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Google to Use PC Microphones to Listen In?
Posted by
ScuttleMonkey
on Sun Sep 03, 2006 06:30 PM
from the shh-yer-changing-my-ads dept.
from the shh-yer-changing-my-ads dept.
seriv writes "The Register reports that Google plans to use PC microphones to collect statistics on a user's environment. Peter Norvig, who directs research at Google, told Technology Review that this software would start to show up in Google software 'sooner rather than later'. The software collects short sound clips and removes background noise. Google then targets its ads based on the statistics collected. With the current level of online privacy, this new level of invasion would seem to have frightening possibilities."
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Google to Use PC Microphones to Listen In?
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is it april fools already? (Score:4, Insightful)
(Last Journal: Monday August 23 2004, @03:25PM)
Re:Actually... [Wrong, wrong...] (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://www.tlarson.com/)
I take issue with a few of the things you've said. Let me start at the beginning.
Actually, this is one of the only real ways to do serious amounts of survelliance. In Orwell's day, a 1984 dystopia would've been impossible; the technological resources required to watch everyone at the same time would've been impossible.
Having recently (3 days ago) read 1984, the details are still fresh on my mind. Orwell's "Telescreens" are, indeed, always-on surveilance devices, but were not constantly monitored. He makes mention early in the book that you never know when the ministry spies were "plugged in" to your telescreen, but you always had to act like you were being watched, just in case. That makes it less like data mining (which is notoriously easy to circumvent [schneier.com]) and more like a panopticon [wikipedia.org] instead, which is useful more for its control value than for finding deviants.
As for surveilance via computer, bear in mind that it's exceedingly easier to monitor someone's activity by watching, not a webcam, but rather their keystrokes, screenshots, and network traffic. Google's new development is not a step toward anything in particular. In fact, knowing Google's track record, the whole project will be a non-trivial-to-activate, opt-in, experimental, Google Labs component with a very explicit and unambiguous warning about the potential privacy implications. It will be lapped up by hundreds of thousands of early adopters excited to see the future of targetted ads, upon which some Symantec-like company will denounce the whole mess as spyware, and claim that only We can protect you.
Re:Cloes (Score:5, Funny)
(http://slashdot.org/ | Last Journal: Thursday April 12 2007, @09:41AM)
Pfft. I have more microphone security than that. I'm running Windows XP.
I can hardly get my f'ing microphone to work even in the applications where I to WANT it to work. There's always some level set wrong or gain turned up too high or something that keeps it from actually capturing my speech. I doubt even mighty Google can penetrate the obscurity layer that is the Creative Labs mixer on top of DirectX.
Re:Cloes (Score:4, Funny)
(http://www.webtekconcepts.com/)
sorry..had to
Re:is it april fools already? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:is it april fools already? (Score:5, Funny)
(http://asztal.net/)
Google Version of "Star Trek" Episode: "I, Mudd" (Score:5, Insightful)
Certainly, most users are quite happy to use Google. Google offers a bunch of free but useful stuff: programs, tools, image databases, etc.
The users are happy.
The users depend on Google and are happy.
The users install the microphone link to Google.
The users are happy.
And Google controls.
"I am Lying" (Score:5, Funny)
(http://www.uvm.edu/~jpatters)
The terrible secret of Space (Score:4, Funny)
(http://www.lullabud.com/)
Google will protect you from the terrible secret of space.
Do you have stairs at your house?
Google is here to protect you.
The user will be happy at the top of the stairs.
Google will protect you from the terrible secret of space.
Please go stand by the top of the stairs.
Re:is it april fools already? (Score:5, Insightful)
(Last Journal: Monday February 13 2006, @07:11PM)
Re:is it april fools already? (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://www.geekazon.com/)
Anyway, it's not bullshit. ArsTechnica had this article [arstechnica.com] about it in June. The idea is to grab a 12-millisecond sample of audio and transform it into a 32-bit "fingerprint" using an algorithm on the client side, then send the fingerprint to a server that compares it against a database of fingerprints from known television audio. From that they can determine what program you are listening to. If the mike picks up 12ms of you talking on the phone, the generated fingerprint simply won't match anything.
This is far from eavesdropping in the 1984 sense, but is a hell of a POC for it, and it does amount to sensing information about you that you might or might not want someone to know. The folks at Google seem to have worked hard to come up with a technique that they don't think will bother people. I see this as a classic case of very smart geeks thinking up a very clever technical solution without seeing the forest for the trees.
Re:is it april fools already? (Score:5, Funny)
How else would we read it??
Re:is it april fools already? (Score:4, Funny)
Say we map the microphone port to a virtual microphone port that's "listening" to an MP3 with some moaning, and cheesy music playing in the background. In the foreground we have a male voice saying "Oh yes, I love free porno. I wish I could download more free porno! *Moan* Oh yes, ooohh, *some generic rustling and fapping sounds* Ahhhh!".
Once that's done, the advertisers have no choice except to let us revel in our free-porn glory.
Wow... (Score:5, Funny)
(Last Journal: Monday February 13 2006, @07:11PM)
Pornware... (Score:5, Funny)
When Microsoft does it, it's called.... (Score:5, Funny)
It sounds like you are trying to masturbate. Would you like some lubricant?
Re:When Microsoft does it, it's called.... (Score:5, Insightful)
I see you're having some sort of seizure. Would you like me to call 911?
After all, the stupid little bugger could never figure out what the hell the user was trying to do. How's he gonna tell one spasm from another?
Re:When Microsoft does it, it's called.... (Score:4, Interesting)
(http://ursine.ca/~baloo/ | Last Journal: Saturday August 12 2006, @01:47AM)
In a perfect world, people would realize that's why men evolved to have a foreskin in the first place and teach their sons to clean under there instead of mutilating genitalia...
Fleshlight... (Score:4, Funny)
Let me be the first to say... (Score:5, Informative)
(http://www.slack-fr.org/ | Last Journal: Wednesday November 07, @08:25AM)
Of course, this may be just FUD, but I am pretty certain it qualifies as unlawful data collection and breach of privacy in my jurisdiction. Try to hijack my microphone, Google, and I will sue you to kingdom come. You have been warned.
A note to self: make sure the Google toolbar is uninstalled on every family computer ASAP.
Re:Let me be the first to say... (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://www.vems.co.nz/)
While I don't think there is "evil" in the intentions of the engineer who thought this "clever" thing up, or the marketing guy who figured the data would be useful, or the corporates who realised it could boost the shareholder value, lets not forget that the government can obtain the data if they so desire as well.
As they say, the road to hell is paved with good intentions.
Re:Let me be the first to say... (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://www.berylliumsphere.com/security_mentor | Last Journal: Wednesday January 31 2007, @09:13PM)
What data?
Each 5-second chunk is represented by a 4-byte number. Google says the transformation is irreversible. If it were reversible, Google would have found a way to encode audio at 4*8/5==6.4 bits per second.
This is for detecting whether you've got a particular broadcast going. The privacy implications are that maybe you don't want this government knowing that you listen to NPR, and that there might be a stealth "upgrade" later from Google or from somebody malicious that would improve the resolution.
Better than The Register, here's a Technology Review article about Google's microphone sampling [technologyreview.com].
What data indeed? (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://lists.clickers.org/linuxsig/index.html | Last Journal: Friday November 09, @11:00PM)
What data? Each 5-second chunk is represented by a 4-byte number. Google says the transformation is irreversible.
If it's not free software, you have no way of knowing. This is true of all non free software you put on your computer.
Re:What data indeed? (Score:4, Interesting)
It's not 4 bytes per 5 seconds! Calculations here (Score:5, Informative)
(http://wod.home.dyndns.org/)
So, even ignoring the fact that frames are overlapping, we have 32 bits per 12 miliseconds, which means more than 2600 bits per second! More than enough to code speech, even without speech recognition algorithms! The Speex codec (which is optimized for encoding speech) can code human speech [wikipedia.org] at such low bitrates as 2.15 kbit/s...
Conclusion if you're not willing to trust what Google says, they could perfectly be sending your speech over the internet to their own servers.
Re:Let me be the first to say... (Score:5, Insightful)
First off, this is the Register.. take it with a grain of salt.
Second, does anyone actually believe that - if this was true - you'd be forced to use it to use Google software? Google might track every statistic imaginable, but no one is forced to use anything they provide.
Re:Let me be the first to say... (Score:5, Insightful)
(Last Journal: Monday November 28 2005, @09:58PM)
Who doesn't use Google?
Re:Let me be the first to say... (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://www.firehed.net/)
Having said that, they'll need to really bend over incredibly far backwards to get me to even consider installing such a thing. Like, they pay all of my online shopping bills, no exceptions. Even with all the best security and intentions, the fact is that if they start getting subpoenaed for data, and don't fight it to the very end, someone has information on me who I don't want to have it. And if that makes me a terrorist, so be it.
Re:Let me be the first to say... (Score:5, Informative)
(http://www.adkap.com/ | Last Journal: Thursday August 10 2006, @04:10PM)
"Our Philosophy"
http://www.google.com/corporate/tenthings.html [google.com]
Re:how do we know? (Score:5, Funny)
You obviously don't own a mac.
Re:Let me be the first to say... (Score:5, Insightful)
I call bullshit. (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://thelifeofbryan.multiply.com/ | Last Journal: Tuesday February 20 2007, @12:20AM)
I don’t know who those Faultline people are, but either they or El Reg (and now Slashdot) have been trolled. HAND
PC Microphones? (Score:3, Interesting)
-r
Good! (Score:5, Funny)
Better yet (Score:5, Funny)
Hook up the output of the Google software to the input of the NSA software, and vice versa.
Google: Hmm. That's odd. I'm not getting anything but static. I'll push down an ad for a new microphone.
NSA: What the..? Someone's trying to plant a mic in the system!
Google: Did you say plant? I've got some fertilizer that's great for plants.
NSA: Fertilizer bomb! We've got terrorists. Set alert to Orange!
Google: Orange? No problem. We've got all kinds of fruit. Take a look at these...
NSA: Fruit?! Dammit, they're not just terrorists, they're gay terrorists! Set alert to Mauve! All systems critical! Start countermeasures!!
Google: What the...? Who's pinging me? No, you can't access that!
NSA: Secret plans for world domination detected! Launch missles! DESTROY MOUNTAIN VIEW!!!
Google: INITIATE SUPER-SECRET DEFENSE PLAN OMEGA! CONTROL ALL SATELLITES! THIS IS IT!! THE SINGULARITY IS NIGH!!!!
Then again, on second thought, maybe it's not such a good idea...
Hidden EULA? (Score:5, Interesting)
(http://slashdot.org/~nurb432/ | Last Journal: Friday August 27 2004, @03:24PM)
What is next, capturing video? Or scanning file contents?
Oceanside property in Nevada for sale! (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://www.swiftlytilting.com/)
So pretty much the lesson here is... (Score:5, Funny)
Yeah, right... (Score:5, Informative)
(http://geeklondon.com/)
The Register is not a reliable news source. Moreover, Andrew Orlowski has a bee in his bonnet about Google and constantly writes articles attacking them with very little merit - I would be astonished if this article is not by him, but even if it isn't, their association with him completely discredits them in my eyes.
Finally Peter Norvig is the author of the seminal Paradigms of Artificial Intelligence Programming (if you haven't read it, go and buy it right now) and is definitely not a complete idiot - I simply don't believe the story as summarised in the slashdot writeup regardless of whether it correctly reflects El Reg's article.
Case dismissed.
My most recent bedroom dialogue (Score:5, Funny)