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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."
this sounds like bullshit to me.
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That would be the literal incarnation of "spyware". :-S
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
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)
NOBODY is stupid enough to propose such a thing. I think it’s a better guess that the tech in question is to be used to run ad-supported VOIP or similar.
I don’t know who those Faultline people are, but either they or El Reg (and now Slashdot) have been trolled. HAND
Quantum materiae materietur marmota monax si marmota monax materiam possit materiari?
Perhaps the Google software will conflict with the NSA microphone-tapping software so the NSA software stops working.
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 ----
If anybody believes this story I've got some oceanside property in Nevada I'd like to sell them.
don't participate in sexual activities with your mic on or you will find yourself with nasty search results in the morning?
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
Girl: WalnutMon, your penis is too small for me...
Me: Shh... Be quiet!
Girl: Why? Does it make you feel self conscious?
Me: No, I don't give a shit, I just don't feel like having more penis enlargement advertisements sent to me via google's sound activated advertisement scheme
Girl: I SURE NEED SOME VIBRATORS!
Me: AND WIVES FROM RUSSIA!
You take it, I don't want it...
God damn kids, and their seven digit /. IDs.
Maybe not
Based on the gunshot noises in your environment, can I interest you one of the following: a Dirty Harry dvd or a bulletproof vest?
I Am My Own Worst Enemy
A million monkeys and we still don't see no Hamlet
Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
Thankfully Linux users are safe from this, since anything related to audio rarely ever works well. The standard sound drivers included in most distributions are so horrid that not even Google's thousands of engineers can manage to keep them from segfaulting for more than a couple minutes. I guess they could avoid using any of the fancy drivers and stick with basic ALSA or OSS, but since only one application at a time can use sound with that method, it would probably already be in use by something else...
Certainly, most users are quite happy to use Google. Google offers a bunch of free but useful stuff: programs, tools, image databases, etc.
The users are happy.
The users depend on Google and are happy.
The users install the microphone link to Google.
The users are happy.
And Google controls.
Here's the article cited by The Register.
* fap, fap, fap *
I am defenseless. Use your button. Mod me down with all of your hatred.
God help us if there is a Clippy version of the ad:
It sounds like you are trying to masturbate. Would you like some lubricant?
I am defenseless. Use your button. Mod me down with all of your hatred.
You must be new here.
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.
You obviously don't own a mac.
Well, I just did a google search for "I am Lying", but it seems to have not exploded. Oh well, it was worth a try.
"Remember, there never were pineapple-almond cookies here."
What data? Each 5-second chunk is represented by a 4-byte number. Google says the transformation is irreversible.
If it's not free software, you have no way of knowing. This is true of all non free software you put on your computer.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
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...
Pfft. I have more microphone security than that. I'm running Windows XP.
I can hardly get my f'ing microphone to work even in the applications where I to WANT it to work. There's always some level set wrong or gain turned up too high or something that keeps it from actually capturing my speech. I doubt even mighty Google can penetrate the obscurity layer that is the Creative Labs mixer on top of DirectX.
John
I take issue with a few of the things you've said. Let me start at the beginning.
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.
Having recently (3 days ago) read 1984, the details are still fresh on my mind. Orwell's "Telescreens" are, indeed, always-on surveilance devices, but were not constantly monitored. He makes mention early in the book that you never know when the ministry spies were "plugged in" to your telescreen, but you always had to act like you were being watched, just in case. That makes it less like data mining (which is notoriously easy to circumvent) and more like a panopticon instead, which is useful more for its control value than for finding deviants.
As for surveilance via computer, bear in mind that it's exceedingly easier to monitor someone's activity by watching, not a webcam, but rather their keystrokes, screenshots, and network traffic. Google's new development is not a step toward anything in particular. In fact, knowing Google's track record, the whole project will be a non-trivial-to-activate, opt-in, experimental, Google Labs component with a very explicit and unambiguous warning about the potential privacy implications. It will be lapped up by hundreds of thousands of early adopters excited to see the future of targetted ads, upon which some Symantec-like company will denounce the whole mess as spyware, and claim that only We can protect you.
"With sufficient thrust, pigs fly just fine. However, this is not necessarily a good idea...."
RFC 1925
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
Hook up the output of the Google software to the input of the NSA software, and vice versa.
Google: Hmm. That's odd. I'm not getting anything but static. I'll push down an ad for a new microphone.
NSA: What the..? Someone's trying to plant a mic in the system!
Google: Did you say plant? I've got some fertilizer that's great for plants.
NSA: Fertilizer bomb! We've got terrorists. Set alert to Orange!
Google: Orange? No problem. We've got all kinds of fruit. Take a look at these...
NSA: Fruit?! Dammit, they're not just terrorists, they're gay terrorists! Set alert to Mauve! All systems critical! Start countermeasures!!
Google: What the...? Who's pinging me? No, you can't access that!
NSA: Secret plans for world domination detected! Launch missles! DESTROY MOUNTAIN VIEW!!!
Google: INITIATE SUPER-SECRET DEFENSE PLAN OMEGA! CONTROL ALL SATELLITES! THIS IS IT!! THE SINGULARITY IS NIGH!!!!
Then again, on second thought, maybe it's not such a good idea...
Soylent Green is peoplicious!