Roomba testers feel misled after intimate images ended up on Facebook
technologyreview.com
technologyreview.com
This whole thing is disgusting.
of course these kinds of things dont work for the regular guy
I'm not trying to be flippant, but what is to stop some company from simply utilizing a Terms of Service that allows them to do whatever they want with the data? I often see people chiming in that consumers "agreed" to all of this, even though the vast majority of people never read through the ToS or privacy policy at all.
ToS are often made to be hard to understand.
If these issues are regulated now, what happens when it's their turn to be the millionaire startup CEO?
Engineers should ask before adding a feature, "Is this going to require user consent?"
They could have added AI to the Roomba to remove people from the video before it ever even hits the network — or drop that video completely. Or switch to a technology other than visible light, etc.
Happened to me last week actually :)
If this ever goes to court I don’t doubt this will turn out to be one giant nothingburger.
That might work, but might also be circumvented at some point. I.e Amazon security cameras can use the neighbors cameras network to phone home.
Restrict them from internet access and you don't have to worry about firmware updates too.
When it comes to property crime, law enforcement agencies cleared 18.4% of larcenies/thefts, 14.1% of burglaries and 13.8% of motor vehicle thefts.
[1] https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2020/11/20/facts-about...
Source: https://www.hackread.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/Mark-Zuc...
That doesn't stop the camera from working, it only notifies you. And it only notifies you if you're paying attention to your computer.
So yes, taping your webcam does work.
I honestly couldn't imagine letting something like this roam around my house collecting a database of everything that's in it. This level of object recognition seems completely inappropriate for a vacuum.
Who wants a camera, roaming their house, constantly sending photos to another person?
Quite a few people, apparently!
Most people rationalize this, because they don't think about the other people at all. They're not visible, so they don't exist. This isn't the "panopticon" because we don't see our watchers ever appear, even when those watchers are posting our intimate photos on social media.
So many "smart" devices needlessly send data to the companies that produce the product. Society has built the technology to keep data on the devices, yet that's not how things have worked out.
Another point: a huge percentage of these devices are produced by Chinese companies. The Chinese government effectively has an ownership stake in all of these companies. However, we too, can rationalize this, because it's so abstract. The consequences aren't visible to us right now, so we can go ahead and ignore them. Right?
Amazon is buying Roomba. Same thing. We can ignore the consequences. It's easy!
Having bought the Roomba J(+) recently, the contribution of images for testing purposes is opt-in so done properly in that sense. The camera is also completely covered when the Roomba is docked, while the advantage of recognizing obstacles and properly driving around them is great. My previous Roomba was completely useless because it would get stuck on cables, shoes, anything.
All this to say it's not that black-and-white to me. I still don't do explicit stuff in front of the Roomba, but it doesn't mean I can't use it in a controlled way.
Actually that's exactly what they did because the "their" here encompasses all humans in the building. Unless there was a requirement to post prominent notices "you will be subject to filming if you enter this facility" around the place, then no there wasn't consent.
(Children’s consent can be given by their guardians.)
It reminds me of that time a bought a dust collector called a "Playstation 4" and it required me to connect it to the Internet before I could use it. I almost returned it for that very reason. Not everything needs to be connected to a network.
Unfortunately, I would never consider connecting the app for fear of what info it might be phoning home with (even if it's just my vacuuming habits). It's too bad that "connected" is basically synonymous with stealing personal information. There are lots of cool non-spying things internet connected stuff can do, but companies have ruined it by using them mainly for bad.
I own both types and I found the cloud version to be less reliable and less convenient.
I'll tell you.
None. None more cleaner.
The fact that it needs an internet connection for that is maddening.
"Feel misled?"
No, I would e.g. feel misled if I showed up to the burger spot and found that the cheeseburger special doesn't apply to bacon cheeseburgers.
This is .. something different from that.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simultaneous_localization_and_...
It's just a cost cutting measure.
But it should be done on the device, without sending images anywhere.
Not victim blaming; but this will not end unless those complicit can be identified and some inevitable punishment is created. Without that negative feedback then the positive thrill is too great for many humans to resist.
cameras for object detection, fine ... but there are VERY few things in my home that I need or want to be connected to a network, and my vacuum cleaner is not one of them. And why do I even need this thing to persist images in any capacity (even locally, let alone remotely)?
Despite being a software engineer for 25 years I'm starting to become a luddite because of things like this. One of these days I might just pack up everything and go live off grid.
That being said I think it would still work fine without the wifi doing a whole area clean with the button on the top, it just might say its having trouble finding its dock and you would need to carry it home after its finished.
Perfect for those occasions when I'm away on vacation but the dirt on my kitchen floor back home is bothering me...
Honestly half these features only exist because they're easy to implement and make the feature list longer, not because they're actually useful. And the other half don't require the internet, I set schedules on my roomba that has no radio in it, it has four buttons and a seven segment display.
But it's barely used these days, as the real vacuum is 1000% more effective in my carpet.
It's mapped the rooms really well and leaves perfect lines on the carpet - no ranom navigation or ping-ponging. We pick things up before we run the robot, but that's fine because it means the house is tidier.
I don't have a pet so I don't know how good it is at avoiding poop on the floor (apparently a selling point of vacuums with cameras) but poop on the floor is not something I would accept in my house anyway.
Easily one of my fave purchases of the past 10 years, would replace in a heartbeat if it broke.
These types of leaks of information only damage the reputation of smart product makers even further. There really needs to be a push towards local processing on the smart devices. Most of them call home for nefarious reasons either to gain or gather marketing information or to outright spying on their customers.
In this case iRobot didn't exactly lie about collecting data, but how greedy/stupid do you have to be as a company to not ensure that the data collect NEVER EVER leave the servers of your AI/QA/Process-improvement lab? The company know that people are already critical of their data collection, that should have trigged the creation of a process that would ensure that once data has been collected will never leave the department that develops their AI. You know this data is sensitive, and yet you outsource handling of if it, to poorly trained freelancers, who knows nothing of data security, privacy laws or apparently common decency.
https://www.theverge.com/2022/11/30/23486753/anker-eufy-secu...
It takes constant vigilance and sadly the incentives aren’t there.
I think that it's an attractive thing because it pays, and people generally don't care. So it's a free avenue for the company to make additional profits, or, to use this extra profit to lower the margin of the original product, thereby making it more attractive in a price competition.
BTW there also are more minor annoyances advertised as features. I had hard time finding an electric kettle without a beeper (so it would just stop heatin once done but won't annoy me the way the microwave does or wake me up when I sleep and somebody wants a cup of tea). ~95% have the signal and ~40% don't even mention they do.
And the truth is that folks don't get these things - at least not something affordable - unless they are introduced to greater society. That's really the bright side to a lot of As Seen on TV products: they might be lazy or weird for some of us, but for others they grant a bit of independence.
Besides, it isn't like these folks did anything wrong besides not being able to understand the legal language the contracts are written in and doing business with a company that wasn't quite upfront with their intentions as folks would like.
I love how the answer to "modern life doesn't leave enough time to do basic human tasks" is "buy a $1k+ soon to be e-waste LIDAR powered AI enabled fully autonomous vacuum cleaner" instead of "fix the damn system". We truly have completely lost our collective minds somewhere since the 90s
You can't throw people at the problem nowadays, because there are just too few young persons.
Vacuuming robots are great because while they can't replace a fit person with a vacuum, they can do half as good a job daily and largely without supervision.
Getting snarky with people because they are upset about a much smaller, more recent, and more visible change than our gradual slide into late-stage capitalism—and one that might actually be fixable without a complete overhaul of our society and culture—is deeply unhelpful. It's the very picture of letting the perfect be the enemy of the good.
You and these people are on the same side, so maybe try showing sympathy and compassion for their frustrations, rather than mocking them for not solely and full-throatedly advocating for an overthrow of the system.
Whether we experience a net gain in saved time for the more important things is dependent on more than just the straightforward subtraction of chores as they exist now. A lot of factors influence that, so you cannot perform simple extrapolations in that manner because the "system" is dynamic. People didn't have washing machines 100 years ago, but they often had more time than we do or claim to do.
The introduction of a labor saving device introduces consequences. Markets and culture respond to the supposedly liberated time. Automation introduces new costs like the need for maintenance. Social activity and arrangements organized around certain activities evaporate and are replaced with new ones. The medium is the message, so to speak.
Indeed how people use their free time varies greatly but that is not a reason to limit people's free time.
I have also never wished for a way to change the radio with voice commands. I’ve seen friends do this and it’s like seeing people ride a unicycle - novel, but it doesn’t offer me anything of value. And of course, the privacy trade off isn’t worth it.
I personally don't want to talk to my appliances any more than I want to talk on the phone. But to be absolutely honest, I know I carry a personal surveillance device around with me. I don't generally want more of it - but if I had a reason for voice commands - and a number of things might fit, so long as it required both hands and took some time - I might change my mind. And if they don't sell the robot vacuum without the camera, I'll probably ignore that. Depending.