Amazon Workers Are Listening To What You Tell Alexa (bloomberg.com) 137
Amazon reportedly employs thousands of people around the world to help improve its Alexa digital assistant. "The team listens to voice recordings captured in Echo owners' homes and offices," reports Bloomberg. "The recordings are transcribed, annotated and then fed back into the software as part of an effort to eliminate gaps in Alexa's understanding of human speech and help it better respond to commands." From the report: The team comprises a mix of contractors and full-time Amazon employees who work in outposts from Boston to Costa Rica, India and Romania, according to the people, who signed nondisclosure agreements barring them from speaking publicly about the program. They work nine hours a day, with each reviewer parsing as many as 1,000 audio clips per shift, according to two workers based at Amazon's Bucharest office, which takes up the top three floors of the Globalworth building in the Romanian capital's up-and-coming Pipera district. The modern facility stands out amid the crumbling infrastructure and bears no exterior sign advertising Amazon's presence. The work is mostly mundane. One worker in Boston said he mined accumulated voice data for specific utterances such as "Taylor Swift" and annotated them to indicate the searcher meant the musical artist. Occasionally the listeners pick up things Echo owners likely would rather stay private: a woman singing badly off key in the shower, say, or a child screaming for help. The teams use internal chat rooms to share files when they need help parsing a muddled word -- or come across an amusing recording.
Sometimes they hear recordings they find upsetting, or possibly criminal. Two of the workers said they picked up what they believe was a sexual assault. When something like that happens, they may share the experience in the internal chat room as a way of relieving stress. Amazon says it has procedures in place for workers to follow when they hear something distressing, but two Romania-based employees said that, after requesting guidance for such cases, they were told it wasn't Amazon's job to interfere. [...] Amazon, in its marketing and privacy policy materials, doesn't explicitly say humans are listening to recordings of some conversations picked up by Alexa. "We use your requests to Alexa to train our speech recognition and natural language understanding systems," the company says in a list of frequently asked questions. In Alexa's privacy settings, the company gives users the option of disabling the use of their voice recordings for the development of new features. A screenshot reviewed by Bloomberg shows that the recordings sent to the Alexa auditors don't provide a user's full name and address but are associated with an account number, as well as the user's first name and the device's serial number. An Amazon spokesperson said in a statement to Bloomberg: "We take the security and privacy of our customers' personal information seriously. We only annotate an extremely small sample of Alexa voice recordings in order [to] improve the customer experience. For example, this information helps us train our speech recognition and natural language understanding systems, so Alexa can better understand your requests, and ensure the service works well for everyone."
They added: "We have strict technical and operational safeguards, and have a zero tolerance policy for the abuse of our system. Employees do not have direct access to information that can identify the person or account as part of this workflow. All information is treated with high confidentiality and we use multi-factor authentication to restrict access, service encryption and audits of our control environment to protect it."
Further reading: How To Stop Amazon From Listening To Your Recordings
Sometimes they hear recordings they find upsetting, or possibly criminal. Two of the workers said they picked up what they believe was a sexual assault. When something like that happens, they may share the experience in the internal chat room as a way of relieving stress. Amazon says it has procedures in place for workers to follow when they hear something distressing, but two Romania-based employees said that, after requesting guidance for such cases, they were told it wasn't Amazon's job to interfere. [...] Amazon, in its marketing and privacy policy materials, doesn't explicitly say humans are listening to recordings of some conversations picked up by Alexa. "We use your requests to Alexa to train our speech recognition and natural language understanding systems," the company says in a list of frequently asked questions. In Alexa's privacy settings, the company gives users the option of disabling the use of their voice recordings for the development of new features. A screenshot reviewed by Bloomberg shows that the recordings sent to the Alexa auditors don't provide a user's full name and address but are associated with an account number, as well as the user's first name and the device's serial number. An Amazon spokesperson said in a statement to Bloomberg: "We take the security and privacy of our customers' personal information seriously. We only annotate an extremely small sample of Alexa voice recordings in order [to] improve the customer experience. For example, this information helps us train our speech recognition and natural language understanding systems, so Alexa can better understand your requests, and ensure the service works well for everyone."
They added: "We have strict technical and operational safeguards, and have a zero tolerance policy for the abuse of our system. Employees do not have direct access to information that can identify the person or account as part of this workflow. All information is treated with high confidentiality and we use multi-factor authentication to restrict access, service encryption and audits of our control environment to protect it."
Further reading: How To Stop Amazon From Listening To Your Recordings
Wait, you DIDN'T think that was happening? (Score:5, Insightful)
The article seems to present this as some new info, I assumed this was happening all the time, otherwise how else can Alexa improve?
it's incidentally also why I don't have anything like Alexa or other voice assistants in my house, but if you are sending audio to Amazon hey guess what, something or someone is going to listen to that audio. DURRRR.
Re:Wait, you DIDN'T think that was happening? (Score:5, Insightful)
No, no one should be suprised-- but they will be. Alexa isn't the only one, just the one currently exposed. How does one improve Alexa? Certainly training.
Or, recycling it.
Humanity has long desired servants. The servants are controlled by their masters, who are not you.
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But what people still don't seem to get is that these devices are not recording 24/7. They monitor for the trigger names to activate, "Hey Google", "OK Google", "Hey Alexa", "Hey Siri", "Hey Cortana" "Hey Galaxy" etc...
So when the devices are activated then they record. Now they can be t
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But what people still don't seem to get is that these devices are not recording 24/7. They monitor for the trigger names to activate...
You said "record", but I don't know why. It's silly to think that a voice-operated device is only listening when you say a certain phrase. Obviously it's listening all the time, otherwise how would it hear the phrase?
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But what people still don't seem to get is that these devices are not recording 24/7. They monitor for the trigger names to activate...
You said "record", but I don't know why. It's silly to think that a voice-operated device is only listening when you say a certain phrase. Obviously it's listening all the time, otherwise how would it hear the phrase?
The phrase recognition is done locally, nothing is saved on-device or sent to the cloud. I don't know about the home devices, but phones have dedicated circuitry that does nothing but hotword recognition. This is done to keep power usage down Having to keep a core of the main CPU awake would consume far too much power, draining the battery. Having to transmit the data via the cellular radio would destroy battery life, and burn expensive data.
Does having a powered-up microphone and very simple pattern r
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We can call it "listening" or "phrase recognition". They're the same. Now, maybe when phrase #1 is detected, action #1 is preformed. But then if phrase #2 is detected, then action #2 is preformed. However, that action #1 talks to you, and you're made aware of that, doesn't mean that action #2 needs to let you in on it all.
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We can call it "listening" or "phrase recognition". They're the same. Now, maybe when phrase #1 is detected, action #1 is preformed. But then if phrase #2 is detected, then action #2 is preformed. However, that action #1 talks to you, and you're made aware of that, doesn't mean that action #2 needs to let you in on it all.
Do you have any evidence -- at all -- that these devices scan for something other than the configured hotword?
Note that since the companies that make them are publicly-traded, there's a legally-enforceable expectation that when those companies say that the devices don't search for any other phrases, they're telling the truth. If anyone could prove that they weren't it would get the companies in significant trouble with the FTC and SEC. This is especially true for Google, which is operating under the ter
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Do you have any evidence -- at all -- that these devices scan for something other than the configured hotword?
Note that since the companies that make them are publicly-traded, there's a legally-enforceable expectation that when those companies say that the devices don't search for any other phrases, they're telling the truth. If anyone could prove that they weren't it would get the companies in significant trouble with the FTC and SEC. This is especially true for Google, which is operating under the terms of an FTC consent decree put into effect after the Google Buzz incident.
Have you not seen this [popularmechanics.com]?
In today's world, just because The Big Company doesn't tell you about a thing that their product does, doesn't mean that they told you that it doesn't do that. And that's the logic that we're dealing with. The mentality that you perceive from Silicon Valley seems outdated.
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Do you have any evidence -- at all -- that these devices scan for something other than the configured hotword?
Note that since the companies that make them are publicly-traded, there's a legally-enforceable expectation that when those companies say that the devices don't search for any other phrases, they're telling the truth. If anyone could prove that they weren't it would get the companies in significant trouble with the FTC and SEC. This is especially true for Google, which is operating under the terms of an FTC consent decree put into effect after the Google Buzz incident.
Have you not seen this [popularmechanics.com]? In today's world, just because The Big Company doesn't tell you about a thing that their product does, doesn't mean that they told you that it doesn't do that. And that's the logic that we're dealing with. The mentality that you perceive from Silicon Valley seems outdated.
Meh. That was clearly a simple mistake. They added the mic because they intended to use it later, then failed to include it in the spec sheet. There is also no evidence whatsoever that it was ever used at all until after it was actually announced.
This is actually an important point, though: Most of the tinfoil-hat crowd who is certain that companies are constantly maliciously lying have to attribute impossibly-high levels of competence and planning to them. In the real world, companies are made up of
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Meh. That was clearly a simple mistake. They added the mic because they intended to use it later, then failed to include it in the spec sheet.
You sound sure of that. Any reason why? Maybe you could show me another example of this same sort of thing happening.
I have another example [wired.com] to share why it is that I think this way. Maybe their activity doesn't alarm you, and that's fine.
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Meh. That was clearly a simple mistake. They added the mic because they intended to use it later, then failed to include it in the spec sheet.
You sound sure of that. Any reason why?
Knowledge of the people and culture.
Maybe you could show me another example of this same sort of thing happening.
I have another example [wired.com] to share why it is that I think this way. Maybe their activity doesn't alarm you, and that's fine.
I don't see any connection between these cases. One is the presence of a piece of hardware intended for future use, but not actually used, and accidentally omitted from the spec sheet. The other is the decision by one engineer to store more data than was necessary. Both are attributable to human error, but they're entirely different in nature and context. The mic in Nest Protect was part of the product roadmap. The Wifi packet capture was not (other than SSID).
FWIW
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We disagree on this, my friend, but I respect your views.
However, about the war-driving by google, you're correct, people shouldn't be broadcasting their SSID.
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And without those samples, they won't know who you are. You and I have the choices of putting our phones in Faraday bags, and thwarting the surveillance economy at ever turn if we think about it. Most will not.
But this is about choices, and fealty to the results of those choices. Government deadlocks will prohibit meaningful moves towards privacy unless that fealty is revoked.
Get rid of your tracker too. (Score:5, Insightful)
If you're like a lot of people, you already have a cell phone (more properly known as a tracker because that's what it does most of the time) so you already have the same spying capability in your house, on your person, and you likely choose to carry that around with you everywhere you go. Even technical users don't expect that the portable spy devices are listening whenever the proprietor wishes (and there's no indicator to tell the user when the mic is hot). You shouldn't own a tracker either.
No you don't (Score:2, Informative)
You only have this surveillance if you gave Google access to the mic permission.
I suggest you go into your phone and access permissions, microphone and turn off everything but the camera app and phone apps.
The big problem with Android is you cannot deny apps NETWORK access, so I'd like to stop the phone and camera apps accessing networks.
Re:No you don't (Score:5, Insightful)
You only have this surveillance if you gave Google access to the mic permission.
I suggest you go into your phone and access permissions, microphone and turn off everything but the camera app and phone apps.
The big problem with Android is you cannot deny apps NETWORK access, so I'd like to stop the phone and camera apps accessing networks.
You have a lot of faith that the creator of the operating system didn't give themselves a back-door way to enable the microphone anytime they like, regardless of what you've set the permissions to.
While I feel pretty confident that when I deny a random app's access to the microphone, that app really can't access it, but I have less confidence Google themselves can't turn on the mic anytime they want.
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Re: No you don't (Score:1)
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While I feel pretty confident that when I deny a random app's access to the microphone, that app really can't access it, but I have less confidence Google themselves can't turn on the mic anytime they want.
FWIW, if any Google apps (including Google Play services) had the ability to turn on the mic without the user's knowledge or permission, the Google security and privacy teams would both consider it to be a serious bug. And, of course, there's nothing in the base Android platform that provides Google with any special access. Note that I'm not saying Google apps don't have the permissions required to enable the mic -- I think Play services has pretty much every permission defined by the platform -- but that
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AFWall+ gives this feature.
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Re: No you don't (Score:1)
Donâ(TM)t forget the accelerometer can pick up vibrations i.e sound and used as a microphone to some extent. I do not believe access can be disabled.
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Considering how horribly wrong Siri gets my dictation I feel OK having an Apple device. Even if I were to say I’m gonna go blow up the school that dumb bitch would probably say something along “sorry I can’t find any shoe stores in your area“. She’s constantly fucking up pronouns. Singulars become plural, genders get swapped. Sometimes I will say him only to see it changed to they. I would understand if the words sounded similar to the word she got wrong. Nothing to be furth
Re:Wait, you DIDN'T think that was happening? (Score:5, Insightful)
This is a standard tactic: First lie directly, then less directly, then admit a bit, then admit the whole. The average person is stupid and will only see the small steps, not the large overall one and will accept the whole thing. Works time and again.
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/. readers are generally ok. ACs, on the other hand...
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People assume they are talking to an artificial intelligence, not to a random low wage employee. They also assume they pay for a working service, not to be part of some ongoing experiment as sample.
And the fact that amazon employees might be audio witness of an ongoing crime is a problem that will, any day, pose a serious issue. Because no marketting laws allows, in most civilized countries, to witness an ongoing crime and not say anything about it, not do anything to alert authorities. The fact that the au
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You hope. It has to listen the entire time, or else it can't hear the word "Alexa". How sure are you that it's not recording the entire time? Or just randomly for this transcribing process regardless of whether the word "Alexa" has been said or not?
Re:Wait, you DIDN'T think that was happening? (Score:5, Interesting)
Guess what. It's here. And now. Maybe not yet in the way as in the former east-block, but give it some time.
Sure, it can have good side-effects. Someone hearing a child cry for help, why wouldn't you alert 911 to get help. But boy is this a worrying development.
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The key part here is "the way the article is written". It's nonsense. There is nobody listening in on Alexa. Rather, human annotators are given a sample small number of audio clips, which are captured when somebody says "alexa" (the wakeword) and they transcribe the text therein. That's it. Every service that uses speech recognition, including your Android phone with Google Assistant or your iOS phone with Siri does *the exact same thing*.
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Remember the supposed ‘accident’ where google home called 911 during a domestic dispute? I found that unbelievable since 1) they dont interface with the PSTN, 2) they do not have a telephone number and therefore not registered with the 911 location database. That only leaves one option. Someone was listening and called the cops themselves.
Look on the bright side (Score:2)
Well, at least such could be helpful to the next person who asks for "Natalie Portman to moan romantically about a Beowulf cluster of hot grits." It does get better each time ... my friend asks for it.
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It redirected me to Bing.
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Nice!
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Alexa, show me all the article's about Amazon's spying on me.
Alexa, how do I spell the plural of "article"?
why do people use these things? (Score:5, Interesting)
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Because it is comfortable.
Every time I am in a hotel I really miss the option to say "Alexa, switch the lights off", or "Alexa, what time is it?" instead of doing everything myself.
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And wherefore would I do that? Amazon Echo is less hassle and since I don't talk at home except issuing voice commands to Alexa, Amazon gets nothing from me.
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I bought a couple of Alexas but I set up one of them in my office, where it's generally pretty quiet and where I'm only there a few days per week anyway. That unit is not going to hear anything but silence 99% of the time. I like it for the convenience of asking it things like how my commute home is looking, traffic-wise, or what the weather forecast is going to be for the rest of the day.
The other one is still in the box, unopened. (They had a sale where you got a pair of them for under $50 so it just se
Will learn the value of privacy when its too late (Score:3)
There are a myriad of ways this can go badly. Everything from misinterpreting conversations leading to arrests to blackmail of politicians.
Re: Will learn the value of privacy when its too l (Score:4, Interesting)
Presumably both of those things have been happening for quite a while now. The system is operating as designed.
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(This is why the listening work is done out of the country.)
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How would the "hear" that? Also, people that are capable of making a WMD will not talk about it in front of a known listening device.
Re: What should be done? (Score:2)
Big Brother Bezos is always watching.
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Maybe in the future if there is demand, they could consider adding a sub routine that could identify captures that in
If you care that much, poison the well (Score:2)
Lock a random sentence generator, with multiple voices into a box with your choice of home spy systems.
Feed your spot, echo, home, siri, cortana GB of gibberish 24x7
Re:If you care that much, poison the well (Score:5, Insightful)
Be on a blacklist that makes this ineffective within 15 minutes. The ones running this operation may have absolutely no ethics, but they are not terminally stupid.
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People don't believe it though. (Score:2)
I knew this was happening. Everyone I've warned about though, just plays it down. They like to believe that the chances of being listened to are very slim. They like to believe the privacy controls are sufficient and reliable.
Interesting (Score:2, Insightful)
So how many times, when we’ve discussed these devices before and someone like me has brought up this EXACT concern... has someone right here said some variant of “oh, no, they don’t transmit anything unless it’s preceded by the trigger phrase”?
Re:Interesting (Score:5, Interesting)
they (we) need to teach kids, early, ideally in school that:
if a politician or businessman is saying something, its generally a good bet that he's lying.
business has no ethics, not anymore. it will do anything to make a profit. lying is just a tool they allow themselves.
kids need to learn this so that we can fix it next generation. they have the benefit of the internet so they have no excuse to grow up not knowing this.
Re:Interesting (Score:5, Insightful)
While I agree on the problem, the solution is not going to work as most people (and most children) are stupid. Just look at the decisions they make. They know that politicians are lying, yet they still vote for the one that tells the better lies. They know corporations are just after money, yet they believe the ads. They vote against their own freedom, against their economic well-being and against their future. They are driven by fear, greed, hate and arrogance, and rationality makes only very rare appearances, if at all. And the "leaders" are cut from the same cloth.
I am sorry to say this, but this installment of the human race is fucked, and it is doing all the fucking to itself. Sure, there is a minority (may 10-15%) that actually understands how things work, that can think independently, that can verify facts and that can recognize a thing for what it is. But these are far too few. It is almost as if this planet is a failed experiment as to whether this mix of independent thinkers and others works and I think we can safely say it works badly and no way to fix it that can actually be implemented is known.
Re:Interesting (Score:4, Insightful)
While I agree on the problem, the solution is not going to work as most people (and most children) are stupid. Just look at the decisions they make. They know that politicians are lying, yet they still vote for the one that tells the better lies. They know corporations are just after money, yet they believe the ads. They vote against their own freedom, against their economic well-being and against their future. They are driven by fear, greed, hate and arrogance, and rationality makes only very rare appearances, if at all. And the "leaders" are cut from the same cloth.
I am sorry to say this, but this installment of the human race is fucked, and it is doing all the fucking to itself. Sure, there is a minority (may 10-15%) that actually understands how things work, that can think independently, that can verify facts and that can recognize a thing for what it is. But these are far too few. It is almost as if this planet is a failed experiment as to whether this mix of independent thinkers and others works and I think we can safely say it works badly and no way to fix it that can actually be implemented is known.
Relax. The world is complicated. Progress is not a straight line. People are free to make their own decisions, your understanding is not required. On the whole, we are doing amazingly well. The "challenges" of today are nothing compared to what we faced in the past. Nothing.
Get some perspective.
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Dead wrong. The challenges of the past were not global and quite a few civilizations managed to wipe themselves out by their stupidity throughout history. Today we do not have redundancy in this way anymore, everything is far too global.
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Dead wrong. The challenges of the past were not global and quite a few civilizations managed to wipe themselves out by their stupidity throughout history. Today we do not have redundancy in this way anymore, everything is far too global.
Yes, WW2 was not a global thing.
The Black Plague was not a global thing.
In total, the plague may have reduced the world population from an estimated 450 million to 350–375 million in the 14th century.[8] It took 200 years for the world population to recover to its previous level.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Death
Remind us, again, what are the existential challenges that you're facing in your life?
Learn some history. Get some perspective.
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Learn some history. Get some perspective.
Instead I will just not listen to idiots like you.
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Learn some history. Get some perspective.
Instead I will just not listen to idiots like you.
Ad hominem to the rescue! What a winner.
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Well, you started it. I doubt you are smart enough to see it though.
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Well, you started it.
Excellent comeback. My kids use that defence as well.
I doubt you are smart enough to see it though.
Another ad hominem, just in case the first one was missed.
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A matter of terminology. I use "willfully ignorant" as a subset of "stupid". You are certainly correct that this is the usual form it takes.
Personally, I work on not caring too much and being a somewhat fascinated observer of this self-annihilation. Clearly I still have some way to go. Fortunately, I decided early on that I will not put children into _this_ world, so I am at least not guilty of inflicting it on somebody else.
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I completely agree on that.
Re:Interesting (Score:5, Informative)
The article does not claim otherwise. It only claims that humans may listen to what is said *after* the trigger phrase, or after something which the box misinterprets as the trigger phrase.
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I'm listening and I can't figure out what the trigger was. A few times I've rewound but it didn't trigger the 2nd time. (Didn't go back far enough? FBI muting for a coffee break? High Frequency Transmissions back to the Mother Ship? [And you thought Apple's Spac
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We take the security and privacy... (Score:4, Interesting)
...of our customers' personal information seriously.
Translation: We do not give a fuck about you or your privacy. We will keep these recordings forever and eventually monetize them any way possible.
From what I have seen, the more a company stresses how it values privacy, the less it actually does. The "Big Lie" approach at work.
Re:We take the security and privacy... (Score:5, Funny)
They do take the security and privacy of their customers’ info seriously. They keep it locked away and sell it only to people they trust. It would be a bad idea to sell it to someone who might not pay for the info.
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Heheheh, indeed!
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They do take the security and privacy of their customers’ info seriously. They keep it locked away and sell it only to people they trust. It would be a bad idea to sell it to someone who might not pay for the info.
I doubt they're dumb enough to sell data, to anyone.
Aside from the PR and regulatory concerns raised by selling data, if you sell data you can only sell it once to each buyer. If you sell some service that uses the data (e.g. targeted advertising), without revealing the data itself or the identity of the user, then you can sell that service many times to each buyer. Further, if the prospective buyer doesn't have as much expertise as you do, they probably get more value from the data-based service than th
The truth is... (Score:3, Funny)
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human monkeys?
you mean like the brain enhanced chinees monkeys? that's why they made them? my god...
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A similar approach got one scammer quite far [thespinoff.co.nz] down in lil 'ol New Zealand
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...that Alexa actually has no AI at all. It just records audio commands, sends them to a central server, where human monkeys listen to conversations, and make Alexa act accordingly. It is just like the Truman show [wikipedia.org], only bigger. Probably the same happens for Siri.
But not Google Home / Google Assistant?
Illegal in Germany (Score:1)
Under German law, devices that can be used as hidden surveillance device are illegal. The doll "My Friend Cayla" comes under that and was banned in Germany.
I wonder if Alexa is the next casualty of that... would serve Amazon right ;-)
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If the provider or smartphone manufacturer has the ability to listen in on a conversation, or just listen while the user is not making a call, I'm pretty sure that would be illegal.
Privacy? (Score:2)
Nobody who VOLUNTARILY PLACED AN ALWAYS-ON MICROPHONE IN THEIR HOME is seriously complaining about the privacy violation here, are they?
From the journal "Duh" (Score:1)
That's how all machine learning systems improve. Humans look at real data, annotate it, and feed it back into the system.
Town idiot (Score:2)