The Conspiracy Thread

[Vas Deferens]

(04-25-2016, 06:04 PM)fredtoast Wrote: I will be happy to do the reading myself.  Just tell me where to go.

I "see" SIRI, but I don't see it recording personal conversations and selling the info to marketers.

But I am willing to learn.

The nuts and bolts are there are devices with microphones that 'always listening'.  In the vast majority of cases, it is listening for a command to begin an interaction with the user "Siri, where is the closest adult video store", "Alexa, define gang bang".  The command is essential at this time for these services to work.  After the command, your speech is turned into text, processed and results returned.  All audio are NOT being databased as it stands today.  There is not enough storage capacity in the world to do as such.  The text of your interactions are META TAGGED (see Snowden) and stored in certain circumstances for future repurposing.     


As new players enter the market, they have less experience with the technology and end up listening to and databasing more than even they possibly intended.  Furthermore, a lot of these companies are outsourcing the translation piece of the equation which opens up more possible fault lines.

The examples I provided are not even on the nefarious end of the spectrum.  They are services a consumer seeks out and actively uses.  But the opportunity for ulterior use is clear, present and undeniable.  There are plenty of well documented pseudo-conspiracies surrounding this technology in the FB app.  While they have consistently denied any other use than associating and tagging a post with songs / TV shows through passive listening, there is no way for the common user to know when other 'FB experiments' or straight up tech glitches are occurring.  


Back to my statement "This is happening.  Trust me."  While you can make an argument that background noise / conversations could fall under the umbrella of 'stated intent'; anything that is said by other individuals will be associated with your profile; much like location based geo-targeting.  Add to that the new players mentioned above along with major tech companies need to placate government requests for your information and you better move somewhere without electricity if you want any semblance of privacy at this point.  

This is a pretty good layman's article to start you down the rabbit hole, and this is a year removed.    

Again, I'm not even saying this is a huge deal or even a conspiracy.  We live in a different time and everyone's expectations need to be inline with the technology around them.  I personally enjoy the benefits of these technologies, but I also know I'm not doing anything of merit and am knowledgeable enough to defend against broadcasting information that could end up in the wrong people's hands.  All I'm saying is whether its keyword tagging by Amazon to sell you a new **** ring or the state of TN wanting to make the meta contents of a marital spat discoverable, its all possible at this point should the juice warrant the squeeze.