Read Amazon's privacy statement on the echo. You can request that all of the audio data collected on your account be deleted. Even easier-use the Alexa app to delete all of your audio content.
And before you ask - why don't they keep it anyway and just say "yup we're deleting it"? Because if the trust that had to be built up for people to agree to have this device in their house is violated (ex employee shows logs of all data being retained against users wishes), people will throw the devices out in a heart beat because of the violation of trust.
Amazon only records several seconds after the wake word. Other than that the device just sits there dumb waiting for the wake word. So there isn't going to be much chance that there is an audio recording of the murder occurring.
If the echo actually recorded everything in its hearing range and sent it up to the mother ship you would see the packet traffic, there would be a significant drag on your bandwidth and if you are charged by the megabyte your billing would jump through the roof the moment it was turned on (assuming something like 1 meg/minute of audio would give 1440 megs per day in usage).
I expect there to be a follow up story in the next couple of weeks: Cops vexxed by fact that amazon isn't recording everything and try to force amazon to release "secret recordings" they feel that amazon should have.
The question then becomes - What level of security is desired? What level of security can be afforded? I threw out the basic level of security where all the doors are locked and the windows are inconvenient to break into.
The specifications were vague so I aimed for cheap and easily implemented.
Is submitter more concerned with data security or protecting the hardware?
What threat level does the person want to be able to resist: Window B&E? Chop saws? Man portable rams? Pneumatic hammers? Car knocking the wall? Ripping a door off with a tow cable? The walls could easily be made out of 10" CMU reinforced with rebar and filled with concrete with prison grade windows and doors. CMU walls and prison grade accessories are expensive.
We could easily design a vault that looks like an office, but how much money does submitter want to spend?
For Security - you need to set the building up to reduce attention. You don't want BRAND NEW and you don't want NEGLECTED. Either is a red flag for people casing a building.
For physical security you need to address doors and windows.
Windows - lockable double pane windows with the retainers that prevent the windows from being opened more than 4" (this prevents someone from opening the window and crawling through). Plant rose bushes or other flowering thorny plants directly under the windows and properly prune them to make them an obstacle to approaching the window. Pull shades that are closed at the end of day to prevent snooping.
Doors - Metal door with security frame. A door designed to resist a police ram.
Any buried lines should be encased in PVC conduit from the house to the out building to prevent water intrusion. With separate conduits for different voltages.
Any long term noise generating devices (racks, air conditioning equipment) should be in a separate room with a closed door to prevent noise transfer.
The building should have year round heating and air conditioning. Sweltering in the heat and freezing in the cold is a sure fire way to not get any work done.
If not lazy, used to taking short cuts that are not available when you are the president and everything is subject to oversight, review, the press and everyone else out there sharpening a knife in the hopes that he will trip up.
Effectively the president does not set his own schedule. His scheduler does that.The presidential schedule is one of the most tightly controlled schedules on the planet. And it is scheduled down to the minute months in advance.
The president's time so important enough that anything that does not involve the president making a decision, getting briefed on making a decision or having a meeting related to legislation is handled by someone else. There is a line out the door of people who want/need to see the president (about decisions and legislation), all of these people need to be scheduled, all of these people are important, their issues are important, cancelling on them had better be for a reason other than "I wanted to skip that meeting". Free time does not exist in a presidential schedule, any unscheduled time is buried in reading briefs, approving position papers and all the other work required for a president. Vacations still have daily briefings and priority work.
If you aren't ready to work at least 80 hours a week, on a rigidly controlled schedule that is set by someone else, don't be the president of the US.
You are correct, I am describing the status quo of the presidency.
The boiler maker environment that Trump is setting up is useful when you have time to play favorites and have people publicly curry favor. The person in the center gets lots of attention and feels important because everyone is coming to you. It doesn't get a lot of work done though because everyone is busy scurrying around trying to curry favor instead of - actually getting the work done.
The whitehouse archives occasionally releases past day schedules of presidents. They are scheduled to the minute and every day covers a dozen different topics, all of which the president has to be briefed on in advance or the president has to do his reading on after dinner (ie after work). Trump has not shown the inclination to do the homework needed to make rapid, informed, decisive decisions when those decisions are needed.
I am in agreement that Pence will be doing a lot of work for Trump and that Trump is used to being able to cash out whenever things get tough.
I am not in agreement that Trump will be able to shovel it all off on Pence. There are to many factors that would conflict with that: All the big calls have to be made by the president. The army only takes orders from the president. If Trump wants something from Congress he better be the one in the meetings pressuring congress members. And if (when) the press picks up on the fact that Trump is trying to be an actual do nothing president they will rake him over the coals continuously-Think Alec Baldwin dressed as Trump sitting on the beach drinking while the Pence actor is having everything collapse around him.
You can call it astute observation. The Whitehouse switch board is notorious for blocking everyone who isn't scheduled. I don't see Trump ever getting an unscheduled phone call.
Trump has a history of setting up boiler-maker environments where people have to vie for his favor. It makes for an environment where everyone is attempting to curry favor with him. Trump enjoys it because everyone has to come to him and he can play favorites and pit people against each other. Think of a King, his courtiers and the court. Listen to the stories of the infighting already occurring in his transition team -that is people attempting to vie for favor with Trump.
Trump is going to find out people are not going to "just call the president" because all of those calls get blocked by the switchboard. Trump is going to find out that casual phone calls do not happen as president, his schedule is locked down to the minute. This boiler maker atmosphere that trump seems to enjoy is going to be counter productive in an environment where decisions need to be made and then acted on and revisiting choices wastes time that needs to be used on other decisions coming in the door.
I use facebook for non-business, non-work, non-professional reasons. I use Linked in for business, work and professional reasons.
I do not normally mix the two. The first being I don't want my boss or coworkers (with a couple of exceptions) knowing how I spend my weekends. Its none of their business.
Facebook is apparently trying to bring that separation between my private and work life. I won't participate in that. There are two many chances of something stupid being cross-posted between personal and professional sections of Facebook. Not going there.
Let me clarify: The local Echo unit is listening all the time. It only wakes up, records and uploads for processing is if you say the magic wake word. Other than that you could do what ever you want and the Echo is just going to sit there dumb as a stump. The cloud side of the operation only knows when it is tasked with something from a local Echo unit.
Don't believe me? Put a bandwidth monitor on your Echo and then test it. Let it sit there with a conversation in the room and then wake it up and ask it to do things: count down timer, sports, scores, the weather, prices for products, wikipedia pages. You'll see the bandwidth usage spike when it is talking to the mother ship.
The problem is most speech scientists that develop the speech models are under contract between a relatively small number of companies and universities. These are the people that actually understand how the sounds that come out of our mouths get turned into text. They all have PhDs in the field and are paid competitively. The available pool of these people: 1. wanting to work on a voice model in their free time and 2. not being under a noncompete is very very small.
I expect that an open source voice model will eventually be developed, years from now. By then the commercial versions will have gotten that much further ahead of the open source version.
I assume you are referring to the nebulous "Amazon is listening" issue. For amazon to be listening all the time would consume huge amounts of bandwidth and processing power for it to be of any use to them. And you the end user would see the bandwidth pull all the time.
Short answer no: The voice model and is to large to conveniently run locally. Any data needed to formulate an answer (prices of products, driving instructions, jokes, baseball scores, count down timers, etc) has to be accessible to the voice computer.
As I noted, I consolidated a 400 page book into four paragraphs and left out a great deal of other subject matter supporting the discussion. May I recommend you pick up "The Fourth Turning" by Straus and Howe.
Instead look at the difference in tools the world has since the 1950s to now.
Communications is instantaneous around the world. In the 1950's if you were lucky you could make a long distance phone call. Anything else was by post (days or months).
Travel is cheap, plentiful and you can go almost anywhere in the world within 24 hour. In the 50's cars were just becoming a household tool. Overseas travel was long and expensive (and by ship).
Computational power and data storage has exploded. Smart phones are a personal supercomputer in your pocket that you can use for huge number of tasks. In the 50's it was paper, pencil and a slide rule. Calculators were barely an option, hard drives were experimental (at best). Any body know the dewey decimal system?
There are many other fundamental changes that have occurred in the last 80 years. And they have led to a multitude of downstream changes in how we live our lives, our society, corporations and the world operates. World-wide supply chain management, cell phone reporting of anything (cats, police, family reunions), ability to get anything delivered to your door within 48 hours (and sometimes same day), ride-sharing, mp3 players, digital cameras, cell phones, the list goes on and on and on.
Many of these changes took a while to grab hold, and suddenly several of them have grabbed hold all at once and it is affecting how the world works (both for good and for ill). People who cannot adapt are being swept away (them whipper-snappers and those fangled new things, its just a fad) while the people who were born with the new technology are exploiting it to its limit.
No technology is not "good" or "evil" it all depends on how you use it. At the same time people should be cognizant of the fact that any new technology can and will be disruptive to part of the old guard. Be it automation putting workers out of work (automatic looms and textiles), the postal service shipping more boxes and fewer letters, Eastman-Kodak going out of business due to digital cameras, self-driving cars putting pressure on taxi drivers (this is just starting now), the rum triangle between England, Africa and the colonies putting English workers out of work because of cheaper US goods, or US workers being put out of work because of cheaper workers in China, India, and the Pacific Rim.
The world has a history pattern of how wars work. Follow along for a minute before saying I am off the wall. Its all in pattern analysis. I am paraphrasing from the book "The Fourth Turning" by Strauss and Howe.
The world works on a 80 year cycle (I'm skipping the generational stuff and going right to the wars.). The wars reflect what part of the cycle you are in. First turning wars occur after the last big war and settle any left over issues from the last big war. Example: Queen Anne's War, War of 1812, Korean War. No major changes to the world dynamic. People are happy to settle things down for a while. These are often proxy wars between the winners of the last major conflict.
Second turning wars go no where fast, drag out for a while and are a quagmire. Example: English Civil war, King George's war, Spanish-American War, Vietnam, Afghanistan (Russian intervention). These wars tend to be guerilla wars, don't get a lot done and no one is quite sure why they are being fought. These are potrayed as police actions or proxy wars (or both).
Third Turning Wars are preparatory wars for the fourth turning. These wars are based on new conflicts that did not exist when the last big war occurred. Examples: French and Indian Wars, Mexican War, World War I, Operation Desert Storm. These wars are fought but don't fundamentally change the underpinnings of the world structure. They do point to how the next major war will unfold. These are often interventions or peace keeping expeditions.
Fourth Turning Wars are decisive and to the end. Example: War of the Roses, Armada of Triumph, King Philips War, Bacon's Rebellion, King Williams War, Glorious Revolution, American Revolution, American Civil War, World War II. During the fourth turning wars are brutal and to the end. Have any new powerful weapons you were afraid to use before? Now is the time to use them.
It is all in pattern analysis. There have been major conflicts, wars and political realignments going on throughout the last 15 years (starting in 2001). The number of governments that have fallen or realigned during that time is breath taking. Europe, the Middle East and Africa are all coming apart at the seams. China and Russia are working very hard to keep their countries battened down hard. The US has its own troubles, notably a big push towards fascism (government take over of corporations and oppression of minorities fits the bill).
Everything is pointing toward large countries being willing to see how far they can push the envelope on any problem they encounter, which leads to larger wars. I expect there to be an expansion of the middle eastern conflict into Europe, Africa and Asia before it calms down again. Case in point: If Russia runs out its currency reserves next year (and it is on track to), it won't have the money to do anything and the Russian state will have to lash out or pull back and lick its wounds. Right now the posture that Russia has is not toward licking its wounds. If Russia lashes out and starts something major things will get serious quickly in Asia and Europe. And Russia will drive it until it runs out of money or collapses either way is not good for Asia, Europe and the World.
Will it unwind this way? I don't know. But I do see something on the horizon that ain't pretty.
But psychiatrists and psychologists can be reprimanded and lose their license to practice if they go on TV and say "That person is bonkers, I can tell from watching him on TV"
It doesn't remove their right to say this, but they are still subject to the consequences of their actions.
This is why psychiatrists/psychologists are not allowed to comment on the health of people who are not directly under their care. If you don't know what is going, you can't make a reasonable assessment of the subject's health. Doctors who have not reviewed the patient's medical file and made an examination of the subject should shut up because they do not have all of the information needed to make an accurate assessment.
Slashdot Mirror
If you activate the Echo with the key word, the command you give it is store indefintiely- unless you request for a data deletion (from the echo app).
Read Amazon's privacy statement on the echo. You can request that all of the audio data collected on your account be deleted. Even easier-use the Alexa app to delete all of your audio content.
And before you ask - why don't they keep it anyway and just say "yup we're deleting it"? Because if the trust that had to be built up for people to agree to have this device in their house is violated (ex employee shows logs of all data being retained against users wishes), people will throw the devices out in a heart beat because of the violation of trust.
Amazon only records several seconds after the wake word. Other than that the device just sits there dumb waiting for the wake word. So there isn't going to be much chance that there is an audio recording of the murder occurring.
If the echo actually recorded everything in its hearing range and sent it up to the mother ship you would see the packet traffic, there would be a significant drag on your bandwidth and if you are charged by the megabyte your billing would jump through the roof the moment it was turned on (assuming something like 1 meg/minute of audio would give 1440 megs per day in usage).
I expect there to be a follow up story in the next couple of weeks: Cops vexxed by fact that amazon isn't recording everything and try to force amazon to release "secret recordings" they feel that amazon should have.
The question then becomes - What level of security is desired? What level of security can be afforded? I threw out the basic level of security where all the doors are locked and the windows are inconvenient to break into.
The specifications were vague so I aimed for cheap and easily implemented.
Is submitter more concerned with data security or protecting the hardware?
What threat level does the person want to be able to resist: Window B&E? Chop saws? Man portable rams? Pneumatic hammers? Car knocking the wall? Ripping a door off with a tow cable? The walls could easily be made out of 10" CMU reinforced with rebar and filled with concrete with prison grade windows and doors. CMU walls and prison grade accessories are expensive.
We could easily design a vault that looks like an office, but how much money does submitter want to spend?
For Security - you need to set the building up to reduce attention. You don't want BRAND NEW and you don't want NEGLECTED. Either is a red flag for people casing a building.
For physical security you need to address doors and windows.
Windows - lockable double pane windows with the retainers that prevent the windows from being opened more than 4" (this prevents someone from opening the window and crawling through). Plant rose bushes or other flowering thorny plants directly under the windows and properly prune them to make them an obstacle to approaching the window. Pull shades that are closed at the end of day to prevent snooping.
Doors - Metal door with security frame. A door designed to resist a police ram.
Any buried lines should be encased in PVC conduit from the house to the out building to prevent water intrusion. With separate conduits for different voltages.
Any long term noise generating devices (racks, air conditioning equipment) should be in a separate room with a closed door to prevent noise transfer.
The building should have year round heating and air conditioning. Sweltering in the heat and freezing in the cold is a sure fire way to not get any work done.
If not lazy, used to taking short cuts that are not available when you are the president and everything is subject to oversight, review, the press and everyone else out there sharpening a knife in the hopes that he will trip up.
Effectively the president does not set his own schedule. His scheduler does that.The presidential schedule is one of the most tightly controlled schedules on the planet. And it is scheduled down to the minute months in advance.
The president's time so important enough that anything that does not involve the president making a decision, getting briefed on making a decision or having a meeting related to legislation is handled by someone else. There is a line out the door of people who want/need to see the president (about decisions and legislation), all of these people need to be scheduled, all of these people are important, their issues are important, cancelling on them had better be for a reason other than "I wanted to skip that meeting". Free time does not exist in a presidential schedule, any unscheduled time is buried in reading briefs, approving position papers and all the other work required for a president. Vacations still have daily briefings and priority work.
If you aren't ready to work at least 80 hours a week, on a rigidly controlled schedule that is set by someone else, don't be the president of the US.
He won't have to take credit: He's the president so by default it is his fault, no matter who he blames.
You are correct, I am describing the status quo of the presidency.
The boiler maker environment that Trump is setting up is useful when you have time to play favorites and have people publicly curry favor. The person in the center gets lots of attention and feels important because everyone is coming to you. It doesn't get a lot of work done though because everyone is busy scurrying around trying to curry favor instead of - actually getting the work done.
The whitehouse archives occasionally releases past day schedules of presidents. They are scheduled to the minute and every day covers a dozen different topics, all of which the president has to be briefed on in advance or the president has to do his reading on after dinner (ie after work). Trump has not shown the inclination to do the homework needed to make rapid, informed, decisive decisions when those decisions are needed.
I am in agreement that Pence will be doing a lot of work for Trump and that Trump is used to being able to cash out whenever things get tough.
I am not in agreement that Trump will be able to shovel it all off on Pence. There are to many factors that would conflict with that: All the big calls have to be made by the president. The army only takes orders from the president. If Trump wants something from Congress he better be the one in the meetings pressuring congress members. And if (when) the press picks up on the fact that Trump is trying to be an actual do nothing president they will rake him over the coals continuously-Think Alec Baldwin dressed as Trump sitting on the beach drinking while the Pence actor is having everything collapse around him.
You can call it astute observation. The Whitehouse switch board is notorious for blocking everyone who isn't scheduled. I don't see Trump ever getting an unscheduled phone call.
Trump has a history of setting up boiler-maker environments where people have to vie for his favor. It makes for an environment where everyone is attempting to curry favor with him. Trump enjoys it because everyone has to come to him and he can play favorites and pit people against each other. Think of a King, his courtiers and the court. Listen to the stories of the infighting already occurring in his transition team -that is people attempting to vie for favor with Trump.
Trump is going to find out people are not going to "just call the president" because all of those calls get blocked by the switchboard. Trump is going to find out that casual phone calls do not happen as president, his schedule is locked down to the minute. This boiler maker atmosphere that trump seems to enjoy is going to be counter productive in an environment where decisions need to be made and then acted on and revisiting choices wastes time that needs to be used on other decisions coming in the door.
I use facebook for non-business, non-work, non-professional reasons. I use Linked in for business, work and professional reasons.
I do not normally mix the two. The first being I don't want my boss or coworkers (with a couple of exceptions) knowing how I spend my weekends. Its none of their business.
Facebook is apparently trying to bring that separation between my private and work life. I won't participate in that. There are two many chances of something stupid being cross-posted between personal and professional sections of Facebook. Not going there.
Let me clarify: The local Echo unit is listening all the time. It only wakes up, records and uploads for processing is if you say the magic wake word. Other than that you could do what ever you want and the Echo is just going to sit there dumb as a stump. The cloud side of the operation only knows when it is tasked with something from a local Echo unit.
Don't believe me? Put a bandwidth monitor on your Echo and then test it. Let it sit there with a conversation in the room and then wake it up and ask it to do things: count down timer, sports, scores, the weather, prices for products, wikipedia pages. You'll see the bandwidth usage spike when it is talking to the mother ship.
The problem is most speech scientists that develop the speech models are under contract between a relatively small number of companies and universities. These are the people that actually understand how the sounds that come out of our mouths get turned into text. They all have PhDs in the field and are paid competitively. The available pool of these people: 1. wanting to work on a voice model in their free time and 2. not being under a noncompete is very very small.
I expect that an open source voice model will eventually be developed, years from now. By then the commercial versions will have gotten that much further ahead of the open source version.
I assume you are referring to the nebulous "Amazon is listening" issue. For amazon to be listening all the time would consume huge amounts of bandwidth and processing power for it to be of any use to them. And you the end user would see the bandwidth pull all the time.
Careful with that: Closed captioning often abbreviates the spoken word.
Short answer no: The voice model and is to large to conveniently run locally. Any data needed to formulate an answer (prices of products, driving instructions, jokes, baseball scores, count down timers, etc) has to be accessible to the voice computer.
As I noted, I consolidated a 400 page book into four paragraphs and left out a great deal of other subject matter supporting the discussion. May I recommend you pick up "The Fourth Turning" by Straus and Howe.
Instead look at the difference in tools the world has since the 1950s to now.
Communications is instantaneous around the world. In the 1950's if you were lucky you could make a long distance phone call. Anything else was by post (days or months).
Travel is cheap, plentiful and you can go almost anywhere in the world within 24 hour. In the 50's cars were just becoming a household tool. Overseas travel was long and expensive (and by ship).
Computational power and data storage has exploded. Smart phones are a personal supercomputer in your pocket that you can use for huge number of tasks. In the 50's it was paper, pencil and a slide rule. Calculators were barely an option, hard drives were experimental (at best). Any body know the dewey decimal system?
There are many other fundamental changes that have occurred in the last 80 years. And they have led to a multitude of downstream changes in how we live our lives, our society, corporations and the world operates. World-wide supply chain management, cell phone reporting of anything (cats, police, family reunions), ability to get anything delivered to your door within 48 hours (and sometimes same day), ride-sharing, mp3 players, digital cameras, cell phones, the list goes on and on and on.
Many of these changes took a while to grab hold, and suddenly several of them have grabbed hold all at once and it is affecting how the world works (both for good and for ill). People who cannot adapt are being swept away (them whipper-snappers and those fangled new things, its just a fad) while the people who were born with the new technology are exploiting it to its limit.
No technology is not "good" or "evil" it all depends on how you use it. At the same time people should be cognizant of the fact that any new technology can and will be disruptive to part of the old guard. Be it automation putting workers out of work (automatic looms and textiles), the postal service shipping more boxes and fewer letters, Eastman-Kodak going out of business due to digital cameras, self-driving cars putting pressure on taxi drivers (this is just starting now), the rum triangle between England, Africa and the colonies putting English workers out of work because of cheaper US goods, or US workers being put out of work because of cheaper workers in China, India, and the Pacific Rim.
Incorrect.
The world has a history pattern of how wars work. Follow along for a minute before saying I am off the wall. Its all in pattern analysis. I am paraphrasing from the book "The Fourth Turning" by Strauss and Howe.
The world works on a 80 year cycle (I'm skipping the generational stuff and going right to the wars.). The wars reflect what part of the cycle you are in.
First turning wars occur after the last big war and settle any left over issues from the last big war. Example: Queen Anne's War, War of 1812, Korean War. No major changes to the world dynamic. People are happy to settle things down for a while. These are often proxy wars between the winners of the last major conflict.
Second turning wars go no where fast, drag out for a while and are a quagmire. Example: English Civil war, King George's war, Spanish-American War, Vietnam, Afghanistan (Russian intervention). These wars tend to be guerilla wars, don't get a lot done and no one is quite sure why they are being fought. These are potrayed as police actions or proxy wars (or both).
Third Turning Wars are preparatory wars for the fourth turning. These wars are based on new conflicts that did not exist when the last big war occurred. Examples: French and Indian Wars, Mexican War, World War I, Operation Desert Storm. These wars are fought but don't fundamentally change the underpinnings of the world structure. They do point to how the next major war will unfold. These are often interventions or peace keeping expeditions.
Fourth Turning Wars are decisive and to the end. Example: War of the Roses, Armada of Triumph, King Philips War, Bacon's Rebellion, King Williams War, Glorious Revolution, American Revolution, American Civil War, World War II. During the fourth turning wars are brutal and to the end. Have any new powerful weapons you were afraid to use before? Now is the time to use them.
It is all in pattern analysis. There have been major conflicts, wars and political realignments going on throughout the last 15 years (starting in 2001). The number of governments that have fallen or realigned during that time is breath taking. Europe, the Middle East and Africa are all coming apart at the seams. China and Russia are working very hard to keep their countries battened down hard. The US has its own troubles, notably a big push towards fascism (government take over of corporations and oppression of minorities fits the bill).
Everything is pointing toward large countries being willing to see how far they can push the envelope on any problem they encounter, which leads to larger wars. I expect there to be an expansion of the middle eastern conflict into Europe, Africa and Asia before it calms down again. Case in point: If Russia runs out its currency reserves next year (and it is on track to), it won't have the money to do anything and the Russian state will have to lash out or pull back and lick its wounds. Right now the posture that Russia has is not toward licking its wounds. If Russia lashes out and starts something major things will get serious quickly in Asia and Europe. And Russia will drive it until it runs out of money or collapses either way is not good for Asia, Europe and the World.
Will it unwind this way? I don't know. But I do see something on the horizon that ain't pretty.
But psychiatrists and psychologists can be reprimanded and lose their license to practice if they go on TV and say "That person is bonkers, I can tell from watching him on TV"
It doesn't remove their right to say this, but they are still subject to the consequences of their actions.
The opportunity to register has already closed in many states. At this point you can't change the candidates without a lawsuit.
This is why psychiatrists/psychologists are not allowed to comment on the health of people who are not directly under their care. If you don't know what is going, you can't make a reasonable assessment of the subject's health. Doctors who have not reviewed the patient's medical file and made an examination of the subject should shut up because they do not have all of the information needed to make an accurate assessment.