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Some random company claiming this capability without any further evidence should probably be treated with some level of scrutiny.
The part of CMG advertising the capability is CMG Local Solutions. CMG itself is owned by Apollo Global Management and Cox Enterprises, which includes the ISP Cox Communications. CMG operates a wide array of local news television and radio stations.
Cox Enterprises isn’t some random company. It’s one of the largest privately owned companies in the US. They are somewhat capable of doing things like this.
Having experience with Cox Enterprises, it’s just a massive amalgamation of disparate acquisitions that have never been remotely brought together in a meaningful way so it is a slightly dubious claim. This would require much more coordination across entities than I feel is possible with the CMG I knew of pre-pandemic.
Nah, if you hired a team, it wouldn’t matter how divided they were. In fact, them being frantic is probably how we’re hearing about it. They needed to advertise their services without looking at the big picture.
Why?
What about modern capitalism makes you optimistic. I know for a fact this is happening. I bought a pair of Bose earbuds—I was pretty excited about them but they were defective. The app they tried to get me to download required me to sign away permission to “map” my head movements, intercept any sound coming through what I actively play through the headphones…AND “passively record any sound around you.”
And when I saw that shit, I got right the fuck out of there—even though seeing that shit required me to click through three sub menus and entirely different legal documents, all of which I would’ve agreed to like every other privacy policy: absentmindedly.
After getting right the fuck out of there, I went on their website to contact customer service about the defect. So I opened an SMS chat with customer service—where I was told “replying to this chat is tacit agreement to our CUSTOMER SERVICE PRIVACY POLICY,” which I opened. And initially I was fine because it seemed like it was a different policy just allowing them to record the conversation “for training purposes.” Until I clicked through one, two, three and now FOUR sub menus to find I WOULD’VE AGREED TO THE SAME FUCKING PRIVACY POLICY.
So I fucking called Bose. I wanted to know if I could use these headphones without ever agreeing to the privacy policy. But of course customer service couldn’t even conceive of my question. I asked to get transferred to the legal dept.
Lol of course not. What the fuck was I thinking.
So fuck them, I returned those fuckers as fast as I could.
How often are you digging into sub pages and cited clauses of the privacy policies you’re agreeing to on a day-to-day basis? Because I will tell you, they were making me sign away the right to ALL a of that information, and their specific info on how they were using it (a different sub-contract) was pretty lax on who they could share it with.
I fully believe this has been happening WAY longer than just recently. Capitalism is trading on our data in the most invasive ways imaginable. The spying and capabilities have reached dystopian levels. How long ago did those CIA leaks come out about smart TVs being used to eavesdrop? That was like 2014. Ten goddamn years ago.
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But isn’t that just some other logical fallacy? I don’t have anything to cite, but a lot of shit is being sold to people under the pretense of religion. It doesn’t discredit the value it brings religious people. Or the people that abuse faith to swindle poor people out of their money—what’s it called? Investment Christianity or some shit? The whole “tithing brings you closer to god” thing where those incredibly wealthy televangelists are seeing the opportunity of “you just have to have faith/not having faith in me is spitting in gods eye” and abusing it. Do televangelists discredit all religion?
I mean, I’m an atheist myself, but I’ve read studies from sociologists saying the population’s increasing loss of faith does have negative effects on overall contentedness and hopefulness and community. Saying, “well televangelists exist, so just know your faith in god is being used to swindle poor people.” You can’t discredit everything having to do with a concept by finding the people taking advantage of it. People find a way to take advantage of every single thing.
I can’t discredit the concept of using phones because the concept of calling someone is being abused to steal old people’s personal info.
And, I mean, what lines are we even drawing here? It’s WELL established that data miners, data trading, invasive permissions signed away in privacy policies for the purpose of packaging and reselling, invasive domestic spying programs…these things all exist and have existed for a long time. My point is…I’m against it? I’m not drawing some insane conclusion about some conspiracy—just because there is a nuanced connection between being wary of our data being stolen and the insane conspiracy theories that the unknown aspects of that problem spawn, doesn’t mean that every person concerned with the loss of privacy is responsible for the extreme end of the spectrum.
That’s the problem I have with what you’re saying—you’re acting like there is no nuance. Because there is well-established reason for concern regarding privacy. And jumping to unfounded conclusions is almost a natural response to any new information in the internet age.
COVID denialism, illuminati, etc. is wariness brought to an illogical extreme. The existence of that phenomenon should NOT discredit any reasonable person concerned about privacy.
Remember brexit? Remember trump? Both of those world events came about from a relatively unknown industry that was exposed after the fact. And those invasive data profiling businesses didn’t go under. They changed their names.
The Edward Snowden revelations were over a decade ago. I’d argue that assuming there is no cause for concern is beyond naive.
And you’re likening crystals and telepathy to “doctors have a profit motive?” Sure, there is an illogical extreme to the information that big pharmaceutical companies have a stranglehold on the medical field and corrupt treatment by prioritizing profits—look at the opioid crisis, look at the entire concept of pharmaceutical reps and commercials for prescription drugs.
These things alone are the concern. Just because they can and do breed extreme ideas with no basis in reality doesn’t justify discrediting the concept itself.
I get it, unfounded conclusions are generally disagreeable. But “our privacy is disappearing” isn’t an unfounded conclusion. I’m saying I’ve read the privacy policy that was getting me to sign away every scrap of privacy the limits of the product could’ve possibly invaded. Conspiracy theorists don’t make that untrue.
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I mean, I get what you’re saying. I’m not the person that was claiming 100% this without a doubt exists. I was just talking about my experience in nearly signing away the right to allow them to record surreptitiously at any time. I don’t know exactly what they’re looking for. and you’re right, unending recording is absolutely not happening. But signing away the right for them to record however they want in the future is just as bad.
I live alone. If they were recording all the time it’d definitely be one huge, mostly silent file of me sometimes making noises at my cat and then music or tv sounds.it’d be pointless. I’m not claiming they’re recording nonstop. It wasn’t me that said it. But my signing away their right to do so is 100% problematic. They don’t have to be recording all the time FOR it to be problematic. I’m not claiming they’re using unique, multi-word phrases to wake up/initiate recording to sell me blinds.
But how many times have we heard law enforcement has gotten warrantless access to customers’ data brought companies? It doesn’t stop until it’s exposed—and even then I do not doubt that it continues after the public outcry has died with the news cycle. I mean, just this week we heard about pharmacies just handing out medical records whenever asked. The cops have been just acting as private enterprise and are customers in the data-trading market. So they’re warrantlessly accessing all that really weird specific private data. They’re ClearviewAI’s customer for facial recognition data.
It’s not at all illogical to read the privacy policy, see I’m signing away the right to record at any time, look at articles like these, and have cause for concern. I get it, you’re saying we would know immediately if we were being recorded based on empirical evidence in our data usage. But what I’m saying is the stars are aligning in troubling ways. I’m not claiming constant surveillance. I’m saying we are signing away all rights to any privacy, data mining and trading is a massive industry that exists and is abused by law enforcement, law enforcement itself operates in super problematic ways, capitalism has bred vampiric companies hat are extracting as much money as they can from our increasingly free-flowing data.
My concern is broad and overarching. I’m not claiming constant recording. You might be confusing my conversation with another you’ve had ITT. But I’m 100% uncomfortable signing away those rights, and I’m sure we are headed for much worse. I’m inclined to take part in the pearl clutching and fear mongering (yes, I know these two phrases have negative connotations) when articles like this are discussed because we are UNDER-alarmed with the loss of our privacy. So I say we DO get people riled up over this because we’ve let WAY TOO MUCH slide for way too long. We neee to be getting our collective ire up over the loss of privacy, and if we need to use unfounded claims of the POSSIBILITY for them to be doing this AT THE SAME TIME that we’re signing away all rights to privacy, then fine. Set off the fire alarm for the noxious fart that is the unfounded claim in this article.
Because we desperately need to do something.
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They’ve redirected the page now that it’s getting attention, but here’s the archived version.
I’m very skeptical of their claims, but it’s possible they’ve partnered with some small number of apps so that they can claim that this is technically working.
This is why I generally ensure my phone is configured ahead of time to block ads in most cases. I don’t need this garbage on my device.
As for how they could listen? It’s pretty easy.
By waiting until the phone is completely still and potentially on a charger, it can collect a lot of data. Phones typically live on the nightstand by your bed at night; and could be listening intently when charging.
Similarly it could start listening when it hears extended conversations; simply by listening to the microphone for human speech every x minutes for y minutes. Then it can record snippets; encode them quickly and upload them for processing. This would be thermally undetectable.
Finally it could simply start listening in certain situations; like when it detects other devices (via BT). Then it could simply capture as many small snippets of your conversation as it could.
Aren’t they all already listening always? I mean, how else does it hear you say “Ay yo Siri” otherwise?
No.
Both Android and iOS do enforce permissions against applications that have not been granted explicit access to listen constantly.
For example, the Google Assistant is a privileged app oftentimes; and it is allowed to listen. It does so by listening efficiently for one kind of sound, the hotword “Ok Google”.
Other applications not only have to obtain user permission; but oftentimes that permission is restricted to be only granted “While app is in use”, meaning it’s the app on the screen, notifying the user, in the foreground, or recently opened. This permission prevents most abuses of the microphone unless someone is using an app.
the phone’s processor has the wake up word hardcoded, so it’s not like an ad company can add a new one on a whim. and it uses passive listening, so it’s not recording everything you say - I’ve seen it compared to sitting in a class and not paying attention until the teacher says your name.
There’s no way that an app with mic permissions could basically do the same thing and pick up on certain preprogrammed words like Ford or Coke which could then be parsed by AI and used by advertisers? It certainly seems like that isn’t out of the realm of physical possibility but I’m definitely no expert. Would they have had to pay the OS maker to hardcode it in to the OS? Could that be done in an update at a later time?
There’s no way that an app with mic permissions could basically do the same thing and pick up on certain preprogrammed words like Ford or Coke which could then be parsed by AI and used by advertisers?
only if you want the phone to start burning battery and data while displaying the “microphone in use” indicator all the time.
not to mention that the specific phrases have been picked in order to cause as few false positives as possible (which is why you can’t change them yourself), and you can still fool Google Assistant by saying “hey booboo” or “okay boomer”. good luck with making it reliably recognize “Ford”, lol.
Huh, TIL. I figured “if they can do it with one thing they could do it with more than one thing.”
Have you seen this code though? Every time I hear a statement like that, I have to wonder if you’re all just taking their word for it.
I don’t take their word for it, unless they show me that code and prove that it is the code running on all the devices in use.
For that I think they use special hardware, that’s the reason that you can’t modify the calling word, and they still notify you when the voice assistant is disabled. I don’t know if this is actually true, or the companies try to hide behind this, or I just remember it incorrectly.
That same hardware couldn’t also have a brand added as a code word for ad, like say “pepsi?”
We already knew this was happening at least a decade ago when people realized why Facebook and Instagram needed unrestricted microphone permissions.
Of course this is possible. Is it practical? Nope. There is already so much data harvested by the likes you Google and Facebook that they can tell what you like, what videos or articles you read, what you share, in some cases who you talk to. Importing a shit ton of audio data is pointless, they already know what you like.
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you just need to process the audio on the devices and then send keywords to Google etc. it’s technically trivial since most phones already have dedicated hardware for that. your phone listens to activation words all the time, unless you disable it. there is no reason why they can’t also forward anything else it hears as text
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I would assume that you are right, considering how much gargage you collect if listening.
Now imagine recording those who have not given consent, or the device saving full scripts of movies.
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And people kept telling me I was wrong when I said this.
I wouldn’t even know because I don’t see ads on my phone or pc.
Copyright © 2023 Cox Media Group, LLC.
Fucking COX, why am I not surprised a fucking ISP like this garbage is behind it.
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TIL we have too many cox in this world
I found that gem as well.
Not the wasted impressions!
Fascinated by this. Especially because it seems now (ideally) someone with more time and expertise than me will now have to verify or disprove whether companies really do this.
“Unprecedented understanding of consumer behavior”
Scary stuff
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And companies responsible for this are cocks?
CMG’s website addresses this with a section that starts “We know what you are thinking…”
“Is this legal? YES- it is totally legal for phones and devices to listen to you. That’s because consumers usually give consent when accepting terms and conditions of software updates or app downloads,” the website says.
Well, yes, but actually no. No idea how this might play out in other parts of the world than the US. But in most places, you’d usually need consent of all parties, that are involved. If my neighbor were to install an (infected) app like this, then carries his phone around and talks to me, I did not consent and it would be illegal to record me, even if he were not tricked into consenting, but did knowingly accept it. Worse yet, in the last scenario, he might be on the hook for legal consequences, too…
Besides that legal minefield, I thinks it’s a bluff. The tech is either way less accurate than they claim, or quite ressource intensive by either eating through your data plan on a mobile phone or draining your battery. My bet is on a PR stunt.
I KNEW IT
Well duh!
