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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.
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.
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...
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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