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by roughly 23 days ago
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.

1 comments

I'm not trying to agitate you here and won't keep looping on the same question after this reply: I just do not understand the threat model here, and you're still being oblique as though its obvious what the threat model by being sarcastic instead of just spelling it out in plain language.

Are you worried about some foreign state actor like Israel targeting you specifically, hacking your devices to listen to you chatting? Or you're worried about US warrantless mass surveillance wiretapping all citizen's smart speakers, and you're worried the US government may spin up such a program?

In the latter case, the scenario you expect will happen is we'll have ~100 million US households are live wiretapped 24/7 without anyone knowing, you'll be part of the remainder living your life blissfully wiretap-free thanks to not having a smart speaker?