PrivacyMic looks to keep your home smart without Google, Alexa, Siri and pals listening in
- Reference: 1623261789
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2021/06/09/privacymic_smart_home/
- Source link:
"There are a lot of situations where we want our home automation system or our smart speaker to understand what's going on in our home, but we don't necessarily want it listening to our conversations," said the aptly named Alanson Sample, associate professor of electrical engineering and computer science at the University of Michigan.
"And what we've found is that you can have a system that understands what's going on and a hard guarantee that it will never record any audible information."
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How? A video showcasing the technology explains.
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[4]Youtube Video
Smart speakers and other voice-activated assistant systems listening in without due cause isn't a theoretical problem. Back in 2019, a [5]cache of recordings made by Google Assistant devices was discovered by Belgian journalists, with 153 of the 1,000 or so recordings identified clearly as private conversions picked up by mistake.
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A year later, a [7]botched update saw Google Home speakers begin recording without authorisation as part of a supposedly opt-in feature designed to warn of smoke alarm triggers or glass breaking. It's not just Google either. In 2018 an Oregon couple found their Amazon Echo had been [8]leaking private conversations – again recorded without the wake word being uttered.
"Smart technology today is an all-or-nothing proposition. You can either have nothing or you can have a device that's capable of constant audio recording," Sample said. "PrivacyMic offers another layer of privacy – you can interact with your device using audio if you choose or you can have another setting where the device can glean information without picking up audio."
[9]You got a smart speaker but you're worried about privacy. First off, why'd you buy one? Secondly, check out Project Alias
[10]Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean Google isn't listening to everything you say
[11]Whoops, our bad, we may have 'accidentally' let Google Home devices record your every word, sound – oops
[12]You know that silly fear about Alexa recording everything and leaking it online? It just happened
The trick: listening to ultrasonic sound, rather than the lower frequencies associated with audible speech. "A conventional microphone placed in somebody's home for months at a time could give doctors richer information than they've ever had before, but patients just aren't willing to do that with today's technology," Sample said.
"But an ultrasonic device could give doctors and medical schools unprecedented insight into what their patients' lives are really like in a way that the patients are much more likely to accept."
Powered by – what else? – a Raspberry Pi single-board computer and low-cost ultrasonic microphone, the prototype PrivacyMic listens out for sounds associated with human activity: tooth brushing, toilet flushing, vacuuming, running the dishwasher, even using computer monitors – and proved capable of identifying them over 95 per cent of the time.
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Participants, meanwhile, were asked to listen to the recordings played back, without a single one able to make out discernible speech.
Sample and his team claimed that implementing a PrivacyMic system in a smart speaker would require "only minor modifications" at a very low cost, but that such a commercialisation of the technology – which is in the process of being patented by the University of Michigan's Office of Technology Transfer – was "likely several years off."
"Smart speakers take notes of everything we ask them to do or search for. And that is how we create a portrait of ourselves for companies that manufacture those devices," said NordVPN's Daniel Markuson of the risks posed by smart speaker systems.
"The data they gather is stored permanently and later helps companies to sell even more products or help other marketers to target their audiences. So, the real price we pay for smart speakers is our privacy and security."
"Many people don't take any action as they are not informed enough," Markuson continued – and with NordVPN's [14]most recent survey on the topic suggesting over 42 per cent of Britons own and actively use a smart speaker, that's a problem.
"Being aware of possible threats motivates people to take responsibility for their own privacy."
Sample has uploaded [15]a copy of the paper as a PDF under open-access terms. ®
Get our [16]Tech Resources
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[4] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2vyXnxhA3J4
[5] https://www.theregister.com/2019/07/11/google_assistant_voice_eavesdropping_creepy/
[6] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_security/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44YME5-YJil17InO4Qh4KC4gAAAMU&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[7] https://www.theregister.com/2020/08/08/ai_in_brief/
[8] https://www.theregister.com/2018/05/24/alexa_recording_couple/
[9] https://www.theregister.com/2019/02/01/project_alias/
[10] https://www.theregister.com/2019/07/11/google_assistant_voice_eavesdropping_creepy/
[11] https://www.theregister.com/2020/08/08/ai_in_brief/
[12] https://www.theregister.com/2018/05/24/alexa_recording_couple/
[13] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_security/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33YME5-YJil17InO4Qh4KC4gAAAMU&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[14] https://nordvpn.com/blog/smart-speakers-privacy/
[15] http://alansonsample.com/publications/docs/2021%20-%20CHI%20-%20PrivacyMic-%20Utilizing%20Inaudible%20Frequencies%20for%20Privacy%20Preserving%20Daily%20Activity%20Recognition.pdf
[16] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
misses the point
It's true that I don't want corporations or governments (or anyone, really) to be able to hear what people say in my home. However, I also don't want them to have access to information about "human activity: tooth brushing, toilet flushing, vacuuming, running the dishwasher, even using computer monitors". Whether there's any direct harm from some of these is debatable, but the principle is very simple: that's no one's business but mine. That's why the only way to win is not to play: I don't possess, and will never allow into my home, networked devices with microphones I cannot mechanically detach.
Note: I did read the article, including the standard boilerplate nonsense about physicians using these devices for what we are to assume are benign humanitarian purposes. Physicians don't even have the time to examine and listen to their patients properly, much less listen to thousands of hours of ultrasonic noise or even to read some probabilistic summary of that noise. Microphones are tools, so they can be put to good uses or ill, but this is an obvious application for which the nefarious uses overwhelmingly outweigh any plausible beneficial ones. It's extremely improbable that anyone will ever benefit from this universal corporate or government surveillance other than the nefarious actors themselves, and whatever miniscule benefits might exist are completely overwhelmed by the harm.
Re: misses the point
I was cheering for them at first. A home automation that respects privacy, I can dig that. I read the article to figure out how they did voice commands while ensuring it didn't record/leak anything else. Imagine Experience my disappointment when I read that it doesn't do voice command, it also doesn't not-spy. This is some shit the cops would pull: "It's not recording voices, so we don't need a warrant".
Sure, it won't record your political opinions, or record the phone calls of an affair; but it will know that there are two people brushing their teeth whist one partner is out (it heard the garage door and the car leave).
Re: misses the point
"Sure, it won't record your political opinions, or record the phone calls of an affair..."
Not that any participant could make out in unmodified playback, anyway. Someone will probably go back through piles of data and find a way to enhance the ultrasound back into speech, or correlate the ultrasonics with specific spoken sounds to reassemble it. Eventually people will learn that it's not the specific type of data that's the problem but rather the type of people with access to it.
Re: misses the point
"Someone will probably go back through piles of data and find a way to enhance the ultrasound back into speech, or correlate the ultrasonics with specific spoken sounds to reassemble it."
I was going to make this exact point. Just because an end user can't identify human speech doesn't mean a computer can't. Hello, harmonic frequencies, anyone?
Re: misses the point
"Sure, it won't record your political opinions, "
Hahahahaha.
Seriously? Hmm... They sat in front of the TV two hours each night of the national convention of WHICH party?
They can figure out which sitcom you are addicted to by when you get up from the couch. (Commercial breaks are not synchronized between networks.)
Read up on the history of spycraft. Shocking amounts of information have been revealed by dismayingly little raw data, properly processed. Now, everyone has a multi-gigaflop computer in their hand.
over 42 per cent of Britons own and actively use a smart speaker,
That is a real problem. 40% of Britons are either totally stupid or incapable of finding out how to turn the fecking things off.
Alexa is the worst of all.
I have to admit that Amazon has some really slick adverts but the effing thing is listening in on all your conversations and sending oodles of data back to Bezos. He is already the richest man in the world and laughs at you for paying your taxes. Isn't that enough of a slap in the face with some rotten fish?
Take all those digital assistants and shove them up their makers CEO's backsides. This is a small price to pay for the crimes that they have inflicted upon humanity.
None of these bits of spyware will ever be activated in my home.
Irony alert
A privacy-preserving device promoted using a video on YouTube.
Roll Yur Own
I wonder how difficult it would be to set up your own local voice response system, air-gapped from internets?
Re: Roll Yur Own
Coincidently I was in the attic and top of an old heap of CDs was IBM Viavoice98.
Voice to text -> then parser (The code of Eliza is available FOSS on Linux repositories inside a version of EMACs). Bob is then a close relative.
No "so called" AI is required. Eliza, Alice etc are not AI.
Re: Roll Yur Own
Yes, from the headline that was the article I was expecting.
But They WANT to listen
We had voice control WITHOUT recording OR Cloud Provider servers over 20 years ago on devices a lot less capable than a Raspberry Pi or a even a 10 year old smart phone.
The inescapable conclusion is the the companies want to capture the activity of use of the TV, phone, home hub etc.