Automated speech recognition

[Palinurus]

Source: http://www.nltimes.nl/2016/09/30/report-thousands-tapped-dutch-conversations-hands-australian-tech-company/

Report: Thousands of tapped Dutch conversations in the hands of Australian tech company

Posted on Sep 30, 2016 by Janene Pieters

An Australian tech company called Appen is in possession of the private telephone conversations of thousands of Dutch, according to the Volkskrant (in Dutch). Telephone experts think the most likely scenario is that the conversations were tapped by British intelligence agency GCHQ.

Appen is a company working on software that converts speech to text, something the GCHQ is interested in, according to the newspaper. The Dutch conversations come from 2010 and 2011.

The unauthorized use of private communications was accidentally discovered by a Dutch Appen employee, who told her story to the Volkskrant. She was hired to transcribe brief audio clips, all of them short conversations between Dutch. In one of them she recognized her ex-boyfriend leaving a voice message for his new girlfriend. She told him about it and he said he never consented to share his communications.

The former employee listened to thousands of Dutch audio clips. And several dozen other people were also working on the project.

Telecom Expert Rene Pluijmers of the National Forensic Investigation Office, thinks the most likely scenario is that the conversations were recorded by a security service. “The British service GCHQ intercepted dozens of fiber optic cables that also come from the Netherlands and since 1981 have experience with speech recognition. They have an interest in automated identification of data and calls. They gave Appen the tapped calls in order to improve the software that can do this.”

One wouldn't have known if it wasn't for her ex-boyfriend's involvement, I suppose. ;D

 

[Ant22]

This reminds me of the topic a friend of mine brought to my attention: smart phones listening to our conversations whilst we're not using them. A quick google search of "smartphones listening to calls" or "is my phone listening to me all the time"returns LOADS of stories of this kind. I've heard them first hand myself although I use my phone for communication purposes and to read stuff in pdf so I haven't noticed this myself.

A couple of excerpts:

http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/your-smartphone-listening-or-coincidence/

BBC Technology Report Zoe Kleinman reports an occasion when she learned of a friend’s death in tragic circumstances, only to find that her friend’s name, the accident, location and year were in the Google search box on her phone.

Further stories on Reddit expand further, such as this from hawk8177:

i was talking to a friend about a med he takes, next day im getting ads about that med… i asked a friend something about the best way to defog car windows… the next day when i open youtube the very first suggestion for me to watch was how to defog windows!

Here’s another, from karlrocks23

My SO and I were having a chat and I was telling her about a new Nespresso shop that opened up in the city and how nicely designed it was. I don’t like coffee that much, and I’ve never even tried Nespresso. That is the only time I can remember having a conversation about Nespresso to anyone and I’ve certainly never Googled it or anything.

The next day, all my ads on chrome were about Nespresso.. I have no issues with ads popping up related to things I’ve searched by voice or type. But it did feel a bit invasive being constantly listened to and for private conversations to be used as a means to target ads at me.

So many of these stories can be found on Reddit and beyond. This one, about a user noticing Google ads for everything he discussed with his wife, is particularly interesting, although too long to reproduce here.

Or: http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-35639549

t all began with a car crash.
I was doing some ironing when my mum came in to tell me that a family friend had been killed in a road accident in Thailand.
My phone was on the worktop behind me.
But the next time I used the search engine on it, up popped the name of our friend, and the words, "Motorbike accident, Thailand" and the year in the suggested text below the search box.

 

[Gawan]

Something with my own phone didn't happen to me. But I know from Facebook, Amazon and google that ads turn up on FB when I either searched for something on Amazon or on google. At least this is something I observed fairly common in the last weeks.

And is your phone all the time switched on and has connection to the provider plus internet? Or is it most of the time on airplane mode?

 

[Palinurus]

Interesting developments. Thanks for sharing these examples, both of you.

As I'm not using this type of technology, I wouldn't have known had you not told about them.

So, thanks again.

 

[Beau]

Something with my own phone didn't happen to me. But I know from Facebook, Amazon and google that ads turn up on FB when I either searched for something on Amazon or on google. At least this is something I observed fairly common in the last weeks.

And is your phone all the time switched on and has connection to the provider plus internet? Or is it most of the time on airplane mode?

You'll also want to make sure the microphone is not enabled for use by the apps on your phone when you're not using those apps.

 

[Ant22]

Something with my own phone didn't happen to me. But I know from Facebook, Amazon and google that ads turn up on FB when I either searched for something on Amazon or on google. At least this is something I observed fairly common in the last weeks.

And is your phone all the time switched on and has connection to the provider plus internet? Or is it most of the time on airplane mode?

My phone does spend a decent amount of time on airplane mode. I mostly turn it on when I need to use it and I usually finish my day with 60-70% battery left.

And oh boy, I almost feel like I'm late to the party because it looks like Google might have admitted they've nonchalantly been doing this since 2015. I found the below info on the Independent website. Well, if it's correct then it will most likely be like 5% of what's actually going on. I do wonder what the 95% is.

Apparently google has been recording what is said around their products and the list of the recorded files can be accessed and deleted. Well, I've just checked and there are no recordings on my profile so I don't know what to make of this information.


http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/news/google-voice-search-records-stores-conversation-people-have-around-their-phones-but-files-can-be-a7059376.html

Google could have a record of everything you have said around it for years, and you can listen to it yourself.

The company quietly records many of the conversations that people have around its products.

The feature works as a way of letting people search with their voice, and storing those recordings presumably lets Google improve its language recognition tools as well as the results that it gives to people.

But it also comes with an easy way of listening to and deleting all of the information that it collects. That’s done through a special page that brings together the information that Google has on you.

It’s found by heading to Google’s history page and looking at the long list of recordings. The company has a specific audio page and another for activity on the web, which will show you everywhere Google has a record of you being on the internet.

The new portal was introduced in June 2015 and so has been active for the last year – meaning that it is now probably full of various things you have said, which you thought might have been in private.

The recordings can function as a kind of diary, reminding you of the various places and situations that you and your phone have been in. But it’s also a reminder of just how much information is collected about you, and how intimate that information can be.

You'll see more if you've an Android phone, which can be activated at any time just by saying "OK, Google". But you may well also have recordings on there whatever devices you've interacted with Google using.

On the page, you can listen through all of the recordings. You can also see information about how the sound was recorded – whether it was through the Google app or elsewhere – as well as any transcription of what was said if Google has turned it into text successfully.

But perhaps the most useful – and least cringe-inducing – reason to visit the page is to delete everything from there, should you so wish. That can be done either by selecting specific recordings or deleting everything in one go.

To delete particular files, you can click the check box on the left and then move back to the top of the page and select “delete”. To get rid of everything, you can press the “More” button, select “Delete options” and then “Advanced” and click through.

The easiest way to stop Google recording everything is to turn off the virtual assistant and never to use voice search. But that solution also gets at the central problem of much privacy and data use today – doing so cuts off one of the most useful things about having an Android phone or using Google search.

 

[Ant22]

Something with my own phone didn't happen to me. But I know from Facebook, Amazon and google that ads turn up on FB when I either searched for something on Amazon or on google. At least this is something I observed fairly common in the last weeks.

And is your phone all the time switched on and has connection to the provider plus internet? Or is it most of the time on airplane mode?

You'll also want to make sure the microphone is not enabled for use by the apps on your phone when you're not using those apps.

Really useful tip, thank you Beau!