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Don’t want an Alexa in your home spying on everything you say? Well too bad, suckers! It’s the way of the future. Can’t argue with that, right?
SHOW NOTES
Don’t Be An Idiot! Get Rid of Alexa!
Newly Released Amazon Patent Shows Just How Much Creepier Alexa Can Get
I have to wonder if there’s even a significant number of people who actually own and use an Alexa, or if TPTB are just trying to create the illusion that everyone’s buying them.
I have yet to meet anyone who owns an Alexa.
Anyway, great video. I really look forward to the #PropagandaWatch videos.
This #PropagandaWatch brings to mind…
How authority figures shape reality – Chernobyl and “Pointing the Bone”
In the comment section of the latest NewWorldNextWeek, Corbett member “ManBearPig” presented a fascinating video with famous writer, Micheal Crichton.
QUEUED at Chernobyl. Around the 17 minute mark “pointing the bone”.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MDCCvOv3qZY&feature=youtu.be&t=12m38s
Back when these things first came out I went over to my sister’s for a holiday dinner. And there on the kitchen table was…..an Alexa. I felt viscerally uneasy immediately. And this was before the creepy news stories started coming out about random conversations being sent to contacts (Oops! Their damage control there was amusing to hear). And how people would receive an ad on their device for something they were just talking about.
So there at my sister’s, I was trying to enjoy the visit, with her, my brother in law, and Gene Hackman sitting cross-legged on the counter with headphones on, pointing his microphone at whoever was talking and scribbling notes. A weird dinner.
Not long after I called her when those news stories started coming out (she isn’t much of a news junkie, she wasn’t aware). That got her attention, and she unplugged it. Makes me wonder though. Is unplugging it enough? Hmmm.
Ha Ha, I enjoyed this one. James’ mocking incredulity at the guy’s argument about it being the future was infectious. You have to wonder what mechanism is at play which compels the author to dream up such rubbish.
Entertaining stuff.
Good points Thomas.
Alexa is simply an ‘in-your-face’ example of Big Brother spying on you.
Lord knows how many ‘smart’ devices we already have in our homes that are doing the evil deed that Alexa now aspires to.
Fawlty-
Yes, quite. It is the most in-your-face. And when a spying device is that obvious and so many people don’t see it, then the coming data dragnet of smart devices and what their true purpose is will just not be on most people’s radar.
And to reference what Thomas brought up, anyone who is targeted specifically can have their home, car, or fishing boat surveilled for sound remotely.
So then. What to do? One’s only real recourse of defense ultimately is to get off the grid and live somewhere in a box made of lead. But even then the drones will know where your lead box is. Crap. Out of ideas. Guess I’ll just try to find sports entertaining.
The following would be a great way to test the efficacy of Alexa.
Alexa is not supposed to be spying on us right?
“Alexa, I’m in on a terrorist attack next month in New York City.
I can’t give out too much information at this time, however the project has been given the green light.”
Now just sit back and see how many days/hours/minutes it takes until the FBI comes knocking at your door!
At which time you will simply smile at them and say “Oh I was just playing a game with my kids. Not to worry. We see so much in the news every day about terrorism I thought it would be a good idea to teach my children what it’s all about, and what we can do to make this world a safer place.
The first step was doing a little role-playing to catch their interest.
We’re thinking about calling it ‘War Games’.
By the way, how did you get wind of our game?”
Kids’ Class Action Lawsuit against Amazon & its Alexa
Last week, there were a variety of articles in different news outlets about this class-action lawsuit.
Here is one source…
Federal Lawsuit Charges Amazon’s Alexa Violates Children’s Privacy
https://www.claimsjournal.com/news/national/2019/06/17/291497.htm
EXCERPTS
…An international law firm has filed a federal lawsuit against Amazon.com Inc., alleging that the company’s Alexa virtual assistant product violated privacy laws in Massachusetts and seven other states by making permanent recordings of children’s voices without their consent.
The lawsuit seeks class-action status on behalf of all persons who lived in a home with an operating Alexa device — which they didn’t set up — while a minor in Florida, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania and Washington. The suit names “C.O.,” described as the 10-year-old daughter of Massachusetts resident Alison Hall-O’Neil, as the lead plaintiff.
The suit says Amazon violated Massachusetts’ wiretap statute and similar laws in the other states by creating “persistent recordings” of C.O. and intentionally intercepting and using oral communications without the consent of the all parties.
Consumer organizations have also charged that Amazon is violating children’s privacy rights, in violation of federal law. The lawsuit takes another approach, citing state privacy laws.
“Amazon has strong commercial incentives to collect as many Alexa recordings as possible,” the suit says. “From the outset, Amazon has been a company built on the relentless acquisition of consumer behavioral data.”
Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan, a law firm with an office in Seattle and other locations around the globe, filed the suit in the U.S. District Court for Western Washington. The suit asks the court to award unspecified damages and litigation costs, order Amazon to delete all recordings of the class members’ voices, and issue a declaration that Amazon violated state privacy laws.
Amazon said in a statement that it has strict measures and protocols in place to protect its customers’ privacy…(blah blah blah)…
…But the lawsuit describes a deliberate effort by Amazon to record voices as a means of refining the natural language understanding of the Alexa product. Many recordings are individually reviewed by Amazon employees and part-time contractors “in locations as far flung as Costa Rica, India, and Romania,” the suit says…
…(more below)…
…It’s not just plaintiff’s attorneys who have privacy concerns about virtual assistants like Alexa. The New York Times reported last week than a group of researchers at Stanford University has received a $3 million grant from the National Science Foundation to develop an voice assistant technology that will allow consumers to avoid surrendering personal information with technology companies.
“A monopoly assistant platform has access to data in all our different accounts. They will have more knowledge than Amazon, Facebook and Google combined,” the team leader, Dr. Monica Lam, told the Times in an interview.
The Stanford team is working to development an alternative technology, called Almond, which they hope to make freely available to consumers and manufacturers. The Almond virtual assistant software is decentralized so consumers can choose where their information is stored and how it is stored, the Times reported.
Several consumer advocacy organizations, led by the Campaign for a Commercial Free Childhood, have filed a complaint asking the federal Trade Commission to investigate and sanction Amazon for infringing on children’s privacy through its Echo Dot Kids Edition. The organization said the product collects sensitive personal information from children, including viewing, reading, listening and purchasing habits. The complaint says the collection of the data violates the federal Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act, or COPPA.
“Amazon markets Echo Dot Kids as a device to educate and entertain kids, but the real purpose is to amass a treasure trove of sensitive data that it refuses to relinquish even when directed to by parents,” said Josh Golin, the CCFC’s executive director. “COPPA makes clear that parents are the ones with the final say about what happens to their children’s data, not Jeff Bezos. The FTC must hold Amazon accountable for blatantly violating children’s privacy law and putting kids at risk.”
Late for work, yes. One can and will be late for work, sometimes habitually. But, one can never be too late being skeptical.
And if we can agree with subscriber alexandre’s pointed, negative assessment of all things digital, then we can easily include the entire gamut of algorithmic cryptocurrency/blockchain digital technology, also.
And I’m glad to see you’re questioning this crypo-paradigm. Because you’re right on target.
At the risk of taking your own words out of the context you may have placed them in and projecting my own interpretation, I sense that in your recalling of how you had felt about the bitcoin auction, it would seem, in hindsight, you’re now voicing a burgeoning of healthy skepticism regarding the legitimacy of cryptocurrency/bitcoin, et al.
“I thought at the time that that was very telling and a very strange mixed message about bitcoin from the deep state to a sheeple mass like myself.”
And probably, now, with 5g nearly upon us and in our face, with all that it soon promises, that is, with all its ugly ramifications (as understood by most Corbett subscribers, at least) it appears all the more so that interview 1103, circa 2015, with Derrick Broze is almost quaint, if not downright naive.
Oh, to the glory of apps on your smart phone! Cut out the middleman! Whip out your surveillance device and grab an Uber! Rejoice in the gray economy of things. Detach from the Central Banks and trade with crypto. Who needs Uncle Sam? Who needs government? Digitized currency is your passport to Freedom and Autonomy! Or, Autonomy and Freedom!
NOT
Cryptocurrency, in its own right, actually represents a brand spanking new form of a “Century Of Enslavement”.
It’s a joke. On all levels, it really is a joke: For instance, in the interview, Broze uses a simple economic example of what the “gray” economy means, sighting the simple act of paying the neighborhood kid 20 bucks to mow the lawn, therefore, no government involvement, no taxes generated, etc., etc., so his argument goes….
But, which of the following transactions do you think engenders more autonomy and less chance of hacking, less chance of being surveilled, decoded and data collected by – you guessed it – big brother: Dropping bitcoin into the kid’s bitcoin account, or just handing the kid the lousy 20 bucks, in nickels, dimes, quarters, singles, fives, tens, or a twenty?
I am very much looking forward, hopefully in the near future, to a JC article that might be entitled:
Will The Real Satoshi Nakamoto Please Stand Up: The Truth Behind Cryptocurrency
Cheers
Did you ever notice that you are given fair warning that you are on a recorded line for ‘quality purposes and training’?
Don’t you think the preemptive recording device should also give fair warning upon the first voice activation that you are in fact being recorded?
I think it should.
Also, public spaces should also be appropriately labeled with the international microphone surveillance symbol.
My 2 cents.
Regards to all.
There may be more folks who are aware than we realize…
June 17th – Lone Gunman Downtown Dallas Shooting at Federal Building
Monday morning, June 17, I am busy working. Two younger co-workers (age 20-35) are with me. One comes up to me and says: “Did you hear about what is happening right now in downtown Dallas?”
“No. What’s up?”. I said.
He tells me and the other coworker about a gunman downtown in body armor shooting at people and the Federal Courthouse.
Right away, these two guys are shouting “false flag event” and that this is another covert government ploy to take guns away and our rights away.
They rant on and on. They cite New Zealand and Las Vegas and ….
I couldn’t get a word in edgewise they were so busy ranting about it being a “Black Op” (quote).
To backup a bit…These fellas normally never talk much about “conspiracy stuff”. Usually it might be about cannabis or some YouTube popular video or Game of Thrones or whatever.
One guy was quickly on the shooters Facebook, showing me the young shooters bizarre video postings.
So anyway, it really hit me hard on why “YouTube” and other media controllers want to repress certain “truth-topic messages”. These are regular guys who have phone access to all kinds of info.
It re-newed my faith in mankind.
~~~
By the way, most readers here probably never heard about the recent Dallas shooting. There is probably a reason for that. It was probably “off-script” from a dark agency operation… just a young kid (Brian Clyde) who had played too many video games and lost his rocker.
owen22,
Thank you so very much for the anecdote!
It underscores that life can be complex, full of shades of gray, needful of more understanding.
Entities and things labeled only as a choice of “good” or “bad” is short-sighted (no pun intended).
It’s wonderful when technology is used to assist people who need it. Couldn’t agree more.
In fact, that’s the first language out of the mouths of any corporate marketing department. Our “fill-in-the-blank” thing can help humanity! I’ve never read an article about a new technology that didn’t state this goal up front and attempt to make everyone ‘believe’ it. However, people like your mother who need real help make up such a tiny percent of the population that this argument does not hold water. Why? No profits were ever made by helping a very tiny percentage of the populace. Get it? I should not have to go on from here, but ok.
Alexa, et al are weaponized systems of control for the main purpose of profit, at the moment. However, any intelligent person following the story could see that would change fast. Now, as expected, the ‘CREEP’ is on and has been since the devices’ inception. If you purchase one of these insidious devices it means third parties are listening to every aspect of your life, selling it to the highest bidder and “cooperating” with law enforcement.
But wait! There’s more coming for the populations of the West. Take a serious look at China if you are unaware into what area these technocratic corporations, supported by their pay-to-play lobbyists in D.C. are edging. Remember: The real money is in hooking up with government. What can the corporate realm provide for the government realm? The de facto destruction of laws they can’t easily contend with but want to eliminate, those which protect your rights. These devices are making human rights, as set down by the Founding Fathers, a Constitutional work-around for those who would rule you.
That’s the goal. Bet on it. (Of course, the FAANG has been inside that fold for a good long time now.)