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Facepalm @lemmy.world

The Picard Maneuver @lemmy.world

1d ago

What a privacy nightmare

58 comments

"Please do not say 'Down with Big Brother' unless the Telescreen is 'turned off'"
🙄
- Not even turned off... Just muted. Because that's the same thing as not listening.

Ah yes, the"mute" feature, a.k.a. "I'm not listening, pinky promise! 😇."

I'm not even surprised. All your info is being sent around by shady fax-to-email conversion companies using Chinese servers. Ask me how I know--we use them.
- The US is so cooked

This sign implies they're fully aware of how unsafe it is to have a device like that. SO WHY THE FUCK DO THEY HAVE ONE?!
- Oh they're so cool and convenient!!
  /s but sadly not /s
  I hate this place
  
  As a enthusiastic home cook being able to set timers without using my hands is a godsend. Thats 90% of what my google nest hub does.
- I guess it’s a tele-health thing? Otherwise yeah wtf

Pull the fuckin plug, holy shit. It’s not that hard.

Ah yes. "Muted".
If you should be aware of anything, it should be that if you have an Internet connected microphone the only way to truly know it's muted is to remove it from power.
- And now they don’t even give a shit about pretending to hide it
  https://www.malwarebytes.com/blog/news/2025/03/amazon-disables-option-to-store-echo-voice-recordings-on-your-device
  
  Yep, was gonna post this.
  Good luck, this hospital's IT department, good fucking luck.
- I had a few Google Home devices, they had a switch to turn off the mic. I assume it was legit switch, because the thing literally yelled at you and had bright red lights any time you muted it. It literally said "The mic is turned off" every time it booted up in a voice that reminds me of a child tattling on their sibling.
- Some of them have hardware switches
  
  but that could simply be wired to an LED and nothing else
- Preferably, by throwing it out a 6th-floor window
- You could always get a multimeter and check the voltage outgoing the ADC if you are skeptical.

I worked for a couple years at a residential school where a lot of the kids had significant medical issues (to the point part of our training was on HIPAA). Tons of kids had echo devices, and I spent a significant chunk of my time there trying to get anyone to take seriously the huge privacy risk those things posed.
- Is it more of a risk than your cell phone?

So very curious about the Ted Kaczynski photo in the background.
- His manifesto was all about technology controlling our lives. That’s my guess as to why that’s in there.
  
  That, racism, fascism, and incel grievances.

Please remember to unplug and throw the echo out of the building. Preferably into a woodchipper.

Only acceptable if their mute button is a hammer.

I want such a voice thingy, but 100% local.
Homeassistant is making porgress with this idea, but it's a slow progress.
- The new update looks great! I'm yet to try it myself though.
  It includes a way to automatically have the voice assistant ask a question, so you only have to respond. E.g. when you come home it can ask: Do you want to play some music? Or when you heat up the oven, it can ask if you want to set a timer. You then just reply with what you want. This is the kind of interaction that makes it feel a lot more like Jarvis IMO.
- That's how I feel about AI stuff too. Like, I'd love to "Ghibli-fi" my family like everyone else, but I'd prefer to run it locally rather than hand over family photos to one of these AI companies.
- Same boat. Tools like this and Gemini make managing my ADHD sooooo much easier. Having a JARVIS-esque "AI personal assistant" would make a lot of my struggles less debilitating. I'd even be willing to pay, as long as the data stayed private.
  
  Tools like this and Gemini make managing my ADHD sooooo much easier.
  Can you elaborate on this?
  
  I think local voice to text algorithms have gotten pretty freaking accurate. You'd need a way to activate listen, send it over the router, then receive the output signal to an Arduino/Raspberry Pi to switch something on or off. I'm sure it's not terribly difficult to design, but I bet the subscription model is so lucrative no one with the know how would offer a local version.

Why is there a mugshot superimposed on this photo? It's just one of those psychological tests where most people don't see it because they expect the window to be reflecting something and they're just reading the sign?
- It's the mugshot of Ted Kaczynski, AKA the Unabomber, who was quite famous for having an extreme aversion to technology and how he perceived its role in the downfall of society.
  
  You know shit's bad when you start to realize Ted had a few good points.
  
  This person manifestos
  
  Makes sense. Thanks.
  
  I mean...
- This explains it
- Yeah, wtf. Looks like a mugshot
  
  Oh, I meant mugshot, but accidentally typed headshot. I fixed it. Thanks!

We had this policy at my last job, but not due to HIPAA. Any time "Alexa" came up in conversations, it was very common for peoples' devices to chime in, telling on them.
Granted, we were in tech, so we were very aware that these things aren't recording everything you say and sending the recordings off to motherbrain nor "spying", per se.
- I recall them being caught of being in the possession of recordings they shouldn’t have had.
  On top of this the option of not sending recordings to the cloud is being removed just now - so they stopped pretending to respect your privacy.
  
  I'd need more (and reliable) information to comment on your first statement.
  For your second statement, there were apparently a limited number of devices which could process some commands locally, but most devices never had that capability to begin with. For the ones that could, it sounds like Amazon is deprecating the functionality. Does that sound correct? Either way, that's still a substantially different situation from having a device that's recording everything you say and uploading it to the cloud.

58 comments