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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.
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.
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
"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.