Amazon Echo Turns Off When Owner Asks if Connected to the CIA
The eerie video came only days after WikiLeaks published the CIA’s hacking methods and tools in the Vault 7 release.
Every day, the latest
inventions make our lives easier and interactive. Whether owning a smart
fridge, smart security systems or cool looking, decorative smart
interactive assistants, all of them have one thing in common: to make
life easier.
But they’re connected to the internet,
too. The downside of these smart devices is they tend to store your
voice and usage patterns on the cloud, which if you think about it, can
be used against you one day.
When contemplating the sinister side of
your devices, one smart device that hooks into the internet springs to
mind: Amazon’s Echo – a smart interactive assistant named Alexa. Alexa,
when asked if it has a connection with the CIA, chooses not to answer
its owner in a video posted on Twitter.
The woman asks the smart device whether
she would lie to her, to which Alexa quickly responds that she would
always try to be truthful. Alexa is then asked to give a definition of
what the CIA is, which is answered with accuracy. It’s then followed by
another question from its owner, “Are you connected to the CIA?” Alexa,
rather than answer, chooses to switch off, not once, but twice, when
the owner of the device repeatedly asks.
Since then, questions have been raised
about Amazon’s product. Amazon’s response is that it’s nothing but a
minor programming error.
Amazon says they’ve now fixed the
problem. Currently, if you ask Alexa if it’s connected to the CIA – it
responds that it works for Amazon – hardly convincing.
Some viewers are of the
opinion that the machine was unable to understand the woman’s question
when she asks Alexa if its connected to the CIA. It seems a fair enough
thought, but the machine, when not knowing an answer shouldn’t shut
down, but rather have responded by saying ‘could you repeat your
question’ or it ‘didn’t understand the question’.
So far, Amazon has declined to comment on the type of technical error.
The eerie video came only days after WikiLeaks published the CIA’s hacking methods and tools in the Vault 7 release.
Matt Novak, a journalist for Gizmodo took the liberty of contacting the FBI, asking them if they were wiretapping Amazon Echo.
The FBI responded to him with a letter
saying, “This is in response to your Freedom of Information Act (FOIA)
request. Please be advised that, upon reviewing the substantive nature
of your request, we can neither confirm nor deny the existence of records to your request pursuant to FOIA exemption (b)(7)(E) [5 U.S .C §552 (b)(7)(E)].”
Makes you think, doesn’t it?
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When Owner Asks if Connected to the CIA) is a free and open source. You
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