Defeating Digital Assistant Snooping

[Blumlein 88]

Back in the 1990's, I worked at a plant late night. One of the guys who was just monitoring processes kept a scanner going in his office. As well as your police and fire department calls, you could pick up the old cell phones. They were analog radio broadcast over certain channels. You could walk in at any time, scan those channels, and find one or more calls between people discussing illicit affairs. Commonly the discussion was about don't let some husband or wife know this or that. Or how clever they were being in hiding it. And the phrase heard over and over is, "besides how would they ever know?". How indeed.

 

[JJB70]

I don't have one and have never wanted one. And even if I did, having a cleft palate and a residual speech impediment after the corrective surgery means voice recognition software has never worked for me anyway. In fact one of my pet hates is the modern trend for telephone lines to replace key pad menus (or, gasp, human operators) with speech recognition software, it really, really peeve me off when I call our glorious tax department and cannot talk to anybody because the wonderful voice recognition software won't work.

 

[jsrtheta]

Really, an argument about that one line? It was a joke, but I give up, you win. Some new spy films do show people clipping into central lines but it's not worth it to me to go back and change my post.

It was just a joke, dude.

 

[ajawamnet]

We have a whole generation that has never learned what any Chicago street urchin could have told them: "Don't write anything down." When I was a defense attorney, Facebook was a treasure trove. People would actually boast about making false accusations against my clients, like no one could figure out how to find their posts. I stopped a felony prosecution in its tracks when I showed the DA that the deputy sheriff who had charged my client had "friended" my client's wife the day after the arrest.

There's a great story from the mid 2000's of how the FBI wasted millions of dollars on an electronic system that no operative in his right mind would use...

We get training all the time on this stuff. For instance - no conversations in OnStar vehicles. If I could I'd rip Onstar right of my lease vehicle... We recently got notice of smart watches being banned in certain areas. All our laptops that are certified for use in any facility have to have the wireless (Bluetoof and Wifi) physically removed.

I have a patent from years ago on wireless intrusion detection that made the cover of Government Computer News. A guy at a local DC office innocuously brought his wife's new laptop in so he could set it up at lunch. As soon as he turned it on it started beaconing and we geo-located it to with a few feet. Freaked the guy out when armed guards came into the break room.

 

[ajawamnet]

Oh and here's a great story from Pittsburgh back in the early 1970's.

I saw this story in the Press or post gazette about a raid the feds and state did on a bookie. When they breached the door, they noticed a shark tank - a common way to get rid of betting slips written on rice paper.

 

[ajawamnet]

Back in the 1990's, I worked at a plant late night. One of the guys who was just monitoring processes kept a scanner going in his office. As well as your police and fire department calls, you could pick up the old cell phones. They were analog radio broadcast over certain channels. You could walk in at any time, scan those channels, and find one or more calls between people discussing illicit affairs. Commonly the discussion was about don't let some husband or wife know this or that. Or how clever they were being in hiding it. And the phrase heard over and over is, "besides how would they ever know?". How indeed.

I worked for some company the was located in Rochester, NY that used Dialogic cards in SCSI equipped PCs for 900 lines. I had to check to see if the lines were working. Some of the crap I heard..

 

[restorer-john]

Back in the 1990's, I worked at a plant late night. One of the guys who was just monitoring processes kept a scanner going in his office. As well as your police and fire department calls, you could pick up the old cell phones. They were analog radio broadcast over certain channels. You could walk in at any time, scan those channels, and find one or more calls between people discussing illicit affairs. Commonly the discussion was about don't let some husband or wife know this or that. Or how clever they were being in hiding it. And the phrase heard over and over is, "besides how would they ever know?". How indeed.

In the late 80s and into the early 90s, I managed a Tandy (Radio Shack) Electronics store. It was an amazing time in tech, computers were coming of age and analogue mobile phones were taking hold, although it was primarily the more affluent (or pretenders/real estate agents/lawyers etc) who had them.

We had the biggest and best range of scanners at the time and our store was 4 storeys above the ground in an elevated shopping centre. Late night trading meant "scanner night". The sheer number of affairs, breakups and long deep and meaningfuls with jilted lovers kept us entertained. With analogue, if they were driving, you'd have to sometimes jump to another frequency to keep up with the conversation- the scanners were amazing. I can still remember the frequency ranges we used to program in to search between, even after all these decades.

 

[Frank Dernie]

It's debatable if I'm remotely sensible
. However, it is one of the best things in my house and I can't imagine going back to the way it is.
Instead of going into massive detail you can read what it's actually like in use here
http://emotivalounge.proboards.com/thread/51943/talk-house-amazing-echo-review

A few thoughts
- The power of the always on digital assistant that it can allow you to control your entire house including your entire home theater system. And it works how you want it not how somebody decides you want it.
-All your non smart appliances work with it. Also you can completely ignore that you have a smart house and use it like you normally would which is what my in law does when she visits. Fully backwards compatible.

- When you have one in every room, it responds to you wherever you are. You don't have to think about it. If anything this is its biggest selling point. Your entire waking life in your house, you are catered to no matter where you are.
- Due to its powerful intercom features, you can talk with your family in any room of the house hands free. Or it can call them when they are outside the house on their phone. And they can intercom in using their phone into any room in the house. Seriously powerful communication.

- You can also use the announcement feature for brief messages all over the house.
- You can have your entire house change colors with color changing and dimming bulbs.

Some common things I use it for:
"Announce can you get x from upstairs?"
"Remind me to do x at this time."
"Movie mode" all lights turn off, amps turn on, tv switches to Blu Ray HDMI input, DAC switches to coax input.
- "What's the time"
- "Will it rain today?" (Yes, you can expect 0.5 inches of rain at 2PM).
- "I'm getting up (all lights turn on)"
- "Set thermostat to 71"
" Turn off thermostat"

None of the things you are pleased it does are things that would compensate for having to talk to it and, worse, for it to talk back. But I have aspergers.

 

[Wombat]

None of the things you are pleased it does are things that would compensate for having to talk to it and, worse, for it to talk back. But I have aspergers.

I need to get off my bottom for the exercise. It does sound like it is meant for control-freaks, low-level though it is.

I have a basket full of remote controls that I never use. Siri(iPad) sits in a drawer and the battery is always flat on the rare occasion that I wish to use the iPad. Maybe Apple could have her saying "I am dying, PLEASE charge the iPad" - a bit like the comeuppance of HAL in 2001 .... .

 

[Soniclife]

All your non smart appliances work with it.

Is this a typo, there is no way dumb appliances can be controlled by one.

I don't like talking to myself, and speech recognition rarely works well for me, not sure how much this biases me against them. With a lot of new tech I feel I can have a good guess how successful they might be, though my prediction about SMS was way off, but I don't have a clue if these are here to stay or will be gone within 10 years.

 

[ajawamnet]

I mean, it's nice to be like Captain Kirk and be able to tell the computer to do something...

But then again, if a flip phone was good enough for Spock and Kirk, it's good enough for me.

AND - check this out - this is from the first season of the original series. The Errand of Mercy episode where the old people on a planet seem to think everything is fine (and to them it is - they're incorporeal) but Kirk thinks otherwise. It's the first time Klingons appear.

So - when the crazy (NOT) old people tell them to verify that the crazy old people have disabled all instruments of violence see who uses texting:

Even uses his thumbs...
So the Klingons were superior ...

 

[ajawamnet]

Oh - and ya know how the hackers back then used to get into the SS7 systems?

You'd call 0 ... operator picks up...

"Blaah,lahgh,luagh ..TTY..."

Outside operator would state - "Ok sir, I'll connect you for TTY..." and would then connect you to an inside operator...

You'd wait, then when you heard the outside operator drop off the call, you'd state, " Hey, this is Bill on Pole Number.." and ask for some sort of in-band signalling to be added to the pair number.

I watched guys do this in our VAD lab, hilarious. There was Black Hat or Defcon years ago that they'd do stuff like that on-stage to see who could get the operators to do the dumbest stuff...

Next time you encounter one of those automated call answering things, try it. Works great, gets you through to a human a bit quicker...

Another thing that I love to do with the Google/AndroidAuto thing - "Google Sucks monkey balls"

"I can't help with "Google Sucks Monkey Balls..."

 

[Tks]

Here's a good place to start

https://www.reddit.com/r/privacytoolsIO/

 

[cjf]

Remember this...If any device you wish to keep secret is not "Air Gap'd" from outside connectivity (no, not just being wireless)....just as a start...and doesn't have its own self serving off-grid Power Source then all bets are off. They will get to you/it! Alexa should be the least of your concerns but it is a good start to avoid the damn thing in the first place.

But even then, if all the above Check boxes are ticked you still have the human side of the equation to deal with in an attempt to try and avoid "The MAN". As a very high-level example for the laymen, watch "Zero Days Stuxnet" documentary on how the US/Israeli's allegedly took down a major part of Iran's Nuclear program back in day's. Fascinating/Scary stuff.

 

[Blumlein 88]

Remember this...If any device you wish to keep secret is not "Air Gap'd" from outside connectivity (no, not just being wireless)....just as a start...and doesn't have its own self serving off-grid Power Source then all bets are off. They will get to you/it! Alexa should be the least of your concerns but it is a good start to avoid the damn thing in the first place.

But even then, if all the above Check boxes are ticked you still have the human side of the equation to deal with in an attempt to try and avoid "The MAN". As a very high-level example for the laymen, watch "Zero Days Stuxnet" documentary on how the US/Israeli's allegedly took down a major part of Iran's Nuclear program back in day's. Fascinating/Scary stuff.

Oh they've been at it again just a few weeks ago with Iran.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/nati...202a4e-c9db-11e9-a1fe-ca46e8d573c0_story.html

 

[Wombat]

Oh they've been at it again just a few weeks ago with Iran.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/nati...202a4e-c9db-11e9-a1fe-ca46e8d573c0_story.html

 

[Blumlein 88]

View attachment 32651

Many people forget that Orwell's main point wasn't the surveillance and everything else. It was the need to foment a continuous war, that creates a reason to do all the things gov't isn't supposed to do. Things like the Patriot Act.

 

[Cosmik]

In the late 80s and into the early 90s, I managed a Tandy (Radio Shack) Electronics store. It was an amazing time in tech, computers were coming of age and analogue mobile phones were taking hold, although it was primarily the more affluent (or pretenders/real estate agents/lawyers etc) who had them.

We had the biggest and best range of scanners at the time and our store was 4 storeys above the ground in an elevated shopping centre. Late night trading meant "scanner night". The sheer number of affairs, breakups and long deep and meaningfuls with jilted lovers kept us entertained. With analogue, if they were driving, you'd have to sometimes jump to another frequency to keep up with the conversation- the scanners were amazing. I can still remember the frequency ranges we used to program in to search between, even after all these decades.

Someone where I worked brought one in on a local race day (horses) and we picked up conversations between trainers and owners. I'm sure that if I had been so inclined I could have made some lucrative bets that day.

 

[headshake]

https://iot.mozilla.org/ + raspberry pi and you have a local IOT gateway that is local.