[Valentine]

(12-30-2016 11:46 PM)kmhour Wrote:  

(12-30-2016 10:59 PM)Valentine Wrote:  

Amazon Echo has 4GB of storage space, so ignoring the size of the software it runs it can hold up to 4000 mins of audio.

This can then be sent at intervals, so network analysis is not going to be very revealing.

It doesn't even have to record all the data. It could simply 'wake up' on other unknown key words such as "credit cards", "guns" or "fuck the government".

eventually the data has to go somewhere. if the device is recording the data and bursting it out, you don't think people are going to notice a sudden and unsolicited 4 GB burst of traffic on their network that originates from their Alexa? or they aren't going to notice a trickle of data over time that has no root in spoken commands (e.g. outgoing data at 4am)? "I just asked Alexa what the weather was and it sent 500 MB of data to Amazon?!?" 4000 minutes sounds like a lot. it's 2.78 days.

I don't disagree that other "key phrases" could be surreptitiously included. "Allah", "or "bomb" and "flight" in close proximity? Absolutely. But that same capability existed years ago with the first smart phones.

As other posters have already mentioned this can use far less data than even I suggested. Even the trickle is not going to appear harmful as these types of devices always seem to run "background updates" to update their search libraries, bug fixes and miscellaneous improvements.

It would never record 24/7, at most only when it hears nearby sound, at least only when it hears your wake up keyword, and at most likely it'll wake up to a variety of keywords.

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That's the point, we don't know exactly how much they are listening because their software is closed-source. In this post-Snowden age if they really had good intentions they would open-source it to show that, but for now I refuse to give them the benefit of the doubt after already seeing the depth of the NSA PRISM program for instance, which proves tech behemoths are already all-in on absorbing as much customer data as possible for profit.

I don't think they're eavesdropping for profit. I absolutely think they're using the usage data for profit - just like every other company in the Valley has for the last decade.

Metadata (e.g. usage data) of course, but content also. Google and Yahoo for example have both have spied on user content for the government and I doubt this is pro bono.

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Being a tech enthusiast and privacy conscious are not mutually exclusive. Everyone who has created privacy-focused tech are massive tech enthusiasts. The difference is they want to make the tech benefit them, rather than potentially harm them.

It's not as easy as 1-click Amazon checkout but open-source home automation already exists today, for those who value both.

I'd be curious to hear what you'd suggest. I'd be happy to take the discussion to PM on the specifics - at a certain point the cross-pollination risk starts to grow.

I'm happy to share here - after all it's a thread related to home automation.

Hardware
Some good places to start are Raspberry Pi and Arduino communities, as well as CrowdSupply - they have some popular open-hardware such as 1btn, Idiotware Shield and LimeSDR.

Mycroft is an open-source AI. All depends what exactly you want your house to do - then just use a search engine to find something for your needs.

Software
There are also tons of open-source dashboards to manage your IoT e.g. Freeboard and Thinger.

For connecting to a multitude of platforms you can use Huginn, or closed-source IFTTT and Zapier which support a huge variety of backends.