Google Criticized For 'Opaque' Audio-Listening Binary In Debian Chromium

An anonymous reader writes: Google has fallen under criticism for including a compiled audio-monitoring binary in Chromium for Debian. A report was logged at Debian's bug register on Tuesday noting the presence of a non-auditable 'hotword' module in Chromium 43. The module facilitates Google's "OK, Google" functionality, which listens for that phrase via a Chrome user's microphone and attempts afterwards to interpret the user's instructions as a search query. Matt Giuca from the Chromium development team responded after the furore developed, disclaiming Google from any responsibility from auditing Chromium code, but promising clearer controls over the feature in release 45.

Comments

Re:Turn off in Windows?

[Anonymous Coward]

You can't. Even when you mute the microphone in Windows, it's still listening and uploading your data to their storage warehouse. Micro$haft then shares that data with government agencies.

Stop running Windows, unless you want your entire life recorded.

Re:time for better sandboxing / permissions?

[macs4all]

What Linux lacks is something similar to what the Android / iOS permission systems attempt to do (but aren't very good at either). All the low level infrastructure is there, but there is support missing at the package and desktop level.

You're lumping iOS and Android Permissions "systems" together, as if they are in ANY way equivalent?

That's rich.