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Comment by xg15 | Hacker News Reader

In some way this feature reminded me of Android's song detection functionality which is also on by default and is constantly listening in the background [1].

So now tech companies normalized that:

- the mic is always on.

- the phone is always on, even when it's off. (thanks to AOP)

- devices are always online even when they are offline.(thanks to company-operated p2p networks like Find My or Sidewalk)

What could possibly go wrong?

https://support.google.com/pixelphone/answer/7535326?hl=en

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Yes which supports all kinds of functionality that people like. Just because you have a processor on or mic listening for wake words doesn’t mean everything is always being transmitted or evil is being done.

State actors could do this selectively regardless even before these features. There have been attacks on Motorola razrs, etc for spying. Long before the smartphone, they just implanted microphones, shine lasers on windows, etc.

> Yes which supports all kinds of functionality that people like. Just because you have a processor on or mic listening for wake words doesn’t mean everything is always being transmitted or evil is being done.

No, but it means that I’m losing agency in whether or not those things can happen. That’s not ok and not benign.

The 'listen for music' feature on pixel phones is optional and off by default.

Yes, I have a Pixel 3 and can confirm that the feature is off by default; I turned it on for a while to experiment and then turned it off again. Also, it appears that if you turn it on, it compares what it hears against a much smaller set of popular songs (probably comparing against a set of feature vectors that's already on the phone); the search for anything obscure tends to work only if the Google Assistant is used.

What is the use case that feature? I get an active "what is this song".

It demoes well at I/O.

But.. What is the use case? That... The phone can give you statistics of what music you've been listening to?

Sort of like a "here is the locations you've been to, because we've been tracking you at every step", but instead "here is the music you've listened to, because we've been eavesdropping at all times"?

for me, its like a soundtrack recorder for my life - sometimes ill remember that there was a cool song playing at the bar and with this feature, its likely that my phone captured the song and tells me what it is - there are 3rd party apps that will give you location based info for when and where you heard the song as well, so it creates a music map and timeline for you. its a very niche feature.

I used a company called mobile spy over a decade ago back on the old iPhone 4s. I was able to see a lot of information and believe the premium features allowed you to silently make a call to the phone which it would automatically answer and leave no trace so you could call and listen in. You of course could see sent images and messages. Websites visited and all sorts of spying. It was very fun to play with at the time it made me realize that anyone could spy on me if they get my device for a bit. I also realized that if all my messages are being sent to this company and I can read it in plain text then so can they. I deleted it and never did try the premium mode.

It’s a feature of Pixel phones, not Android.

I’m not sure how this will change in the future, but currently at least it’s probably not possible to transcribe and communicate speech this way (the power and bandwidth requirements would be too high).

But we’re damn close.

Edit: It seems like throughput isn’t even an issue in the case of Amazon’s Sidewalk. Now it’s just transcription in low power modes. Heck, you might even be able to send raw audio.

This is feasible.

The article mentions that the AOP is responsible for Siri, too.

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