Nest - hidden microphone

[Zak33]

https://www.businessinsider.com/nest...19-2?r=US&IR=T

• In early February, Google announced that Assistant would work with its home security and alarm system, Nest Secure.
• The problem: Users didn't know a microphone existed on their Nest security devices to begin with.
• On Tuesday, a Google representative told Business Insider the company had made an "error."
• "The on-device microphone was never intended to be a secret and should have been listed in the tech specs," the person said. "That was an error on our part."

your thermostat is listening to you.........

[Hoonigan]

Was it a mistake, really, aye? Was it? Aye?

This was, 100%, done completely and utterly on purpose.

[peterb]

https://www.businessinsider.com/nest...19-2?r=US&IR=T



your thermostat is listening to you.........

More likely the Nest camera! I know the Nest smoke detectors have a microphone for self testing.

[Saracen999]

I've made no secret of my views on Google, and their ethos (which is, IMHO, all your privacy are belong to us) and I seemed to remember suggesting that if N. Korea wanted a live test of their nukes, Google HQ would make an admirable target. I was, of course, kidding about testing nukes but not about the inference for what I think of Google. I put them in the same desirability category as the Spanish inquisition, Ghengis Khan or a dose of Lasser Fever, Ebola and Bubonic plague (all at the same time).

That is, not a fan.

Nonetheless, I struggle to see conspiracy in this microphone non-announcement. I am quite prepared to accept cockup, in not disclosing it was there, not a deliberate act.

I say that for two reasons :-

1) Anybody with a brain capability exceeding a peanut would predict the blowback when it came out, and sooner or later, for one reason or another, it WAS coming out, and they aren't THAT stupid, and

2) Given that their entire business model is based on snooping on us and invading our privacy, I assumed they would do something like this anyway.



What actual difference does it make, except to a relatively small middle group?

Middle? Middle of what I hear you ask.

Well, on one side, there's those that think like me who assume that the beast is what it is, and can't help it, the "beast" being online "smart" devices. If you don't want your privacy invaded, don't buy such "smart" hardware. If you do buy it, assume you're being data-raped, analysed, categorised, stored etc.

On the other side, there are those (many on here) who know that's happening, and either don't care, or regard it as an acceptable price to pay for the benefits, andcthere undoubtedly are some.

The "middle" is what I suspect is a fairly small group that lie between those two camps. The first camp find this mike doesn't matter because they aren't buying in to this data sacrifice so won't buy this sort of smart device. The second csmp find it doesn't matter because they've already got microphones, possibly cameras, in "smart" devices (yes, Amazon, I mean you) in their homes, carry a personal location and activity tracker everywhere they go (which, by the way, could be sitting on a table right next to this Nest device, and some even have health data from step counters, etc, all available IF companies choose to exploit it. They are, in other words already mega-snooped-on, and don't care, so why care about one more microphone?

For that middle group .... maybe it's a bit of a wake-up call. Maybe. Though I doubt it.