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Google to Use PC Microphones to Listen In?
seriv writes "The Register reports that Google plans to use PC microphones to collect statistics on a user's environment. Peter Norvig, who directs research at Google, told Technology Review that this software would start to show up in Google software 'sooner rather than later'. The software collects short sound clips and removes background noise. Google then targets its ads based on the statistics collected. With the current level of online privacy, this new level of invasion would seem to have frightening possibilities."
WTF happened to "Don't Be Evil", Google?
Of course, this may be just FUD, but I am pretty certain it qualifies as unlawful data collection and breach of privacy in my jurisdiction. Try to hijack my microphone, Google, and I will sue you to kingdom come. You have been warned.
A note to self: make sure the Google toolbar is uninstalled on every family computer ASAP.
The right to offend is far more important than the right not to be offended. (Rowan Atkinson)
For once I have not read the 'effing article.
The Register is not a reliable news source. Moreover, Andrew Orlowski has a bee in his bonnet about Google and constantly writes articles attacking them with very little merit - I would be astonished if this article is not by him, but even if it isn't, their association with him completely discredits them in my eyes.
Finally Peter Norvig is the author of the seminal Paradigms of Artificial Intelligence Programming (if you haven't read it, go and buy it right now) and is definitely not a complete idiot - I simply don't believe the story as summarised in the slashdot writeup regardless of whether it correctly reflects El Reg's article.
Case dismissed.
--- These are not words: wierd, genious, rediculous
http://www.techcrunch.com/2006/06/08/google-resear ch-prototypes-ambient-audio-contextual-content/
Technology more acurately described here: http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20060609-7028 .html
Some are holding out for the highly desired 1 MB (MiB; mebibyte) user id number of 1,048,576.
Ron
Here's the article cited by The Register.
Oh, and BTW: Welcome to the future.
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
This is why Apple's cameras have a little light that comes on when the camera does, and can't be overridden in software.
I'm a statistician. And if there is one thing that's worse for a statistician than getting no data, it's getting poisoned data. Data that has been deliberately or accidently been tampered with to generate results that deviate greatly from a result you would get with normal data.
If your want to counter data miners, give them what they want: data. You certainly can't give them more than they can handle, but you can give them false data. False data is worse than no data, because instead of getting no data from you, you are invalidating all data gathered.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Most laptops have them embedded. Other than that, any VOIP client or multi-person game player will have a mic. I'm sure there are more.
Pull my finger for my public key.
...or don't use Google Desktop? Really, it is not particularly useful.
Nah. Foreskin is vestigial. Tell me, don't you ever shave your face and clip your nails?
So, even ignoring the fact that frames are overlapping, we have 32 bits per 12 miliseconds, which means more than 2600 bits per second! More than enough to code speech, even without speech recognition algorithms! The Speex codec (which is optimized for encoding speech) can code human speech at such low bitrates as 2.15 kbit/s...
Conclusion if you're not willing to trust what Google says, they could perfectly be sending your speech over the internet to their own servers.
The AACS key is NOT 0xF606EEFD628B1CA427BEA93A9CA9773F
Actually, there is a much more common sort of microphone in homes and offices, even if there's no computer or a computer without multimedia (mics on office PCs are probably quite uncommon). It's your phone. Additional advantage is that it is usually switched on and connected all the time.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
Sure you do, it's called a screwdriver. A particularly pointy one, and a quick blow on the handle will disable your mic any time you like. re-enabling is a bit harder...