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from the random-acts-of-predictable-randomness dept.
From a Business Insider Article
A couple in Portland, Oregon, say that speakers in their home powered by Amazon's Alexa smart voice assistant recorded a private conversation and sent the recording to a person in their contacts.
A woman named Danielle says she and her husband got a call two weeks ago from the contact, who told them to immediately unplug all their devices because he had heard their conversation in his home 176 miles away in Seattle, KIRO-TV first reported. She said he proved it by providing details about the conversation.
Amazon told the news station: "Amazon takes privacy very seriously. We investigated what happened and determined this was an extremely rare occurrence. We are taking steps to avoid this from happening in the future."
[...] Here's what happened, according to Amazon:
"Echo woke up due to a word in background conversation sounding like 'Alexa.' Then, the subsequent conversation was heard as a 'send message' request. At which point, Alexa said out loud 'To whom?' At which point, the background conversation was interpreted as a name in the customers contact list. Alexa then asked out loud, '[contact name], right?' Alexa then interpreted background conversation as 'right'. As unlikely as this string of events is, we are evaluating options to make this case even less likely."
If we're going to be unable to resist having devices in our private spaces which can record our private conversations, then Amazon needs to step up and seriously upgrade the security and privacy to the level we've come to expect from IoT devices.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 26 2018, @07:17AM (2 children)
Exhibit A: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autorun [wikipedia.org] -- with us since Windows 95
(Score: 5, Insightful) by choose another one on Saturday May 26 2018, @10:21AM (1 child)
Oh it's been with us _much_ _much_ longer than that, the fatal consequences of interpreting words in conversation as commands, without confirmation:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Will_no_one_rid_me_of_this_turbulent_priest%3F [wikipedia.org]
There are probably earlier documented examples too, I just can't think of them right now.
(Score: 2) by realDonaldTrump on Sunday May 27 2018, @02:57PM
Obama fixed that one. And John Brennan -- who is PANICKING right now -- fixed that one. They call it the Disposition Matrix, I call it my kill list.
The King could just say, go kill so-and-so. And it happened. Not many folks to kill in those days, they could keep all the names in their heads. And they had to because they couldn't read or write.
Much more complicated now. I say, put so-and-so on the kill list. Then a guy types it in, there's a special cyber for that. And he prints it, there's a document. And they bring me the document to sign. And the guy, usually, doesn't get killed unless I sign. Sometimes a lot of bad dudes get together, some are on the list. And some should be on it, I didn't sign for them yet. But they all get droned together!!!