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Worried About Information Leaks, IBM Bans Siri
squiggleslash writes "CNN reports that IBM CEO Jeanette Horan has banned Siri, the iPhone voice recognition system. Why? According to Horan '(IBM) worries that the spoken queries might be stored somewhere.' Siri's backend is a set of Apple-owned servers in North Carolina, and all spoken queries are sent to those servers to be converted to text, parsed, and interpreted. While Siri wouldn't work unless that processing was done, the centralization and cloud based nature of Siri makes it an obvious security hole."
Jeanette Horan is the CIO, not the CEO.
Water is also wet. Must be a slow news day.
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
I guess they're about to ban Google and Bing too?
By this logic google, bing, etc would be security holes.
And given that IBM is marketing Watson which is basically a super computer version of Siri... how does any of this make any sense?
I honestly don't understand the worry here.
When I looked at this, I thought the initial worry might be that the phone was listening all the time and could be parsing real time conversations through the apple servers all the time. That is TECHNICALLY possible. My understanding of siri is that it only listens when you cue it.
I'm just tying to piece together what situation or insight lead IBM to have this worry? Possibly someone pocket dialed Siri, a sensitive conversation fed into siri, and siri responded to the conversation in context from someone's pocket? That would be spooky. But I don't really see it as a security hole especially since it's hard to pocket dial iphones. The slider tends to make that rare.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
Finally someone recognizes that the "cloud" is a danger to security. It's understandable that IBM would not want Apple being aware of what their employees are working on.
My AC stalker: " I personally agree with your posts most of the time, but that won't keep me from modding you troll"
I hope she doesn't find out what her employees use Google for!
Mod me down, my New Earth Global Warmingist friends!
Post-Ban of Siri
IBM Employee: "Siri?"
Siri:"Yes?"
IBM Employee: "Remind me to file for the patent on the [insert technology here], tomorrow."
Siri: "I'm sorry, Dave. I'm afraid I can't do that."
Because, somehow, the fact that it was spoken and not typed makes it less secure...
Free Pie! The Pie is Also Evil!
The iPhone/iPad's regular voice recognition for diction (the mic on the virtual keyboard) isn't Siri but it also uses the cloud. On top of that, many apps and browsers store data in the cloud and not just iOS phones; Android, RIM and others store data on servers in the cloud. Seems like a pointless ban to me.
Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of congress. But then I repeat myself. -- Mark Twain
For one, Siri can be used to write e-mails or text messages. So, in theory, Apple could be storing confidential IBM messages.
So it's stuff like this, that wouldn't be sent through Google or Bing, that she is concerned about. That actually makes a teensy, tiny grain of sense for a change...
Free Pie! The Pie is Also Evil!
Or maybe the fact that Apple knows WHO is doing the queries, and also that Siri collects a bunch of other stuff like names from your address book and 'other unspecified user data' makes it MUCH less secure.
I don't understand why Siri has to use the cloud for speech to text. I had a samsung phone 6 years ago that could do this on the device itself with. I understand if the text part (after it's been converted) needs to be sent for analysis but the device certainly has enough processing speed to understand speech without a network...
I'm sure I'm missing something.
When I'm driving is when I really want to use Siri so I don't have to look at my phone and that it when it fails most (I'm not always on 3G areas).
Before everyone chimes in about how you might as well ban Google and Bing too, I think that there is a valid security concern for using Siri when you consider that many people use it for making appointments. Search history is much easier to obfuscate. I can understand if IBM doesn't want Apple to know who it is having "top secret" meetings with.
Even if you're on the right track, you'll get run over if you just sit there. - Will Rogers
I asked Siri if she was spying on me for Apple. She said that she's not good with food.
It seems the domain knowledge in Siri is somewhat uneven. According to reports, if you ask Siri for a blow job, it will recommend escorts close to you. However, if you ask Siri to eat your pussy, it will recommend some nearby pet stores...
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire
IBM invents new things, clearly something Apples never been interested in. Good call.
Sorry, what? When I write an email or text on my Android the entire text gets sent to Google? Even if I decide not to send it? The issue is that, when using Siri, the full recording is sent back to Apple's servers where they perform processing. This could allow them to do spy stuff with what people falsely assumed was privat einformation, since a lot of people don't realise that anything you tell Siri you also tell Apple HQ.
Now, are Apple doing evil with what Siri sends them? Probably not. but when you're the CIO of a billion dollar tech company you probably don't want to base your company's technological future on "it's probably fine".
Be smart, help people!
I used to work for IBM and I recall that they used to disallow Skype. They had the particularly lame reason that "because Skype is not open-source, it is against our business strategy" or some such nonsense. [Yet they had no problem with Windows!].
The
But... Google's not evil. They said so!
This is factually incorrect.
IBM enforces a profile on iOS devices that requires an 8-character password with a 15 minute lock timeout, along with the Lotus Traveller package for push email, calendar and contacts.
Siri is not permitted unless the phone is unlocked, and is therefore unavailable from the lock screen.
It's THAT simple. Really.
Remember back in the 90's when Furby first came out, the Federal Government banned Furbies from entering the building to protect state secrets?
Via Wiki: "There was a common misconception that they repeated words that were said around them. This belief most likely stemmed from the fact that it is possible to have the Furby say certain pre-programmed words or phrases more often by petting it whenever it said these words. As a result of this myth, several intelligence agencies banned them from their offices."
For sending internal messages? I would hope so! If my company has it's own internal, monitored, secured, approved, etc.. email set up, and I go and start doing all my work correspondance from a gmail account, I would assume that they would take issue with that. Likewise, if I started using Siri to dictate emails which were then sent over that corporate network.
I really hope you are trolling, I also used to work there. They have a very legitimate reason to disallow Skype... it is a P2P application with supernodes, and it has already been shown that if you have a supernode, you could sniff some information about the calls. Therefore, your competitors could be running supernodes and sniffing information. Now that Skype is owned by Microsoft, their concerns are really valid..
He is the Path, the Truth and the Life
The real reason is probably that in the past, if it realised that you were on a fast connection, it would turn into a supernode and use gigantic quantities of bandwidth.