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Should Burger King Be Prosecuted For Their Google Home-Triggering Ads? (washingtonpost.com)
Slashdot reader Lauren Weinstein thinks Burger King should be prosecuted for
successfully running an alternate version of its advertisement to trigger Google Home devices again Wednesday:
Someone -- or more likely a bunch of someones -- at Burger King and their advertising agency need to be arrested, tried, and spend some time in shackles and prison cells. They've likely been violating state and federal cybercrime laws with their obnoxious ad campaign... For example, the federal Computer Fraud and Abuse Act broadly prohibits anyone from accessing a computer without authorization... Burger King has instantly become the 'poster child' for mass, criminal abuse of these devices... It was a direct and voluntary violation of law.
Let's face it. From a marketing perspective, this is a huge success for BK. A relatively small number people were *actually* negatively affected, and I'd bet very few regular BK customers will actually STOP going there as a result. But for a single commercial, a huge number of people are now talking about BK and Whoppers. Even better, some people shift blame to Google for the insecurity of those voice interfaces. It's highly unlikely and negative legal consequences will come from this either.
Whichever sociopathic marketing asshole came up with this ploy is probably getting a big raise this year.
Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
Or why not remove Burger King from their search engine? A milder version would be pushing up a warning page when searching for Burger King or any of their trademarks...
Just as it should be. BK isn't "legitimizing triggering digital assistants", they are exposing serious flaws in poorly thought out technology. BK is not to be blamed but thanked; the people who would allow themselves to be exposed to such triggering and the companies that makes the shoddy products are the problem.
If Burger King legitimizes triggering digital assistants, then everybody can do it
Everyone CAN do it. Laws don't stop criminals, so claiming that BK opened some pandoras box is just plain ignorant. The box was opened when Google (and Amazon and presumably many other wannabes) created these products without even the rudiments of a secure design. These products are defective by design, and its just lucky that it was brought to light in an innocuous way instead of some criminal or other making off with millions by way of a less harmless approach.
I wish I had a good sig, but all the good ones are copyrighted
Kevin Mitnick spent 5 years in jail https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... and Aaron Swartz was prosecuted/persecuted to the point that he committed suicide https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Meanwhile, Sony pulls off their rootkit exploit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... and now Burger King with "OK, Google", and nobody goes to prison. The takeaway lesson for cybercriminals... don't do anything as an individual; instead, incorporate as a multinational, and have the corporation do the dirty work, without risk of anyone going to jail.
I'm not repeating myself
I'm an X window user; I'm an ex-Windows user
No, this is a good thing. The security hole is, and has always been, that the devices only recognize selected trigger words. This hole is due to poor design choices of the manufacturers, and they must step up to the plate to fix it or become liable for any and all consequences.
My GPS in my car has a 100% programmable verbal trigger (I have used "yo, bitch" in the past... so as you can see, quite programmable) and it is almost a decade old. So there's zero question it can be done.
The message is flat on the table now: Amazon, Google, Mycroft... everyone has to set up user-programmable trigger words as part of the install of the device / app. Otherwise this kind of thing, including truly hostile events, will be a regular consumer experience, and the manufacturers will be complicit.
No manufacturer can argue they were ignorant of the risk now. Entirely a good thing. I look forward to them repairing this obvious malfeature.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
It would be funny, but then you're just playing BK's marketing game. There would be headlines AGAIN about Google doing that, which is just giving them more publicity. How many marketing campaigns end up with several Slashdot headlines (along with plenty of other big-name media outlets)?
The worst thing that could have happened to BK is that this story was ignored. They way they figure it, the longer they can keep this in the news, the more successful their marketing campaign is. The faux anger will dissipate in fairly short order, but we're still all thinking about BK's Whoppers in the meantime.
Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.