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Google Home Ends A Domestic Dispute By Calling The Police (gizmodo.com)
An anonymous reader quotes Gizmodo:
According to ABC News, officers were called to a home outside Albuquerque, New Mexico this week when a Google Home called 911 and the operator heard a confrontation in the background. Police say that Eduardo Barros was house-sitting at the residence with his girlfriend and their daughter. Barros allegedly pulled a gun on his girlfriend when they got into an argument and asked her: "Did you call the sheriffs?" Google Home apparently heard "call the sheriffs," and proceeded to call the sheriffs. A SWAT team arrived at the home and after negotiating for hours, they were able to take Barros into custody... "The unexpected use of this new technology to contact emergency services has possibly helped save a life," Bernalillo County Sheriff Manuel Gonzales III said in a statement.
"It's easy to imagine police getting tired of being called to citizen's homes every time they watch the latest episode of Law and Order," quips Gizmodo. But they also call the incident "a clear reminder that smart home devices are always listening."
"It's easy to imagine police getting tired of being called to citizen's homes every time they watch the latest episode of Law and Order," quips Gizmodo. But they also call the incident "a clear reminder that smart home devices are always listening."
Coming soon, a law that mandates that all homes be equipped with one of these devices as well as prison sentences for those who attempt to disable them. For the sake of the children, of course. "You are the dead!"
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
At the very bottom of the linked story
http://abcnews.go.com/US/smart-home-device-alerts-mexico-authorities-alleged-assault/story?id=48470912
Editor's note: This story has been updated; an earlier version named a smart home device that was not the type found in the home and credited by police with calling 911.
Google Home cannot yet make phone calls. I'd like to see some proof that this was a Google Home at work. Isn't anyone at all skeptical anymore about news stories?
What's the problem with welfare for poor folks? As long as there's an obligation for self betterment with the view to getting off welfare i.e. education, internship, community service, I don't see the problem.
Corporate welfare on the other hand, I have a big problem with that. It has been demonstrated time and time again that corporate leaders use tax breaks to pad their own packages rather than improve employment prospects. Trickle down simply does not work and greed is the main factor.
In the end, perhaps it was a good thing.
But consider that Google Home missed the part about it being a question. I can see other situations where such a sentence might be used where I didn't want a SWAT response or any response at all.
Yes, I understand the 911 people listened in and made the decision to respond based on what they heard, and again in THIS case they were correct.
But there are all sorts of permutations of this where Google Home and whoever they called might be bad.
I certainly don't want to be sitting around bad-mouthing my employer / parents / next door neighbor who owns guns / [insert someone else here] and have Google Home call them so they can here it all...
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
This was talked about in 1984. East Germany did as much as they could given their limited tech. China is doing a much more comprehensive job with modern tech.
So you support corporations using the poor as easy position filling? That's what happens when you attach it to things like 'showing self improvement'. You get corporations taking part in incentive programs to 'create jobs'. The jobs in question are bottom of the barrel, violate labor laws (that the ignorant and poor cannot fight), and generally treat people like shit.
It then becomes a punishment to get off of welfare. We need to sever the tie between corporations, healthcare, and indeed even just surviving. Work needs to provide enough of a benefit that the government isn't needed. What often happens is these people get off welfare and have less money than they did before leaving it. Why bust your ass for pennies when the government takes better care of you?
Nobody has an answer to that because they're too busy being faux-moral jerkoffs. They believe everyone should suffer to justify their existence, or that some nebulous idea of 'personal responsibility' is the only way to go forward. Those values are proven to fail when challenged, because it becomes an excuse to mistreat people.
Fucking NSA agent diverting the conversation to partisan politics so the serfs are distracted from the original topic!
Given how shit the voice recognition still is on these things, he probably said something like "ok girl, I don't look at all like Omar Sharif"
When I hear about a story like this I think about an experience I had back when Doom II was released. I had hooked up my computer to my home stereo to show the game off to my roommates. I lived in an apartment in a bad neighborhood at the time.
I started to play and got as far as two shotgun blasts in before pressing pause to answer the phone. Shortly after the phone rang there was a very loud and forceful knock at the door. Said knock was followed by 'open up, police!'.
I went to the door, confused why the police were banging on my door. Several officers were standing outside with their guns in their hands while I had my phone in my hand. In my confusion I asked them what they wanted. They said they had reports of shots being fired and demanded entrance to my apartment. I let them in and showed them my computer with the game still paused. They were incredulous and didn't believe me, searching the apartment instead.
Ten seconds later they came back after finding nothing of interest. They then let me show them the computer game. I then showed them that by clicking the keyboard I could make the shotgun noise they heard.
Many additional police vehicles were outside. The officers had not yet bothered to tell the many additional cops outside that the shotgun was just a videogame. Much panic ensued as the officers outside started to yell 'shots fired' with their fellow officers inside my apartment. /repeat of my own comment from some time ago.
Or the guy hears the SWAT team arriving and shouts at the terrified woman.
"You liar, you did call the sheriffs"
"No honey, I swear I didn't", she replies, suddenly confused.
"Liar!". BLAM BLAM
The funniest thing about this story is that the girlfriend neither called the cops herself, nor did she ask Google Home to do it. The boyfriend asked 'Did you call the police', and Google Home heard the last part, took it as his directive, and called the cops.
He should be allowed to take Google Home w/ him to jail, so that he can train it better.
So you would have them process/blacklist every possible audio track from every show, movie, and radio broadcast ever created?
...yes?
It's not an intractable problem; merely an issue of scale, and the folks producing these systems are excellent at solving scaling issues. After all, the process has already begun with music.
As one possible solution, start with the libraries from Amazon, Google, and Netflix. Those libraries are already digitized and delivered in high-quality streams. As broadcast streams are produced, take a feed from each content-producing station, and process that. Note that since these streams can be processed faster than they're viewed, the backlog can be eventually caught up.
On the blacklist side, false positives can be reduced by listening to identify what media is being played. If you're watching Law and Order, for example, the device (or more appropriately, the cloud system behind it) can recognize the episode, and know to ignore the remaining dialog. That in turn increases the confidence of matches that aren't part of the episode's audio track. Conversely, when you change the station, the device can detect the deviation from the soundtrack, and lower that confidence input.
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
For reference, I will defer to an actual lawyer. The Illustrated Guide to Law is an absolutely fantastic reference for basic legal fundamentals. Two pages in particular are good places to start for a particular example, applicable in this case.
By coincidence, it even addresses the privacy issue: There's no such expectation while in someone else's home.
The rest of the series is also great material for understanding the principles involved.
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
There is always fraud. If it's possible for someone to get the assistance while still getting income from illegal or under-the-table dealings, someone will do it, even if just as a way to get by while "sticking it to the Man". Yes, that creative ingenuity would probably be more profitable in a legal enterprise, but there is always someone who just wants to get away with a scam. Remember, humans are horrible creatures.
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
When will they update it to state what actually happened?
1. Police receive 911 call about domestic dispute from woman who pretended to call someone else. ....
2. Man asks woman "Did you call the sherriffs?"
3. Woman denies it.
4. Sherriffs show up, man starts threatening woman because she lied to him.
5. Sherriff spots smart home device, remembers what was said on the call, and defuses situation by suggesting that the woman didn't call them, the smart home device did when the man asked the question.
6. Journalist overhears and thinks he has a news for nerds story worthy of slashdot front page.
7.
8. Profit
Sure it does...
Now how much income? How do we account for inflation? Who gets to answer those questions? Is there any accommodation for unequal needs? What qualifies as "universal"? Does it apply to all citizens? Does it apply to all residents? Do convicted felons still get the paycheck while in prison? How do we stop fraud? Where does the money come from? Is that fair and just?
This basically summarizes why the government rarely implements simple solutions. They're rarely simple.
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
Train your virtual assistant to the name "Didju." Alternatively, the name "Bitch" may prove quite useful and/or hilarious.
-IOVAR Web Dev Platform
Ah yes, the uncivilized land of Australia, where Google can't possibly get a data-sharing contract with the production studios.
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
"Guy intervenes, gets hurt, ,..."
and then breaks the law by using force other than in self-defence, and then breaks another law by pulling a gun when his life is not in immediate danger.
No matter how much you might dislike it, a gun is literally the last resort and you don't pull it unless you fully intend to shoot to kill. If you pull it and don't shoot, it's because of a major change in the situation, but - like an airbag going off - is something that should automatically involve the police if things have got this far.
Either way, you want the police coming at that point. And your correct response would not have been to pull the gun unless you genuinely thought that you needed to use it as a lethal weapon (rather than just showing it off to shut people up), or - if you didn't intend to use it - using reasonable force to restrain - AND - having called the police.
Responsibility comes with it the ability to know the legal limits. Even "fighting back" is a grey area unless the safety of yourself or others is in question if you don't. And there you want police to come too.
Sorry, in this case, penis means "I'm going to pull out a weapon when it's unjustified and threaten people with it". The exact thing that the rest of the world is always pointing at when the US doesn't punish its own police force for doing that. Let alone a private citizen.
Much scarier than that people tolerate devices listening all the time is that they can call emergency services just by hearing certain phrases. Much scarier than that is idiots pulling guns because of a domestic. Much scarier than that is idiots like that being able to source and carry guns, legally.
If you had restraint, nothing would have been able to get to that kind of position anyway.
Exactly. It's detracting me from asking the most important question of all! How do I use the 3 sea shells?
Science advances one funeral at a time- Max Planck
Based on some of the things my Echo responds to.... I bet "Did you' in a strong accent could sound like "Echo" which is a trigger word.
My concern is that the Echo can only call other Echo users.... so my guess is that it was one of the other AWS enabled devices.
Unless one of them is a developer and was building something that could do that. I don't imagine such folks are immune to domestic disputes. I knew a girl once who was very intelligent, (probably could have put ProtaOS on a Raspberry Pi) but always made bad choices for her SO.
Make America grate again!
Sure it does...
Now how much income?
Double the poverty line.
How do we account for inflation?
Peg an increase to the inflation rate; similar to what we do with Social Security
Who gets to answer those questions?
Congress does.
Is there any accommodation for unequal needs?
No, it's universal
What qualifies as "universal"? Does it apply to all citizens?
Yes, every man, woman and child above a certain age
Does it apply to all residents?
Maybe
Do convicted felons still get the paycheck while in prison?
Perhaps they would get a portion, considering their room and board are already being paid for by the state
How do we stop fraud?
It's universal, so there would not be much fraud. But you could tie it to the Social Security system and track it that way.
Where does the money come from?
The federal government. They could tax for it, or just print it.
Is that fair and just?
Yes.
Hey, check it out, I just worked out a basic income! ;-)
"What the American public doesn't know is what makes them the American public." -Ray Zalinsky (Tommy Boy)
That's flat-out wrong. There are plenty of people that want to live on handouts and to never work an honest day in their life. I know people like this. They know every trick in the book to game every welfare-like program, and when the government does a sweep of welfare looking for cheats, they jump over to disability. If that stops working for them, they go back to welfare.