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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."
-r
Will the user be notifed in big red letters.. or will this just be hidden down in the fine print like everything else?
What is next, capturing video? Or scanning file contents?
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Actually it turns on your Webcam and mic to record everything you say and do.
Privacy just went out the door.... unless you use *insert favorite OP systen here*
I vote for DOS.
He didn't. He created a bunch of sockpuppet accounts so he could reach 1000000 faster.
Actually, this story has surfaced atleast twice before. The first two times it raised a whole lot of "noise" over the privacy issues. This time they are saying the "local" (i.e. end-user-site) software will cook down the audio to an identifying hash for what program the TV is running. i.e. what they want is fingerprinting of the audio for tv channels, and prolly radio channels, or maybe even what kind of music you are listening to. To me this sounds a bit "far fetched". Especially since they have "two" options: 1. Record everything and make the fingerprinting done centrally. This is NOT a good way, and would basically mean that google (with the help of a subpoena) can be turned into a house-listening-plan in every home around the world. I think NSA are laughing with delight at this idea. 2. Do the fingerprinting on the users machine. This means a lot of transfers done, upfront, for it to work. It still raises some privacy issues, since the fingerprints can be seeded with talk-phrases the NSA wants to search for in speech. As for the technology to do this, it's pretty much around already (on windows, that is), if they do it with java or activex. Guess this is one more reason to remember to DISABLE the microphone in your mixer. The privacy-issues around this is a nightmare, especially since google could be selling off recognized voice-patterns coupled with address (see: track down of IP) to sales-people. Imagine this: "They are talking about Airbus, you might want to visit their firm" sold to Boeing, etc. Even if they SAY they are only going to listen for tv-channels, the temptation to fingerprint other phrases WILL be large. Especially if several federal agencies are running them down with subpoenas requiring them to look for "terrorism phrases", such as "democratic elections". Now, I'm not sure this story is valid, since the previous two occurrences of it was seen in online-rags know for their poor record of checking facts. However there are several thing to give it credibility: It has a named person in google that is supposed to have said this. It has surfaced several times, over a period as long as a year, every time with more detail of the implementation. However, I think this would be a very dangerous gamble for google to play. If they implemented this WITHOUT telling the customers, and someone happened to find out (and they would. Someone WOULD leak it!), they could just kiss their revenue goodbye. Google DEPENDS on internet users using THEIR service to search the web. If internet users distrust coming NEAR their services, google would be essentially worthless. Google needs us to trust them. If they did this openly, it might just float, until us federals started leaning on google. Then google could basically kiss every non-republican-us-user goodbye. See above for result. Both of these scenarios points in the direction of this not coming anytime soon. Google did not acquire their market position by being stupid, or ignorant about the users. They KNOW that doing this "behind the users back" will be the same as killing their own business. They KNOW that of they can implement this in a way that the users trust, the US federal offices will subpoena google to abuse this new listening tool for other uses, and the same thing would happen. This is why they will be very reluctant to even try this out. So unless the service was voluntary, and EASY to deinstall, I doubt it would surface at all. //Svein
Hi, I'm a signature virus. Copy my to your ~/.signature to help me spread.
I go out and leave a looped soundtrack of piggies oinking?
Or machinegun fire?
Or "IhategoogleIhategoogleIhategoogle"
Or arabic speech? (will I get a visit from the secret anti-terror police?)
I am government man, come from the government. The government has sent me. -- G.I.R.
Here is my submission to slash for a story in JUNE:
"Google listens to t.v. to pick ads Fri Jun 16, '06 03:25 PM Rejected"
If it's a hoax it's a long running hoax that's yet to be debunked,which is possible of course, but is it probable? Oh and thanks slashdot editors for blowing off yet another submission of mine only to pick up the same story MUCH later, sigh.
Tired of all the isms, don't exploit people as an employer, or a government, mmmmK?
Integrated Media Measurement, Inc. (IMMI) has a program like this for cell phones - tracking media 24/7 by recording ambient audio and comparing it to a database of stored samples.
Right now it's opt-in; potential users in selected markets are being sent direct mailings, with the company offering to pay for phone service for those willing to leave their phone (and the program recording 10 seconds of audio every 30 seconds) on regularly.
Interestingly enough, Al Acorn (Pong designer and Atari co-founder) is listed as CTO.
The "don't be evil" thing is something that Google founders have said, but more interestingly it showed up in their S1 (check it out, Yahoo! for example, has links to the S1 on their finance page for GOOG), which limits their liability with respect to stockholders should that policy cause them to fail to make money. This, I will note, is unique in the business world. No one limits their exposure in this way, which is why you should typically be very afraid of public corporations. It's not that they are run by evil people (sometimes they are), but that they MUST behave in evil ways if push comes to shove, and that's the path to stockholder value. They are required to be exactly as evil as the law and their S1 allow them to be (and there's some debate on the law part).
That being said, I have a deep faith in one thing: Slashdot + The Register = faulty news. Sure, Google has a technology that lets them turn on a microphone. Good for them. I'll wait to see how they attempt to deploy it before getting upset.
Actually, this is one of the only real ways to do serious amounts of survelliance. In Orwell's day, a 1984 dystopia would've been impossible; the technological resources required to watch everyone at the same time would've been impossible.
Now, or at least some point in the not-too far future, it shouldn't be too difficult to keep itense survellience going in real-time through the use of distributed computing applications and this sort of webcam-microphone collection. If Google's desktop software were to REALLY become widespread, it would be very easy for them to package distributied computing software to analyze the behavior of people at the same time it kept an eye on them.
The only hurdle at this point, at least as far as I know, is to write software good enough to analyze that much content in real time. It seems as if we're quite a while away from that.
http://www.TheGamerNation.com/Forums
AOL's recent posting of user search information has sensitized the public to Internet privacy issues for the near term. I think Google would be wise to be proactive and issue a press release promising that the technology will not be enabled without user consent and pointing out the very short sampling time in order to avoid suffering PR backlash from stories about the technology.
:-) :-| More seriously, I am certain that the number of programs that try to access these devices will increase over time. Does Vista address this issue?
A weaknesses in XP is the lack of management tools to control access to multimedia devices by program. Program features like the one Google is proposing make the ability to secure audio and video input devices at the OS level obviously necessary. Until such control is provided, the security minded user can unplug the microphone and the webcam when they are not in use. Not convenient, but secure. As far as I know, such security is currently unlikely to be necessary because few programs try to make such accesses -- but who knows for sure what the WGA daemon can do?
having been part of /. since almost day one (hb, at 71000, was my third id) it is sad to see how far things have slid. When I try to explain why /. is still superior to new comers like digg due to the initial filtering of stories; yet another scuttlemonkey shift comes around to shoot that argument all to heck. And always the junk stories are calculated to be the kind to drive maximum traffic to whatever site (we can only hope) he's getting some kind of incentive to pimp. It is just sad to see how little the remaining powers that be seem to care.
THE YEAR WAS 2081, and everybody was finally equal...
In a perfect world, people would realize that's why men evolved to have a foreskin in the first place and teach their sons to clean under there instead of mutilating genitalia...
Help us build a better map!
there's still the fact that this alleged Google software would be eating up a lot of CPU cycles and some network bandwidth. There's too many negatives from the consumer's point of view, and I think Google is too smart to try this.
"I'm so moist I'm sticking to the leather." -Kermit the Frog on The Late Late Show
not really. If they use encryption, you can't read the actual data. And if they just listen for certain phrases ("bomb", "islam", "liberal", etc) and send back identifying hashes, it would look much smaller than usable audio.
Slashdot needs a "-1, Wrong" moderation option.
The Urban Hippie
Foreskin is vestigial.
Foreskin is vestigial in the same sense that the appendix is vestigial. Humans don't fully understand what biological purposes the foreskin serves and so consider it without biological function. For starters, foreskin is the only external tissue in the human body that has estrogen receptors. What possible biological function could estrogen receptors on the human male body serve? I don't know but I do know I wish my foreskin had not been removed before I even had a say in the matter.
Here's one site that lists many possible benefits of foreskin.
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