I am also an IT professional. I've worked in software development for a major mobile device manufacturer for 15 years. Prior to that, I worked for a small company that did web analytics by deploying a small piece of client software that would send tracking information back to a server for aggregation. The idea was to sell the aggregated data to companies who wanted to know, for example, what drew users to their website or where they went after leaving. The client software was never installed without explicit consent (although no doubt many who installed it were not paying attention when they gave that consent), and there was nothing personally identifiable in the collected data. Even so, people were frequently outraged when they realized that the client was installed and tracking their web usage. The client was vilified as "spyware" (not wholly inaccurate), and retaining an adequate user base was an ongoing issue. We spent a lot of time trying to figure out how to make users want to install our software, without much success. Eventually the company went bankrupt. It was a bit before its time.
Fast forward a decade, and times have changed. Fast. Companies like Google and Apple did figure out how to make users want to be tracked - or at least want the shiny thing enough to tolerate being tracked in return. What my company was collecting in the early 2000's was child's play compared to what these companies collect now, and most people don't think twice about it. And even if they do think twice, it doesn't matter, because they really, really want the shiny thing, and they're willing to give up just about anything where personal privacy is concerned in order to have it.
It's really not the companies that are the problem here. The people upthread who argue that our conversations aren't interesting and the devices are only collecting limited data are right, mostly. Nobody at Google cares what you're having for dinner, and notwithstanding bugs or other unintentional data leakage, they really won't be transferring data except when explicitly activated by the keyword. For now, anyway. But there's really nothing stopping them, besides fear of bad publicity. And as these things become more and more integrated and accepted into society, the fear of bad publicity goes away, because people begin to simply assume that everything they do is tracked and accept it as the cost of convenience. Unless consumers decide to value their privacy over convenience (which looks pretty darn unlikely at this point), it's only going to get worse.
I recently participated in a patent mining session intended to generate technically feasible ideas of what might be done with smart speakers. Suffice it to say that I was pretty appalled by some of the ideas. Not because they were bad ideas, exactly, but because it's all too easy to envision these things put into place, and the further erosion of privacy that will come with them.
For now, if I was staying in a room with one of these installed, I would simply unplug or mute it, as others have suggested. But there will come a time, probably not too far into the future, when that won't be an option anymore. The devices will be embedded, and will not be physically accessible to be disabled. Society moves on, and short of living like a hermit off-grid, we individuals get dragged along with it. Like it or not.
Fast forward a decade, and times have changed. Fast. Companies like Google and Apple did figure out how to make users want to be tracked - or at least want the shiny thing enough to tolerate being tracked in return. What my company was collecting in the early 2000's was child's play compared to what these companies collect now, and most people don't think twice about it. And even if they do think twice, it doesn't matter, because they really, really want the shiny thing, and they're willing to give up just about anything where personal privacy is concerned in order to have it.
It's really not the companies that are the problem here. The people upthread who argue that our conversations aren't interesting and the devices are only collecting limited data are right, mostly. Nobody at Google cares what you're having for dinner, and notwithstanding bugs or other unintentional data leakage, they really won't be transferring data except when explicitly activated by the keyword. For now, anyway. But there's really nothing stopping them, besides fear of bad publicity. And as these things become more and more integrated and accepted into society, the fear of bad publicity goes away, because people begin to simply assume that everything they do is tracked and accept it as the cost of convenience. Unless consumers decide to value their privacy over convenience (which looks pretty darn unlikely at this point), it's only going to get worse.
I recently participated in a patent mining session intended to generate technically feasible ideas of what might be done with smart speakers. Suffice it to say that I was pretty appalled by some of the ideas. Not because they were bad ideas, exactly, but because it's all too easy to envision these things put into place, and the further erosion of privacy that will come with them.
For now, if I was staying in a room with one of these installed, I would simply unplug or mute it, as others have suggested. But there will come a time, probably not too far into the future, when that won't be an option anymore. The devices will be embedded, and will not be physically accessible to be disabled. Society moves on, and short of living like a hermit off-grid, we individuals get dragged along with it. Like it or not.
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