I, For One, Welcome Our New Self-Driving Overlords

Baby, you can drive my car…

An “unlikely” string of events prompted Amazon’s Echo personal assistant device to record a Portland, Ore., family’s private conversation and then send the recording to an acquaintance in Seattle, the company said Thursday.

 

The woman told KIRO-TV in Seattle that two weeks ago an employee of her husband contacted them to say he thought their device had been hacked. He told them he had received an audio file of them discussing hardwood floors, she said.

h/t Captain Obvious

 

17 Replies to “I, For One, Welcome Our New Self-Driving Overlords”

  1. It’s the Brennan (Ex-CIA) feature used to take a peak into every Citizens life.. Don’t need CONTRACT spy’s with Echo.. What would you expect from an Echo?

  2. So this morning Tommy Robinson was live streaming at a rape gang trial in England.. He was arrested and within a few hours was sentenced to 13 months in jail.. This is unbelievable conduct from the Brits.. For those who have read Tommy’s book “Enemy Of The State”, this is probably a death sentence for him. Aparrently there is some sort of lock on publishing details of this..

    1. Soon to come here also. To think that Britain was once a bastion of democracy and freedom.

      This surveillance of us by the the various private and government agencies is only beginning to get serious.

      1984 folks, 1984. Just date pegged too early.

  3. Willingly ceding control to something very few understand. What could go wrong?

  4. Anyone who allows this stuff in their home is nuts. As someone who works in the information security industry…to place something like a personal assistance device in your home is utter insanity. DON’T DO IT. Might as well spray paint your personal information on your garage door. It’s essentially the same thing.

  5. way off topic. I just dropped this one at Blogging Tories. I have been posting on many different sites not as old white guy. Have been doing so for many years. today disqus informed me that unless I allow worldwide access to all my posts i would be banned. I accepted their request and then tried to contact them via a regular thread. they censored me and I could not contact them. My original agreement stated that I could keep my profile private, Check the box. This means no one can follow you or see comments on your profile. Who the fuck is lying and what has happened and who do I sue. I am no longer am at disqus.

    1. never heard of them.
      wiki advises the outfit was started by a couple Chirese.
      therein is the red (no pun intended) flag.
      the Chirese are very fond of capitalizing on stuff like sharing personal data, share and share alike.
      no concerns about privacy cause there is no privacy when the Chirese are running things.
      except for themselves naturally. they learned it from zuckerberg, how to steal the idea and how to sell the personal stuff to the right bidder.

    2. I believe you misinterpreted the Disqus thing.

      You can still keep your profile private, just as before. What you had to click to agree to was their tracking of you via cookies. Disqus continues to track you wherever you go, even on unrelated sites – just like Facebook does.

      This isn’t new, mind you – they’ve been doing this for a long time. My guess is that Disqus took a look at what’s happening to Facebook right now and decided to cover their asses by forcing everyone that uses them to agree to it. It’s still scummy, of course, but at least there’s ways to mitigate the tracking. Unfortunately, now I have to sign in every freaking time I want to comment somewhere.

      Edited to add: The ‘private’ profile – just in case you weren’t sure – doesn’t have anything to do with your privacy from disqus: It only prevents other users from viewing your posting history, etc.

  6. “Teslas get into a lot of crashes and are costly to repair afterward,” said Russ Rader, spokesman for the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, which is the Highway Loss Data Institute’s parent organization. “Consumers will pay for that when they go to insure one.”

    http://www.autonews.com/article/20170604/FINANCE_AND_INSURANCE/170609884/tesla-owners-should-pay-more-for-insurance-aaa-says

    In addition to the faulty I-robot drive … EV’s are driven by people who HATE cars … and are not very skilled at operating one. IMHO … every EV driver should take the bus. Much safer for them … and the rest of us.

  7. I drive an 06 vehicle…yea it’s got an ECM/TCM/BCM…but no WiFi – internet – on star…none of that shit…bad enough I have a cell phone..but I’ll be damned if some overt listening device gets plunked into my living room. That’s simply beyond stupid..!

    WTF did anyone expect..? Privacy..?
    Hilarious..

Navigation