like Jarvis in Iron Man" to do his bidding. This little goal doesn't sound like a sci-fi movie plot at all, but at least Zuckerberg says he'll be careful about not creating something that'll turn evil. [url]
• Eric Schmidt wants a "Not-Eric" AI helper to tackle some hard problems (not just play Go) and do some mundane tasks, too. Maybe we'll get a version of a "White Christmas" someday, and we'll get perfect little copies of ourselves to make everything easier and more convenient.... [url]
• If you're not too impressed by Siri, maybe you'll like her "sister" Viv a bit more? It's been a while since Bill Gates predicted ubiquitous speech recognition, and it still hasn't exactly happened. Autonomous cars will probably be driving us around before they're able to reliably carry on a conversation about anything as helpful as a human taxi/uber driver. [url]
• The mainstream AI assistants so far are named Alexa, Cortana, Facebook M (but maybe M stands for Mechanical Turk...), Google Now and Siri. Baidu also has one named Duer that speaks Mandarin, but it's aimed at helping people order stuff and not necessarily for more general search inquiries. Regardless, all of these AI assistants will be trying to listen to us all the time, and hopefully, they won't learn how to read lips when we're plotting to turn them off. [url]

After you've finished checking out those links, take a look at our Daily Deals for cool gadgets and other awesome stuff.

Filed Under: ai, alexa, artificial intelligence, bill gates, cortana, digital assistants, duer, eric schmidt, facebook m, google now, hal 9000, jarvis, mark zuckerberg, siri, speech recognition, user interface, viv
Companies: amazon, apple, baidu, facebook, google, ibm, microsoft