Hotel Googlefornia

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Doka
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Hotel Googlefornia

Post by Doka » 04-10-2019 11:36 AM

"We are programmed to receive / You can check out any time you like / But you can never leave!"
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hotel_California

Seems to cover a lot of "Territory" these days. :?:


Hotel Googlefornia

Even if you don't use Google, the Menlo Park data giant still has you and some of your most deeply personal information deep in its servers. Gizmodo's Kashmir Hill took on a "monumental challenge," according to the latest from Forbes, of not merely giving up Google's many services, but actively blocking all communication with every single one of Google's services on all her devices.

In other words, Hill didn't just stop using Google Search, YouTube, Gmail, Waze, etc., she got "the help of a Motorola engineer who designed a custom VPN (virtual private network) that restricted all of her devices -- laptops, phones, smart speakers, everything -- from talking to Google servers."

The result? It pretty much broke her access to the internet.

Jason Evangelho reports what happens when your smartphone, computer laptop, and tablet are denied access to "Google's 8,699,648 (!) IP addresses," and the results weren't pretty:


Entire Article/Comments

https://pjmedia.com/vodkapundit/hotel-googlefornia/
KARMA RULES

Those Who Can Make You Believe Absurdities, Can Make You Commit Atrocities': Voltaire

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Doka
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Re: Hotel Googlefornia

Post by Doka » 04-10-2019 08:09 PM

Are we "Paranoid" Yet? :shock: :|





Busted: Thousands Of Amazon Employees Listening To Alexa Conversations


Amazon employs thousands of people to listen in on what people around the world are saying to their Alexa digital assistant, according to what is sure to be a Congressional hearing-inspiring report by Bloomberg, which cites seven people who have worked on the program.

While their job is to "help improve" NSAlexa - which powers the company's line of Echo speakers - the team "listens to voice recordings captured in Echo owners’ homes and offices," which are then transcribed, annotated and fed back into the software in order to try and improve Alexa's understanding of human speech for more successful interactions. In other words, humans are effectively helping to train Amazon's algorithm.

In marketing materials Amazon says Alexa “lives in the cloud and is always getting smarter.” But like many software tools built to learn from experience, humans are doing some of the teaching. -Bloomberg

The listening team is comprised of part-time contractors and full-time Amazon employees based all over the world; including India, Romania, Boston and Costa Rica.

Listeners work nine hour shifts, with each reviewing as many as 1,000 audio clips per shift according to two employees from Amazon's Bucharest office - located in the top three floors of the Romanian capital's Globalworth building. The location "stands out amid the crumbling infrastructure" of the Pipera district and "bears no exterior sign advertising Amazon's presence."

While much of the work is boring (one worker said his job was to mine for accumulated voice data for specific phrases such as "Taylor Swift" - letting the system know that the searcher was looking for the artist), reviewers are also listening on people's most personal moments.

Occasionally the listeners pick up things Echo owners likely would rather stay private: a woman singing badly off key in the shower, say, or a child screaming for help. The teams use internal chat rooms to share files when they need help parsing a muddled word—or come across an amusing recording. -Bloomberg

Article/Comments

https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-04- ... versations
KARMA RULES

Those Who Can Make You Believe Absurdities, Can Make You Commit Atrocities': Voltaire

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Re: Hotel Googlefornia

Post by Doka » 04-10-2019 08:21 PM

Your car is watching you. Who owns the data?

Computers on wheels raise thorny questions about data privacy

If you’re driving a late model car or truck, chances are that the vehicle is mostly computers on wheels, collecting and wirelessly transmitting vast quantities of data to the car manufacturer not just on vehicle performance but personal information, too, such as your weight, the restaurants you visit, your music tastes and places you go.

A car can generate about 25 gigabytes of data every hour and as much as 4,000 gigabytes a day, according to some estimates. The data trove in the hands of car makers could be worth as much as $750 billion by 2030, the consulting firm McKinsey has estimated. But consumer groups, aftermarket repair shops and privacy advocates say the data belongs to the car’s owners and the information should be subject to data privacy laws.

Yet Congress has yet to pass comprehensive federal data privacy legislation. And although Sen. Roger Wicker of Mississippi, chairman of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation, has said he would like to see federal privacy legislation passed by the end of the year, it is unclear if that goal can be met.

Financial technology is changing how we do business, and regulators are trying to catch up

The European Union has already ruled that data generated by cars belongs to their owners and is subject to privacy rules under the EU’s General Data Protection Regulations or GDPR. Automakers, meanwhile, are still trying to shape the outcome of state data privacy laws, including the one in California that goes into effect in January 2020, but might be subject to amendment before then.


https://www.rollcall.com/news/policy/cars-data-privacy
KARMA RULES

Those Who Can Make You Believe Absurdities, Can Make You Commit Atrocities': Voltaire

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