By default, they're capturing an inordinate amount of data whether or not they're being malicious

You could probably enforce some kind of anonymization of data with a cryptographic key that's only known when the user accesses it, and then thrown away

Presumably Google might not even be able to access their own stored data on a user

Someone needs to put an axe into the internet bill of rights before someone gets it passed and the next Democrat Congress can use it against us

Which of course is assuming whatever anonymization is used is *effective*, but that's a different story. Anything that happens with the big tech companies needs to be done with transparency so that third parties can authenticate what they're doing is on the up-and-up -- One of the bigger problems as it is already is that basically even when FB/Google/Twitter get called in front of Congress

what are you trying to anonymize?

They just lie.

There's no reason to trust anything they say about their methodologies or implementations of anything because they've proven they're totally untrustworthy

It doesn't help that they coordinate together on things. They probably have access to each other's shit whenever they want to do one another favors

And in some instances they're owned by one conglomerate

@Beeman As much as possible? I remember when people used to get angry at people being able to look up your library records because knowing what books you checked out from the library is an unconstitutional search & invasion of privacy

Now consider that your phone is literally recording your speech passively, sending that off to Google, it's recording your location, it knows everywhere you go even if you turn off location tracking. They probably have all your emails. They have all your search history for decades. Any one of these is creepy as hell and way beyond anything you'd ever see in 1984. They've got it all.

there's an easy solution to not letting Google know your search history (which they then turn around and use for ordering search results, as well as for ads and other purposes)
It's called "use another search engine". Most of the rest of the stuff you could "anonymize" is volunteered by the user

and could jsut be collected from multiple sources automatically

Not only that wail, but Alexa is being used to testify to a murder

It recorded the incident at the time of the murder

Which is screwed up on more levels than just invasion of privacy

Files can be edited, overwritten

Things could be covered up even, giving someone an alibi for when they did commit a crime

the issue with the alexa shit is twofold: one- consumers largely dont care about this
two- you can easily solve this problem by not putting a recording device in your home

like it was already super obvious that it was going to grab data

it wasnt some closely guarded secret
And everyone I've seen react to this in a horrified manner is someone *who didnt want/doesnt have an Amazon surveillance puck in the first place*

I would have to see an "internet bill of rights" before i agree with it, i'm never a fan of giving more power to the government.

Sadly the former is much more prominent. You could tell people this and they would still own the thing

Not just alexa

@RoadtoDawn that must have been a playful headline, because something that is not real can not "testify" to a murder, just be used as evidence (if allowed).

I would take exception with stuff that doesnt advertise its function

like that smart tv that was recording people, for instance

Yeah dunno if Bezos himself has to go in or not, I felt it explained my point as quickly as possible @Shadows

heh

court demanded that Amazon hand over the recording is the basic scenario

Ya.

Mhm, I'm sure they'll get an expert witness, some amazon tech engineer to explain all the goofy tech jargon to the idiot boomer jurors that will just nod along

Wow, someone doesn't like our system....

:)

Was more a jab at boomers, :p

which is part of the system... heh

I had to write reports on cases, focusing on the forensic expert witness aspect. I know how they talk to make themselves sound intelligent haha

and besides, in that particular trial it wouldn't even be ancillary, just a formality. I'm not sure how often they have testimony from recording devices, this case will likely be unusual, the precedent being the fact it was Alexa and not, say, a cell phone call or something

It'll probably be decided the moment its declared admissible

Its always good to be wary of new tech, as it should never be the case that we are not in control of it and not the other way around. But i also don't think its good to worry to much about it, as its something that always happens, people in the past feared any new form of tech as "This will do something bad for us".