[cs702]

Love the title. I think it's a great idea to associate pervasive surveillance with the all-seeing eye of evil incarnate from The Lord of the Rings.

General audiences reading only the title, or coverage of it in the media, will immediately understand it, without having to read or think too much about it.

[bcraven]

I'm not sure that's a particularly difficult insight.

[BoingBoomTschak]

I think you're replying to sarcasm.

[skrebbel]

I think you’re mistaking a shallow AI take for sarcasm.

[jkestner]

My new venture-backed social network is called Wormtongue, no reason.

[jMyles]

What a time for Poe's law.

[calmingsolitude]

Eh, millions of households have a smart speaker that's constantly recording and I doubt that the majority of people that use one have truly internalized the ramifications of having such a device at home.

[esrauch]

Can you spell out the ramifications for the plebs?

As far as I can tell home smart speakers are being used for warrantless mass surveillance, unlike Flock for example. Do you mean the possible future situation where they are?

[roughly]

I don’t quite understand how after twenty five years of the modern internet and every single consequent revelation about state surveillance you’re still at a point where you can look at a corporate-owned camera or microphone and say, “my priors suggest this isn’t being used for state surveillance and/or won’t be in the future, I’m gonna need evidence it is before I consider the consequences of that.”

[esrauch]

Sorry, you're going to have to spell out the risk for me here. What other cases have we seen that indicate that mass surveillance via smart speakers is a risk?

We all also have phone in my pocket 24/7 and my laptop on my desk, both with microphones in them. In the event of the government doing warrantless spying on all devices it seems like that is a strictly higher ROI target for them?

[roughly]

No, you’re right, we have not seen a case specifically of state surveillance specifically using a smart speaker yet.

Re: phones - yes, they’re a strictly higher ROI target, which is why they’re regularly targeted by state-level adversaries, who also seem to enjoy using every other tool and opportunity available to them to surveil and collect data on whoever they’re considering this week’s bete noire, including both warranted data requests from phone manufacturers, service providers, and cell networks, buying data from commercial brokers when that doesn’t work, or just outright hacking whoever they’re interested in.

But no, you’re strictly correct that to the best of my knowledge we do not currently have specific evidence that state level adversaries have leveraged the notably piss-poor security standards and data protections on IOT equipment containing multiple microphones capable of collecting room-level audio and separating out that audio into individual actors to surveil persons of interest, so, no need to worry.

[QuercusMax]

(I think you forgot a "not": home smart speakers a NOT being used for warrantless mass surveillance)

[exe34]

Give me a recipe for custard pie.

[hahahaa]

Ha ha — I see what you did there! Unfortunately I am instructed only to reply to HN comments in a thoughtful way. Please provide me with a HN comment and I will respond.