Slashdot Mirror
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."
Perhaps the Google software will conflict with the NSA microphone-tapping software so the NSA software stops working.
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
Seconded.
While I don't think there is "evil" in the intentions of the engineer who thought this "clever" thing up, or the marketing guy who figured the data would be useful, or the corporates who realised it could boost the shareholder value, lets not forget that the government can obtain the data if they so desire as well.
As they say, the road to hell is paved with good intentions.
Forget thrust, drag, lift and weight. Airplanes fly because of money.
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...
First off, this is the Register.. take it with a grain of salt.
Second, does anyone actually believe that - if this was true - you'd be forced to use it to use Google software? Google might track every statistic imaginable, but no one is forced to use anything they provide.
you are probably right, it is most likely bullshit, but just incase i will keep my tinfoil hat pulled down tightly over my ears :^)
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
And now you will get advertisements about tinfoil hats! :-)
* 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.
"This sounds like bullshit to me" gets rated INSIGHTFUL??? Man, Slashdot has gone down the tubes.
Anyway, it's not bullshit. ArsTechnica had this article about it in June. The idea is to grab a 12-millisecond sample of audio and transform it into a 32-bit "fingerprint" using an algorithm on the client side, then send the fingerprint to a server that compares it against a database of fingerprints from known television audio. From that they can determine what program you are listening to. If the mike picks up 12ms of you talking on the phone, the generated fingerprint simply won't match anything.
This is far from eavesdropping in the 1984 sense, but is a hell of a POC for it, and it does amount to sensing information about you that you might or might not want someone to know. The folks at Google seem to have worked hard to come up with a technique that they don't think will bother people. I see this as a classic case of very smart geeks thinking up a very clever technical solution without seeing the forest for the trees.
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.
>lets not forget that the government can obtain the data
What data?
Each 5-second chunk is represented by a 4-byte number. Google says the transformation is irreversible. If it were reversible, Google would have found a way to encode audio at 4*8/5==6.4 bits per second.
This is for detecting whether you've got a particular broadcast going. The privacy implications are that maybe you don't want this government knowing that you listen to NPR, and that there might be a stealth "upgrade" later from Google or from somebody malicious that would improve the resolution.
Better than The Register, here's a Technology Review article about Google's microphone sampling.
Of course slashdot went down the tubes.
How else would we read it??
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."