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20 days agowhy does it need to be device agnostic?
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Cake day: October 2nd, 2020
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happy to get into into these subtopics, but it’s also possible i may not be understanding you properly because i agree with alot of what you just said.
what are you attributing the close to 0 probability to?
if you wanna say “whats the probability that CMG was at least partly talking out their arse about their capabilities (and especially any claim they were currently in possession of that capability)?”
i’d also give it like >90% probability they (CMG) are full of shit. in which case you could say i agree with you (to within say 10% error margin).
if you’re instead saying the probability is ~100% that audio surveillance capability cannot possibly currently exist outside TLAs because “someone would’ve published it already” then i really cannot agree. (and afaict that ars article does not support that stance either)
381·22 days agoextremely good question to ask OP.
thinking on it right now, perhaps Moon (2009)
Not disputing the three letter agencies
The capability they were claiming to have would make a three letter agency very excited.
sorry i didn’t understand. didn’t you say you don’t doubt TLAs likely already have this capability?
oppressive regimes
most (all?) of whom are operating outside typical legal constraints and likely already have access to the million dollar exploit trade which already exists.
further, i’m not sure how this changes the landscape anyway? its not without precedent that variations on capabilities can be useful to more than one market segment concurrently?
trivial to discover and flag as malware
can you explain further what you mean by this? i’m not sure there’s anything trivial about conclusive analysis of the deep complexities and dependencies of modern smart devices
Apple and Google would also be very keen to find and squash whatever loophole let’s them record without showing the notification.
historically we’ve seen google can take over half a decade to address such things, afaict (welcome correction on this) apple’s generally been faster to respond, and i do agree apple’s current public image attire would be contrary to be seen to enable this. [not simping for apple btw, just stating that part of their brand currently seems to be invested in this]
in reality there are a confluence of many agendas and there’s likely ALOT of global users running non-bleeding edge or other variations on the myriad of sub-system components, regardless of what upstream entities like google implement. if you are aware of any conclusive downstream binary analyses please link
which if true would have been exposed/validated by security researchers long ago.
i agree the probability of discovery increases over time. and the landscape is growing more hostile to such activities. yet i’m not aware that a current lack of published discovery is actual proof it’s never happened.
tbh we have our doubts this leak is directly connected to solid proof “they are listening”.
but we’re not currently aware of any substantiated reasons to say with certainty “they’re absolutely not listening”
well they’re an ad company, so being full of shit is pretty much mandatory.
but i’m not aware of any evidence they’re actually 100% full of shit on this exact issue or not? can you explain a little more how you know for certain they’re full of shit. or you just meant “they’re most likely full of shit”?
deleted by creator
can you please explain further what you mean? it could be interpreted a number of different ways.
i’m not sure if this is your point or not? but there is obviously overlap between each of those groups, there’s black sixpack dads, and poor/middle class lgbqti etc etc
anyway imo none of this revived division appears organic. there’s always going to be the odd biggot, but afaict the majority of modern biggots are being indoctrinated and radicalised by an organised media effort (and our leaders are either complicit or ‘inexplicably’ powerless at protecting us from it). for sure these radicalised biggots should do better, but we’re also talking about average people going up against billion dollar propaganda machinery. it’s certainly asymmetrical warfare.
governments have all shifted more to the right on average
it appears to be the case. though afaict none of it appears to be organic.
2·24 days agoyou’re definitely asking the right questions. had the same thoughts.
smug redditors who not only 100% “know” it can’t be happening, but actively get annoyed if someone dares to even wonder if it might happen
I don’t think it’s so much that it would be impossible to conceive of them being able to record you in short bursts.
that’s exactly my point. if there’s an argument to be made over a technical aspect, why undermine it with some nonsensical requirements? imo it really suggests an emotional desire for it not to be true, which just compromises the integrity of any subsequent technical analysis.
as for the actual technical analysis, i’m always up to discuss each aspect of it :)
regarding the computing requirements for audio, this is something well worth looking into.
human vocal frequencies are quite narrowband compared with the audio most people think of with their music, gaming and movies/episodes.
CD quality audio is 16-bit 44.1 kHz sample rate, modern ‘high fidelity’ audio is in the realm of 24-bit 96 kHz or 192 kHz sample rate.
compare with even ancient voice codecs where bandlimited sampling requirements are only 6.6 kHz and 8bit samples can produce an effective 12bit response! that’s almost half a century ago btw!
the telecommunications industry has put considerable effort into understanding the human voice and the kinds of margins they can use to be profitable. they can even estimate the differential energy footprint based on different choice of words and tones in a conversation, this stuff has been studied quite a bit, for decades.
therefore the audio computational requirements are quite a bit less than i think alot of people realise. but we can ofc go deeper with the technical analysis into a variety of subdisciplines for the computational requirements to be substantially reduced even further.
understanding that these are capitalist systems
regardless of the reduced costs alluded to above, i think the capitalist system is another insight for us to examine. they are boundlessly greedy, nothing is ever enough.
there’s always been the argument they ‘have enough data already’, (and that is a good argument, because they do have enough).
but when has ‘enough’ ever been sufficient for these systems? they already had cookies, but they wanted tracking pixels. and when they had tracking pixels, they devised browser fingerprinting. but that still wasn’t enough, so they started devising audio beacons, but that wasn’t enough, then they started spying on shopping center wireless traffic. etc etc
it’s never ever enough. when we demand infinite growth on a finite planet, it will never be enough.
and imo it doesn’t actually need to be directly profitable in effect, only to be marketed as such to feed their bottomless appetite. especially when correlated surveillance is highly prized, and an additional channel or medium adds value to the existing gathered surveillance.
Although with the progression of some of these machine learning models, the equation may look a little different before too long.
exactly, imo its not a matter of if but when.
and imo if its finally revealed. some people will say “no shit”, some powerless people will be upset. but most people will say “i’m not doing anything wrong so i don’t care”.
and i’m willing to bet a bunch of the people currently telling us “its impossible”, will unironically switch overnight to saying “i always knew they were doing it and it never bothered me”
in each of the studies i’ve read, if you dig past the popsci headlines reported in the media, and into the actual academic claims being made. everyone i’ve read has been quite upfront about the limits of the study and how they’ve been unable to achieve full scope to absolutely rule it out. if you know of any absolutely conclusive full binary analysis please link.
tbh i don’t mind people saying they think its not happening, or that its unlikely etc
saying it’s absolutely not happening is a very different thing. and a very difficult assertion to justify.
it’s always something like “it’s impossible cos its too much data to record everyone 247/365” when even a tiny bit of common sense, (even if one knows nothing about computers, networks or even audio) could quickly conceive of the idea that some simple mechanism might detect noise thresholds and not need to record 24/7. you don’t even need to be technically minded to work that part out.
i could go on and dig into the actual technical aspects, but the main point is it’s always some unbelievably contrived scenario. basically fabricating low hanging fruit which is so low its underground. and then declaring that not only is everything 100.000% safe, but its actually a peeve that you even wondered.
The Internet and smartphones are not mystical devices.
Whether they’re mystical or not is an entirely different conversation ;p
This is something you can independently confirm yourself very easily…
you are vastly understating how non-trivial this task is. or you are allowing your emotional desires to cloud your technical analysis.
teams of experts put in months at a time to assess only a fraction of the required scope. these experts are putting in so much time while admitting they couldn’t achieve full coverage despite having financial backing & well trained teams. it’s reasonably unlikely so many experts would dedicate so much time & resources if its such an easy thing to independently confirm.
if Camdat and ganymede were sitting with one of their nontechnical friends, and their friend says “hey my stock smart device which i only use with facebook and a few things seemed like it eavesdropped on my voice about <common product/brand>”. and they swear they didn’t reveal it via some other channel etc. blah blah we’ve all heard it many times.
if you, Camdat listed all the reasons why the same phenomena can likely be attributed to a variety of other surveillance and correlation methods, some of which are arguably at least as scary. i would likely agree with every single thing you said.
imo its wiser to leave it at that, rather than making the assertion its absolutely not happening, or getting frustrated with them for even wondering.
it sounds like you have enough knowledge to know it’s almost impossible for an individual to assert it absolutely 100% isn’t happening.
imo if you make an honest effort to break the technical problem down you will arrive at a different conclusion - or in the very least not be nearly so bold as to allow this to be an emotional peeve.
consider forgetting the propaganda the media has subjected you to, and most importantly forget whether you do or don’t want it to be true. approach the problem from a purely technical perspective while considering these companies can hire hundreds of very smart people from a variety of subdisciplines. recall these companies have virtually bottomless greed and almost exactly 0 morals.
100% shoegaze fits the bill perfectly for OPs request. i’d add slowdive to that list
there’s some great, highly independent shoegaze on yt
also, some Dandy Warhols & Brian Jonestown probably fits the bill, eg. this track
3·1 month agothe PR and lawsuit risk
what risk? facebook & others conducted illegal human experiments. this is an enormous crime and was widely reported yet all fb had to do from a pr perspective was apologise.
as we all know, fb even interfered with with the electoral process of arguably the world’s most powerful nation, and all they had to do was some rebranding to meta and it’s business as usual. this is exactly how powerful these organisations are. go up against a global superpower & all you need to do is change your business name??? they don’t face justice the same way anyone else would, therefore we cannot assess the risk for them as we would another entity - and they know it.
So, while i personally disagree for above reasons, I can accept in your opinion they wouldn’t take the legal risk.
simpler metrics are enough
when has ‘enough’ ever satisfied these entities? we merely need to observe the rate of evolution of various surveillance methods, online, in our devices, in shopping centers to see ‘enough’ is never enough. its always increasing, and at an alarming rate.
local processing of the mic data into topics that then get sent to their servers is more concerning is not much more feasible
sorry i didn’t quite understand, are you saying its not feasible or it is feasible? from the way the sentence started i thought you were going to say it could be, but then you said ‘not much more feasible’?
Voice data isn’t
voice conversations are near-universally prized in surveillance & intelligence. There hasn’t been any convincing argument for any generalised exception to that.
I am not sure they could write it off as a bug
it’s already been written off as a bug. i didn’t follow that story indefinitely but i’m not aware of even a modest fine being paid in relation to the above story. if it can accidentally transcribe and send your conversations to your contact list without your knowledge or consent (literally already happened - with impunity(?)), they can 1000% “accidentally” send it to some ‘debug’ server somewhere.
Are they actually doing it? It ofc remains to be seen. Imo the fallout if it was revealed would roughly look like this
- A few people would say “no shit”
- Most people would parrot the “ive done nothing wrong so i don’t care” line.
- A few powerless people would be upset.
If they truly wanted to have mic access, they could for a long time
agreed
and it would have been known
are you sure?
The reality is it is too expensive
imo this commonly repeated view has never been substantiated.
we’ve yet to see a technical explanation for why it’s “impossible/too expensive” which addresses the modern realities of efficient voice codecs, even rudimentary signal processing and modern speech-to-text network models.
and risky
how so? previously invasive features are simply written off as “a bug”. they barely even need to issue some b̶r̶i̶b̶e̶s̶ fines (typical corporate solution to getting caught), that is the level we’re currently at:
“whoops it was a bug, we’ll switch it off”
“whoops another update switched it on again” (if caught, months/years later)
“whoops some other opt-in surveillance switched itself on again, just another bug ¯_(ツ)_/¯”
as long as they have deniability as a bug, there’s almost zero repercussions and thus virtually zero risk. that is perhaps why a company out and talking about it openly is such a no-no. discussing intent makes ‘bug’ deniability more difficult.
in my experience when reading past the “they’re not listening” headlines, and into the actual technical reports, noone has been able to conclusively rule it out. if you know of conclusive documentation, please post.
then there’s the “they have enough data already” argument. which is entirely without foundation, as we all know very well: nothing is ever enough for these pathologically greedy entities. ‘enough’ simply isn’t in their vocabulary. we all know this already.
[i didn’t downvote you btw]
no idea why you’re being downvoted.
you’re entirely correct, and i don’t interpret you as defending telegram’s lack of user protections
(noticing a real uptick in reddit hivemind around lemmy lately, it’s depressing tbh)
Everything that’s encrypted is generally more private and secure than the equivalent which isn’t encrypted
excellent writeup
i agree with alot of what you said and will try to hit a few key issues and hope i can add something to the excellent perspective you’ve cast.
exactly, they know its a very useful mechanism to accumulate power. so imo we should constantly remind ourselves - they’d be doing this anyway. if homosexuality didn’t exist or was non-viable for this, they’d be onto something else. they’d have used any topic to get what they want. (you could ofc have a metadiscussion about why certain topics are more powerful than others. but thats a different discussion).
another critical point, as you correctly identified, this is how christianity has become, not what christianity was even purportedly about. if you take the actual words attributed to jesus in the bible, afaict never said a god damn thing about being gay trans whatever. according to their own book - after centuries of fucking with the bible - it STILL says the greatest commandment of all is to love your neighbour as yourself and you can’t judge cos you’re all fuckin sinners afterall.
so it’s all hypocrisy built upon hypocrisy , basically typical “there are 5 lights” bs. in other words it has all the fingerprints of a propaganda pathology not an expression of positive spirituality.
yeah to that end i think the OPs timeline of 40 years was a bit optimistic, or we at least have to recognise that represents a cross-section of OPs experience which wasn’t necessarily universal 40 years ago. that said i feel there has been a backslide in the last say 10-15 years)
tbh i think thats because its probably both at the same time, its a documented soviet technique to covertly fund two sides of an issue to control the outcome. not picking on the soviets btw, just that they did a great job perfecting these kinds of things, wrote it down and then the power structures keeping them secret began to collapse and the methology leaked to the public.
we see this in a simpler form where corporations invest in pride month and also unironically heavily invest in homophobic organisations, (so i guess it doesn’t always have to be a cold war operation for powerful entities to effect control via seemingly conflicting interests).
and in what is presumably a less consciously aware context, consider how jk rowling veils her attacks on the trans community behind a thin veneer of “caring about gay people”. i’m strongly of the belief if she’d been born 50 years earlier she’d be jumping on the homophobia bandwagon instead of the currently “trendy” transphobia bandwagon.
to say another way, not everyone pretending to be our friend has our interests at heart, infact sometimes they’re just trying to accumulate power by taking the positive stance on this issue - probably for no other reason than the negative position won’t currently yield them as big a return.
and this can lead to eg. conservatives becoming outraged about a stance taken by someone who is vocal and politically motivated, but who has no business speaking on our behalf, then conservatives end up feeling like they’re “under attack from the homosexuals” when it wasn’t even a homosexual who said it!!
next the conservatives says some hateful thing in retaliation, people respond to that and it spirals…everyone loses (except perhaps the actual perpetrator). this is definitely a flaw in human thinking where our tribalism clouds our perception, we feel under attack and in the heat of the moment incorrectly assess which side someone is taking (or even that there’s only 2 sides, when in life there’s probably rarely ever only 2 sides).
again, its probably both? tbh i don’t think that laziness is the only explanation for the woefully shoehorned characters we’re currently getting. honestly its fucking insulting (to us, not the biggots - though the biggots might feel insulted too?). as you mention its a profitable cash grab, and i’m sure it hasn’t escaped their notice that a certain type of aggressively half-arsed inclusivity will provide alot more value to them from the hysteria it generates vs actually doing it ‘right’ in a sensitive and compassionate way, which might actually lead to healing.
if healing is what they actually wanted i think it’d look very, very different than how it currently looks. and the kindest interpretation is they’ve realised it’s more profitable short-term to produce hysteria instead of healing.
compare in contrast to what i still think (despite modern news) was a great example of inclusivity characters with the lesbian main characters in buffy:
in 1999 no less, it showed a lesbian couple in bed and instead of a cheap sexiness grab, they’re literally sitting up in bed reading & having a mundane conversation. no sexualisation of the lesbian relationship as something existing only for hetero male gratification, or out attacking heteros. just plain, believable real life characters living a boring normal part of their life. so yes i very much agree that the boring normality is a very powerful thing. surely ALOT more positive overall than aggressive hysteria.
In summary my take-aways are:
their MO is to use a scapegoat, they’d be attacking someone vulnerable, regardless of whom
not everyone pretending to be our friend actually wants to help us
hysteria is sadly apparently more profitable (short term) than healing
A positive note?
i really don’t either, though something think how homosexuality has been hijacked in modern perception (by that 1000 years of fake christianity as you mentioned). in eg. parts of ancient societies, men could love men and women could love women, someone could be a third gender, and it wasn’t even a thing to get upset about it, because it was just normal life. why do we suffer when they didn’t even know they were supposed to be suffering?