A lot of smartphones now have explicit “always-listening” modes. There are also devices such as the Amazon Echo whose primary purpose is to listen to what is being said in a home or office.
Could a security-conscious government tap into these devices that citizens have voluntarily purchased, grab the data stream, and figure out in advance who is going to commit which kinds of crime? Maybe that kind of mass data gathering isn’t practical until better AI listening software is developed, but what about a warrant to tap someone’s Amazon Echo stream or smartphone audio stream? Could it be possible for a suspect to effectively bug himself or herself by purchasing a smartphone? No need to go into the suspect’s house; just run some packets out of an Amazon, Apple, or Google server farm.
But what if the day comes when speech recognition software is good enough? Will people decide voluntarily that the government’s robots should listen to every microphone output in order to protect them from terrorist attacks, etc.?
Watch Person of Interest for a variety of plausible-enough stories about what could happen along these lines, given the right technology…
My understanding is that hot word detection is currently done by specialized low power chips. Collecting a full audio stream continuously would burn too much battery. Who knows what the future holds.
Isn’t it all being recorded at that big NSA facility in Utah?
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/may/04/telephone-calls-recorded-fbi-boston
BURNETT: Tim, is there any way, obviously, there is a voice mail they can try to get the phone companies to give that up at this point. It’s not a voice mail. It’s just a conversation. There’s no way they actually can find out what happened, right, unless she tells them?
CLEMENTE: “No, there is a way. We certainly have ways in national security investigations to find out exactly what was said in that conversation. It’s not necessarily something that the FBI is going to want to present in court, but it may help lead the investigation and/or lead to questioning of her. We certainly can find that out.
BURNETT: “So they can actually get that? People are saying, look, that is incredible.
CLEMENTE: “No, welcome to America. All of that stuff is being captured as we speak whether we know it or like it or not.”
So why not smartphones, Echo, etc.?
http://paleofuture.gizmodo.com/the-fbi-can-neither-confirm-nor-deny-wiretapping-your-a-1776092971
And combine this:
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/may/17/findface-face-recognition-app-end-public-anonymity-vkontakte
with this:
http://www.tomsguide.com/us/shodan-webcam-search,news-22163.html
and web cams that don’t turn off even when you turn them off:
http://gizmodo.com/researchers-say-googles-nest-cam-never-turns-off-1744653116
“Will people decide voluntarily that the government’s robots should listen to every microphone output in order to protect them from terrorist attacks, etc.?”
It’s pretty much out of our hands at this point, isn’t it?
I don’t know about governments, but Batman was able to do it in “The Dark Knight”
“My understanding is that hot word detection is currently done by specialized low power chips.”
That’s all you need – the government doesn’t want to listen in on your inane conversations about the Red Sox 24/7 , but mention “bomb” or “ISIS” and it’s time to turn the mike on. Also, if your phone’s battery life goes way down, do you assume that you need a new battery or that the latest OS update messed things up or that it’s because the gov is now running your mic all the time?
Anyway, I assume some future generation phones will listen all the time so that Siri can say “I heard you talking about lunch next Tuesday – would you like me to make a reservation for you?”
The challenge of listening to everything is likely going to be prohibitive.
It’s quite chilling when you change the word “suspect” to “dissident”, “political opposition”, “business competitor”, “whistleblower”, “protestor”, or “spouse”.
And you’re kidding yourself if you think this isn’t happening already.
“Will people decide voluntarily that the government’s robots should listen to every microphone output in order to protect them from terrorist attacks, etc”
What makes you think that people will get any choice whatsoever in what the NSA does or does not decide to listen to?
“Will people decide voluntarily that the government’s robots should listen to every microphone output in order to protect them from terrorist attacks, etc”
What makes you think that people will get any choice whatsoever in what the NSA does or does not decide to listen to?
…
The NSA already lied to Congress about surveillance without any negative repercussions. We would not have known about it if it weren’t for Snowden. There is no reason to believe the government will suddenly become forthcoming about surveillance, so consent from the people won’t be an issue.
The challenge of listening to everything is likely going to be prohibitive
….
Not for computers.
It probably was prohibitively expensive to record all voice phone calls in the US a few years ago.
The NSA is building this monstrosity in Utah
http://static5.businessinsider.com/image/51b1c97769beddb34600002b-3000-1608/ap132411996867.jpg
When it’s done they will have enough capacity to record all voice communication
of every citizen, and there’s no reason whatsoever the believe they won’t do it if they
aren’t stopped. Obama seems to have no inclination to do so however.
Unless you think they are using all those buildings for fitness centers for their employees.
They already record and voice recognise all trans border telephony. I recall reading about the capability in the snowden documents.
They might be able to have all the phones build up audio recordings on internal flash, then upload to us-east-1.s3.amazonaws.com when they’re on wifi. Government eavesdropping is why us-east-1.s3.amazonaws.com is based in Virginia, after all. Realistically impossible because Google would require 25 gig of libraries & a few megawatts of power to instantiate all the virtual machines & Java API’s required to access the audio recording hardware 24 hours a day.
And even if you don’t have your own device, the FBI might be listening in public anyway using hidden microphones.