Who's reading/listening to/watching whom? Chronicles, #4 - "A Secret Catalogue of Government Gear For Spying On Your Cellphone"

Who's reading/listening to/watching whom? Chronicles, #4 -

Remember when Tony Soprano said he never uses GPS, and he always used burner phones? Given he was a mafioso and all, that made sense, right? Why help the FBI track him?  But in recent years, even law-abiding "civilians" should be aware of the increasing number of ways their gadgets are contributing to invasions of privacy.

"A Secret Catalogue of Government Gear For Spying On Your Cellphone"

(By Jeremy Scahill & Margot Williams (December 17, 2015) | The Intercept)


###
-->

Who's reading/listening to/watching whom? Chronicles, #3: "The walls have ears: Warrant granted for Amazon Echo recordings", "Goodbye privacy, hello 'Alexa': Amazon Echo, the home robot who hears it all", "Virtual standoff: Amazon Echo vs. Google Home"", and "Amazon Alexa vs. Google Home and how they’re always listening"

Who's reading/listening to/watching whom? Chronicles, #3 -

• Here's the article that inspired me to write this post:

"The walls have ears: Warrant granted for Amazon Echo recordings"

(Published time: 28 Dec, 2016 02:31, Edited time: 28 Dec, 2016 23:14; RT America)

• Here's another take on Alexa's intrusion on privacy:

"Goodbye privacy, hello 'Alexa': Amazon Echo, the home robot who hears it all" 

(by Rory Carroll in Los Angeles; Published Saturday 21 November 2015 07.07 EST; The Guardian)

We had Rory Carroll invite ‘Alexa’ aka the Echo into his home. There was helpful cooking assistance, endless facts and figures, an amusing misunderstanding – and concerns over what exactly Amazon does with all that interaction data

• The privacy concerns  posed by Alexa apply equally to Google Home 

"Virtual standoff: Amazon Echo vs. Google Home"

(By Kim Komando , Special for USA TODAY 8:11 a.m. EST December 30, 2016)

Privacy issues

For Amazon or Google to answer your questions on demand, it has to be listening all the time. According to Amazon, when Alexa detects its wake word and glows blue, it streams "a fraction of a second of audio before the wake word" to the Amazon's servers and closes once your command has been processed. That fraction of a second gets saved along with your main command.

Google Home operates in a similar way. It constantly listens for the phrase "OK Google." Once detected, its LED lights activate and the recording is sent to Google's servers.

I wrote an entire article about how these devices are always listening and also tell you the steps to delete your recordings. Click here to learn more about this now.

• Here's more on the subject, from Kommando.com 

"Amazon Alexa vs. Google Home and how they’re always listening"

(By Francis Navarro, Komando.com; November 12, 2016; Komando.com)

Here's the creepy part, Amazon and Google keep an audio recording of each and every voice command you've issued to Alexa or Home in their respective servers.
Why so? Amazon claims that it keeps the recordings to improve and enhance your user experience. The Echo uses these recordings to fine tune its comprehension by creating your unique voice profile.
Google uses the voice data to make their services "faster, smarter, and more useful". This information is also used to provide a more personalized experience across all Google services.

###

ON TV: Showdown - "Hell on Wheels"' Lily Bell v. Thomas Heywood's "The Fair Maid of the West"

I've been binge-watching Hell on Wheels and am glad I came aboard. In fact, I just finished watching season 3, episode 2 ("Eminent Domain") and have decided to lay a stake:   I'll add this richly textured, though occasionally flawed, antebellum western set during the Union Pacific's westward construction of the First Transcontinental  Railroad, to the arsenal of pop culture/mass media resources I draw from (get it?) for various projects.

Today's focus: Showdown - Hell on Wheels' Lily Bell v. Thomas Heywood's The Fair Maid of the West


In the AMC series Hell on Wheels, Thomas "Doc" Durant (a real-life character portrayed by Colm Meaney) references Thomas Heywood's English Renaissance drama, The Fair Maid of the West, or a Girl Worth Gold, Parts 1 and 2 (1631) to promote his Union Pacific Railroad, by publicizing Lily Bell* as "The Fair-haired Maiden of the West" and exaggerating the extent of the travails she endured during a Cheyenne Dog Soldiers massacre. However, though Bell actually was beautiful and blonde (and, therefore, both fair and fair-haired), had been seriously wounded by the brave who intended to kill her, had been stalked by a posse of warriors aiming to finish her off, and had to be  rescued by not one, but two heroes on horseback (Joseph Black Moon and Cullen Bohannon - both of whom, like Bell, were spreading their wings beyond their socially constrained molds and finding a mis-fit with the worlds they found themselves in), the widow generally behaved more like the maiden in the first half of Heywood's drama than either the heroine in that quarto's back half or the maiden Hell on Wheels' Durant fabricated.

There's no two ways about it: Bell was avant-garde, adventurous, brave, liberated, and resourceful. She looked and acted like a lady but drove hard bargains, was sexually aggressive, didn't hesitate to slap a b* (male or female), assumed her late husband's role as chief surveyor in addition to increasing responsibilities in running the railroad, was neither a bigot nor a snob, and bested Durant when he and his wife tried to oust her from the railroad enterprise (that would have failed without Bell and her husband's contributions). Nonetheless, in the season 1 finale ("God of Chaos"), Bell granted Durant's request that she assume the fair damsel image, to garner support at the event Durant hosted to impress railroad stakeholders.



*Love the name, like that of "Sweet Polly Purebred"



https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fair_Maid_of_the_West
http://www.amc.com/shows/hell-on-wheels/cast-crew/lily-bell