Speaker 1: I want to thank every Amazon employee and every Amazon customer,
Speaker 1: because you guys paid progress. You guys paid problems. This
Speaker 1: is Megacorp, an investigative podcast exposing some of the world's
Speaker 1: most unethical corporations. This series is about Amazon. I'm Jake Hanrahan,
Speaker 1: journalists and documentary filmmaker. Megacorp is produced by H eleven
Speaker 1: for cool Zone Media. So we've spoken about the awful
Speaker 1: work conditions in the Amazon warehouses, the company's disregard for
Speaker 1: health and safety, and we've also looked at how Amazon
Speaker 1: manages to avoid paying millions of dollars in tax. Now, though,
Speaker 1: we're going to move on to something different, because, as
Speaker 1: I've mentioned, each step up the Amazon pyramid of facori,
Speaker 1: there's a new scandal to be examined. In this episode,
Speaker 1: we're going to be asking the question, is Amazon spying
Speaker 1: on you? We know the government is, we know social
Speaker 1: media is, we know Google is. But what about Amazon?
Speaker 1: A company that, in its delusion, prides itself on being
Speaker 1: the smiley, happy face of the consumer experience. Let's find out. First,
Speaker 1: let's take a look at Amazon's range of smart speakers. Now,
Speaker 1: if you don't know what a smart speaker is, consider
Speaker 1: yourself lucky, but to explain. The smart speaker, sometimes referred
Speaker 1: to as a home assistant, is an Internet enabled two
Speaker 1: ways speaker system that basically replaces getting up and pressing
Speaker 1: buttons in your home. For example, if you want to
Speaker 1: search for something online, you can ask the smart speaker
Speaker 1: to do it. If you don't want to just get
Speaker 1: up and switch off the light, you can program the
Speaker 1: smart speaker to do it on your command. Some of
Speaker 1: the most advanced smart speakers can be programmed to basically
Speaker 1: run your whole house for you. Amazon leads the global
Speaker 1: market when it comes to smart speakers, but the start
Speaker 1: of they'd sold a hundred million That sold sixteen point
Speaker 1: five million smart speakers by the fourth quarter of twenty
Speaker 1: and almost seventy of smart speaker users in the US
Speaker 1: favor using the Amazon Echo. The Echo is their most
Speaker 1: popular smart speaker. It's enabled with Alexa. Alexa is basically
Speaker 1: the technology that makes Amazon's smart speakers work. Alexa is
Speaker 1: a virtual assistant cloud technology that is able to learn
Speaker 1: things as you use it in a more detailed way
Speaker 1: of speaking, Alexa is a voice activated user interface that
Speaker 1: you uses a combination of machine learning and artificial intelligence.
Speaker 1: To function. It all sounds very futuristic, but it's here,
Speaker 1: it's now, lots of people have it now. Personally, I
Speaker 1: can be a bit of a luddy and I do
Speaker 1: not understand why anyone would want such a device in
Speaker 1: their house. However, as I just said that many many
Speaker 1: people do, this is helping Alexa learn, yeah, literally learn.
Speaker 1: The more commands Alexa receives, the more Alexa develops. In fact,
Speaker 1: Alexa has learned one hundred thousand new skills since the
Speaker 1: technology was first launched in November. So to sum up,
Speaker 1: through the Amazon Echo and its utilization of Alexa, Amazon
Speaker 1: has a reach into hundreds of millions of homes across
Speaker 1: the world. So you'd really hope, for the sake of
Speaker 1: personal autonomy and privacy that they're not listening into your
Speaker 1: conversations through the smart speakers. Right Well, in t nineteen,
Speaker 1: it emerged that Amazon employees had been listening to voice
Speaker 1: recordings captured via the Echo in consumers homes and offices.
Speaker 1: This wasn't a couple of rogue employees either, No, Amazon
Speaker 1: literally hired thousands of people to do this. The job
Speaker 1: was to not only listen to what you're saying, but
Speaker 1: to also transcribe and annotate it. They would then feed
Speaker 1: it back into the software with the aim of apparently
Speaker 1: helping Alexa better understand voice commands. Of course, this raises
Speaker 1: extremely serious questions about citizens personal privacy. But it gets
Speaker 1: even worse. Reported by Forbes, the people tasked with listening
Speaker 1: to your conversations quote required to record the data, whether
Speaker 1: the device has been activated on purpose or not end quote.
Speaker 1: So basically, they can listen into your conversation even if
Speaker 1: you don't want them to. So by buying an Amazon Echo,
Speaker 1: you've essentially invited an employee of Amazon to listen into
Speaker 1: your private conversations, whether you've given Alexa command or not.
Speaker 1: If Big Brother is always watching, it's clear now that
Speaker 1: Amazon is always listening, that is, if you've got one
Speaker 1: of these smart speakers in your home. Now, apparently, if
Speaker 1: the people hired to listen, in record, and annotate conversations
Speaker 1: in your home via the Amazon Echo here private data
Speaker 1: such as your bank details, they're told to just mark
Speaker 1: it down as critical data and move on. Let's hope
Speaker 1: every single one of the thousands of people Amazon employed
Speaker 1: to do this honest and didn't steal anyone's details. Now,
Speaker 1: according to this Forbes article. One of the darker elements
Speaker 1: to this situation is that two workers employed to log
Speaker 1: the conversations thought they heard a sexual assault. When they
Speaker 1: reported it to their superiors, Amazon ironically enough, told them
Speaker 1: it's not their job to interfere. So Amazon will listening
Speaker 1: to your conversations to improve their software data. But if
Speaker 1: they hear someone being sexually assaulted, they don't want to
Speaker 1: do anything about it, according to this article. Now, unfortunately
Speaker 1: it doesn't stop. They're not at all. Let's talk about Ring.
Speaker 1: Ring is a home security company owned by Amazon. They
Speaker 1: bought it in eighteen for one billion dollars and now
Speaker 1: millions of people across the world used the technology. Ring
Speaker 1: provides a line of WiFi connected security cameras for your home.
Speaker 1: You've likely seen footage of Ring doorbell security systems online.
Speaker 1: Is basically a little camera in the doorbell or wherever
Speaker 1: they put it in their house that allows the homeowner
Speaker 1: to see what's going on outside before they open the
Speaker 1: door or inside, for example, if they want to keep
Speaker 1: an eye on their kids as they're plane. Through the wifire,
Speaker 1: you can have Rings set up on your phone or
Speaker 1: your tablet or your laptop or wherever it's not a
Speaker 1: bad idea, but they have been at several problems with
Speaker 1: Amazon's Ring, so let's start with the hackers. This is
Speaker 1: particularly dark. It was reported by journalists Joseph Cox and
Speaker 1: some month of Cole that hackers had built themselves a
Speaker 1: dedicated software for hacking into Amazon's Ring security cameras. It
Speaker 1: becomes clear how funked up this is when looking at
Speaker 1: a story from Mississippi in the US, where it was
Speaker 1: discovered that hackers had managed to get into a ring
Speaker 1: security camera placed in the bedroom of three young girls,
Speaker 1: one of them was just eight years old. Hacker managed
Speaker 1: to take control of the ring security camera, playing music
Speaker 1: through its speaker as the young girls played in their room.
Speaker 1: Daker was watching them the whole time. Dakker then played
Speaker 1: the song Tiptoe through the Tulips, and when one of
Speaker 1: the young girls asked who was there, the hacker replied,
Speaker 1: it's Santa, it's your best friend. Here's the actual recording
Speaker 1: of these hackers interfering with the Ring camera in the
Speaker 1: room of these young girls. I'm your best friend. I'm
Speaker 1: sand a clause. I don't you want to be my
Speaker 1: best friend? You can mess up your room, you can
Speaker 1: break your TV. You can do whatever you want. In
Speaker 1: another incident of the same year, a hacker took control
Speaker 1: of a RING security camera in Florida and began screaming
Speaker 1: racist comments at a family for up to three minutes
Speaker 1: before they were forced to pull the batteries out of
Speaker 1: the Ring unit. So why was this happening, Well, essentially,
Speaker 1: Amazon's Ring wasn't requiring its users to choose two step
Speaker 1: verification by default. With something as delicate as in home
Speaker 1: security cameras, this should have been a standard requirement for
Speaker 1: all users, because without the two steps, it was a
Speaker 1: lot easier for hackers to get into their system. In fact,
Speaker 1: reporters Joseph Cox and Samantha Cole found that hackers were
Speaker 1: building and sharing programs to access RING cameras on criminal forums.
Speaker 1: This of course sets a very dark precedent. If that
Speaker 1: wasn't bad enough, though, it was later discovered that Ring's
Speaker 1: own employees had been improperly accessing Ring users video data.
Speaker 1: Amazon's Ring employees were spying on customers themselves. It was
Speaker 1: discovered that four of Amazon's Ring employees had been fired
Speaker 1: after abusing their position. They had watched footage from Ring
Speaker 1: security cameras without the customer's knowledge or permission. This all
Speaker 1: came out when Amazon Device President of Public Policy Brian
Speaker 1: Huesman answered U S Senators in a letter after they
Speaker 1: had written to Amazon expressing safety concerns about RING devices
Speaker 1: in November twenty nineteen. In the response letter from Amazon
Speaker 1: obtained by Motherboard, the question and answer is as follows
Speaker 1: quote question to your knowledge have there been any documented
Speaker 1: instances of this access being abused? Answer? Over the last
Speaker 1: four years, RING has received four complaints or inquiries regarding
Speaker 1: a team member's access to RING video data. Although each
Speaker 1: of the individuals involved in these incidents was authorized to
Speaker 1: view video data, the attempted access to that data exceeded
Speaker 1: what was necessary for their job functions. In each instance,
Speaker 1: one Ring was made aware of the alleged conduct, RING
Speaker 1: promptly investigated the incident, and, after determining that the individual
Speaker 1: violated company policy, terminated the individual. In addition to taking
Speaker 1: swift action to investigate and take appropriate disciplinary action in
Speaker 1: each of these cases, RING has taken multiple actions to
Speaker 1: limit such data access to a smaller number of team members.
Speaker 1: RING periodically reviews the access privileges it grants to its
Speaker 1: team members to verify that they have a continued need
Speaker 1: for access to customer information for the purpose of maintaining
Speaker 1: and improving the customer experience end quote. So effectively, Yes,
Speaker 1: Amazon has found several cases of Ring employees literally spying
Speaker 1: on their customers. Now you might say, oh, well, this
Speaker 1: is only four employees. Well, I would argue that this
Speaker 1: is only four employees that got caught. Amazon's Ring has
Speaker 1: clearly been sloppy with its security see both externally and
Speaker 1: internally reported by The intercept In. Sources inside Ring said
Speaker 1: that they had provided their research and development team in
Speaker 1: Ukraine unfettered access to quote a folder on Amazon's S
Speaker 1: three cloud storage service that contained every video created by
Speaker 1: every Ring camera around the world end quote. Not only this,
Speaker 1: at the time, the video files were left unencrypted, anyone
Speaker 1: from the team could download someone's sensitive security camera footage
Speaker 1: with the click of a button. The source also said,
Speaker 1: quote Ring unnecessarily provided executives and engineers in the US
Speaker 1: with highly privileged access to the company's technical support video portal,
Speaker 1: allowing unfiltered, round the clock live feeds from some customer cameras,
Speaker 1: regardless of whether they needed access to this extremely sensitive
Speaker 1: data to do their jobs. End quote. Imagine that people
Speaker 1: are Amazon's Ring company able to look into your home
Speaker 1: at seven on a live feed whenever they want to.
Speaker 1: That sounds like spying to me, even if there's no
Speaker 1: intention of doing anything bad behind that they shouldn't have
Speaker 1: had the access. Now. Whilst Ring pointed out to US
Speaker 1: senators that for employees in Ukraine had been caught and
Speaker 1: fired for spying on customers, it seems, at least according
Speaker 1: to the source, that they failed to mention how these
Speaker 1: employees were able to do so. That is rings sloppy
Speaker 1: internal security when it comes to allowing workers access to
Speaker 1: Ring security video. So there's the issues with Amazon's Echo
Speaker 1: smart speakers and the issues with Amazon's Ring home security devices.
Speaker 1: After all that it might allow you to discover the
Speaker 1: Amazon is now making little robots for your house, they too,
Speaker 1: have already raised serious privacy concerns. Astro join me on
Speaker 1: stage today. I'm full to introduce you to a new
Speaker 1: kind of household robot that integrates Alexa advanced hardware, software,
Speaker 1: computer vision, and AI in a brand new way. And
Speaker 1: it's a beautiful illustration of how ambient computing can improve
Speaker 1: customers lives in a way that traditional consumer electronics just
Speaker 1: kept if you didn't know. Amazon's Astro is a new
Speaker 1: three wheeled little robot that can autonomously drive around your home.
Speaker 1: Is packed with cameras and has a little screen on
Speaker 1: the front with two eyes. It's meant to be cute,
Speaker 1: but honestly, it looks a little bit creepy. The idea
Speaker 1: behind Astro is that it will map the layout of
Speaker 1: your home and act as a little robot butler, so
Speaker 1: long as everything in your house is hooked up to
Speaker 1: the same system as Astros Amazon's. Is this about Astro quote?
Speaker 1: Astro is a household robot for home monitoring with Alexa.
Speaker 1: When you're away, use the Astro app to see a
Speaker 1: live view of your home, check in on specific rooms
Speaker 1: and viewpoints, and get activity alerts. When you're home, Astro
Speaker 1: can follow you from room to room, playing your favorite music,
Speaker 1: podcasts or shows, and find you to deliver calls, reminders, alarms,
Speaker 1: and timers set with Alexa. End quote. Honestly, it sounds
Speaker 1: fucking horrible, but that's Astro. So. Astro is known internally
Speaker 1: at Amazon as Vesta and Astro Slash. Vesta has another
Speaker 1: purpose that they don't tell you about in that advert.
Speaker 1: Running surveillance on customers. Have a listen to this internal
Speaker 1: training video for Astro slash VESTA. Don't ask us where
Speaker 1: we got this, just have a listen to what they're
Speaker 1: saying the donation. Start following that Anne stranger and keep
Speaker 1: following under the stranger goes out of the field of you.
Speaker 1: As soon as the person goes out of field of you,
Speaker 1: it will start investigation. That is, it will go and
Speaker 1: check in each scampaigns that is created. This investigation. Unknown
Speaker 1: investigation or non person investigation will happen only after reaching
Speaker 1: to the first scanpoint. This will not happen immediately. And
Speaker 1: regarding the non person investigation, the patrol should start as
Speaker 1: soon as it sees the non person in the field
Speaker 1: of you, and immediately second later the person leaves from
Speaker 1: the field of you, the patrol will start automatically. I mean,
Speaker 1: when the investor is following an unknown person, then a
Speaker 1: non person is introduced into the field of you, the
Speaker 1: patrol or investigation immediately stops. You know, that was a
Speaker 1: little bit hard to understand due to the start, but
Speaker 1: that's we got it. But basically she is explaining how
Speaker 1: Astro can run an investigation patrol. If a stranger quote,
Speaker 1: stranger is in the house, and then Astro can hide
Speaker 1: that activity from the non users at will if they
Speaker 1: enter astros field of vision. So basically running about the
Speaker 1: house doing a little investigation on this stranger. Then the
Speaker 1: owner walks interview and quickly Astro stops it. I don't
Speaker 1: know about you, but along with several other aspects of
Speaker 1: Astro that will hear about, that seems quite creepy to me.
Speaker 1: To get a better understanding of what Amazon is up
Speaker 1: to with their Astro robot, I spoke to Matthew Goalt.
Speaker 1: He's a staff reporter at Motherboard and the host of
Speaker 1: their cyber podcast. He's also the one that first found
Speaker 1: out about the surveillance situation with Astro. So the pitch
Speaker 1: for investor or Astro as it's known now is that
Speaker 1: it's basically like a tablet on wheels with Alexa software
Speaker 1: built in and for a customer gets a cute little
Speaker 1: Wally style thing the roll around your house, let you
Speaker 1: buy stuff on Amazon, and it integrates into the rest
Speaker 1: of the Amazon ecosystem into your home, meaning it can
Speaker 1: communicate with ring cameras. Uh, you know, your Echo, your
Speaker 1: Alexa and and if you have one an Amazon powered
Speaker 1: security system. So the pitch and the way it's described
Speaker 1: internally or kind of two different things. Um, the marketing says,
Speaker 1: a clever little robot that learns from you and will
Speaker 1: help you in your day to day life. So the
Speaker 1: internal documentation kind of shows that Astro is a robot
Speaker 1: that's designed to slowly move through your home, learn all
Speaker 1: of its nooks and crannies, monitor to the behavior of
Speaker 1: its inhabitants, and it literally will follow people around the house,
Speaker 1: recording what they say and do and attempting to integrate
Speaker 1: that data into a customer profile of the home. It
Speaker 1: also has facial recognition software that the people working on
Speaker 1: the device said doesn't work very well. So when you
Speaker 1: buy this thing, you're supposed to get everyone in the
Speaker 1: family together, you hunker down in front of it, and
Speaker 1: you register your face. Um. This is one of the
Speaker 1: things that Astro does is perk up when it meets
Speaker 1: someone in the home who isn't supposed to be there.
Speaker 1: So if you know, ostensibly if you have an intruder,
Speaker 1: it will follow them around, record what they're saying and
Speaker 1: doing stot you know, for someone to view later, and
Speaker 1: if certain conditions are met, alert the authorities. What those
Speaker 1: conditions are aren't exactly clear, but the the the idea
Speaker 1: is that if they are stealing something or making certain
Speaker 1: kinds of loud noise like say the shattering of glass,
Speaker 1: or if or if Astro sees a fire set, it
Speaker 1: will then contact the relevant authorities. Now, I know you
Speaker 1: might be thinking at this stage, well, that doesn't sound
Speaker 1: that bad. Yeah, it's mapping out my whole house, reading
Speaker 1: people's faces, etcetera. But if somebody bursts into my house
Speaker 1: and I'm not there, this little robot thing is going
Speaker 1: to call the police. Well, listen on, because it's not
Speaker 1: that simple. And at the end of this you can
Speaker 1: decide if you think the negatives outweigh the positives. But
Speaker 1: the people we talked to who had worked on this
Speaker 1: thing where we're not happy with the device, Um, we
Speaker 1: talked to several people. Every single one of them kind
Speaker 1: of said the same thing that they thought that this
Speaker 1: was terrible. They were horrified by the privacy implications of it,
Speaker 1: and that generally just didn't work very well. Astro seems
Speaker 1: kind of bad at everything that it does. Um, this
Speaker 1: is one of my favorite quotes. Astro is terrible and
Speaker 1: will almost certainly throw itself down a flight of stairs
Speaker 1: if presented the opportunity, and will note that every single
Speaker 1: person we talked to mentioned that stairs were a problem
Speaker 1: for Astro does not know how to handle them. Quote
Speaker 1: the person detection is unreliable at best, making the in
Speaker 1: home security proposition laughable. So drilling down, how does Astro
Speaker 1: collect data on its customers? So, Astro is another in
Speaker 1: a long line of data gathering operations run by Amazon. Basically,
Speaker 1: every interaction anyone has with Amazon, whether through using an
Speaker 1: Echo Dot to order cheese Whiz or rewatching X files
Speaker 1: for the five time on Prime Video, that becomes a
Speaker 1: data point and Amazon's like huge aws stores. Um So,
Speaker 1: if you're read a book on good Reads, or you
Speaker 1: highlight a passage in a Game of Thrones novel on
Speaker 1: your kindle, or you leave a one star review for
Speaker 1: dish soap on Amazon, the site learns all of that. Ostensibly,
Speaker 1: it uses this data to better manage the customer experience.
Speaker 1: You might start seeing books similar to the one you
Speaker 1: rated highly, start getting ads for something that was mentioned
Speaker 1: in that passage that you highlighted. Uh, and you'll probably
Speaker 1: never see dish soap that you rated at one star
Speaker 1: ever again, Um, and a lot of people love this.
Speaker 1: They love the way that interacting with Amazon and its
Speaker 1: systems allows you know, the site to learn about you
Speaker 1: as a customer. The argument is that it makes life easier,
Speaker 1: and that's kind of the tradeoff, right, You're sacrificing a
Speaker 1: little bit of privacy for convenience. But the thing is,
Speaker 1: I think a lot of what Amazon does, and a
Speaker 1: lot of other people think that what Amazon does h
Speaker 1: rises to the level of spying. And I think Astro
Speaker 1: is a really good way to kind of taught, like
Speaker 1: have that conversation. Um, there's stuff that it does that
Speaker 1: just massive, massive, massive privacy concerns. And so if you
Speaker 1: think about Astro as like a camera and a recorder
Speaker 1: on wheels that is feeding information back to Amazon, Well,
Speaker 1: who is looking at that information and why are they
Speaker 1: looking at that information? Is there any kind of precedent
Speaker 1: set in Amazon as a company that can tell us
Speaker 1: about how they're going to use that information going forward?
Speaker 1: At this point in the episode, because of what we
Speaker 1: spoke about earlier, we know that there is a precedent
Speaker 1: and that the people that get hold of this information
Speaker 1: Amazon continuously disrespecting people's privacy is likely that the same
Speaker 1: thing will happen with Astro um. And this is really
Speaker 1: important because I think there's this big misunderstanding of Amazon.
Speaker 1: When we start talking about its power and about breaking
Speaker 1: it up and about whether or not it's some monopoly,
Speaker 1: people are just like, well, it's just a website that
Speaker 1: sells stuff that's really not true anymore. It also sells
Speaker 1: a lot of surveillance tech, you know, like this little
Speaker 1: astro robot. It's runs aws. It's the biggest data form
Speaker 1: on the planet. UM. A lot of the Internet is
Speaker 1: now filtered or stored on their cloud servers, and that's
Speaker 1: a huge single point of failure in Amazon is storing
Speaker 1: a lot of audio and video fed to it by
Speaker 1: its customers through the cameras and echo dots and little
Speaker 1: astros that are it's selling. If that wasn't bad enough,
Speaker 1: listen to this extra detail a few Goats tells us
Speaker 1: about the ring Comeras we spoke about the stuff of
Speaker 1: the episode, Amazon has a lot of deals with various
Speaker 1: law enforcement agencies across the country that gives them carte
Speaker 1: blanche access to these ring cameras. Um. There's really good
Speaker 1: investigations in pieces in Motherboard and then also from the
Speaker 1: Electronic Frontier Foundation that have shown that Amazon routinely gives
Speaker 1: cops access to these things. Um. One example, in San
Speaker 1: Francisco in twenty nineteen, cops were given access to ring
Speaker 1: camera footage so they could watch protests. And this is
Speaker 1: not something that they go and they check with Hey,
Speaker 1: can we uh, can we use your ring camera? See
Speaker 1: what the footage is like. No, Amazon just hands it over. UM.
Speaker 1: So you're when you're installing one of these things in
Speaker 1: your home, you're becoming part of a vast surveillance network
Speaker 1: and you don't have any control over where that data goes. Uh.
Speaker 1: There's a town in California that partnered with RING to
Speaker 1: give away free cameras to anyone who witnessed a neighbor
Speaker 1: committing a crime and then promised to testify against them
Speaker 1: in court, you know, incentivizing people to rat out their neighbors.
Speaker 1: In an incident in Washington State, a RING user posted
Speaker 1: footage of someone on their porch. Sheriff later tracked down
Speaker 1: the guy and then they got into a confrontation they
Speaker 1: killed him. The woman has said repeatedly after the fact
Speaker 1: that she regrets posting the footage online, and she feels
Speaker 1: that her her sharing the ring recording directly led to
Speaker 1: the man's death. UM. And it's one of these things
Speaker 1: where it was obviously a guy that was in distress
Speaker 1: and in need of like a mental health check um.
Speaker 1: And he died because of an interaction with the police
Speaker 1: and because someone saw him on a ring camera. Now,
Speaker 1: Amazon can't always control who gets access, and it can't
Speaker 1: protect you from its own employees. UM. Their devices for spine,
Speaker 1: even if ostensibly they're supposed to be used to make
Speaker 1: our lives more convenient and keep people safe. And at
Speaker 1: the end of the day, it's a camera or recorder
Speaker 1: and you don't have control over what's done with the
Speaker 1: data once it hits Amazon servers. It's one thing to
Speaker 1: have like a closed circuit television system set up in
Speaker 1: your home where you are the only one that has
Speaker 1: access to the footage. But when you get integrated into
Speaker 1: Amazon's services like this, you're you're you're inviting this huge
Speaker 1: company to paw through all of your stuff and look
Speaker 1: through it all. And you know, here we have Astro,
Speaker 1: this little device that that moves around your house and
Speaker 1: records even more information. So Amazon has been caught spying
Speaker 1: on its customers several times. How is the spying via
Speaker 1: Astro unique? I would say the spying the astro is
Speaker 1: unique because it's ambulatory. This thing moves around your house.
Speaker 1: It has your faces, It has the faces of you
Speaker 1: and everyone in your home stored in side of it,
Speaker 1: and it's making judgment calls about who should and shouldn't
Speaker 1: be there. And the people who have worked on this
Speaker 1: thing tell us it's not good at making those judgment calls. UM.
Speaker 1: The facial recognition software is built on shaky foundation UM,
Speaker 1: and trying to integrate into a thousand dollar a little
Speaker 1: robot that's going to move around your house is asking
Speaker 1: for a disaster. UM. You know, it's one thing to
Speaker 1: have the ring camera pointed outside your front door, or
Speaker 1: an Alexa that listens to everything inside your home. It's
Speaker 1: quite another to have a little device that moves around,
Speaker 1: recording audio and video and creating a floor plan in
Speaker 1: its memory. So this is another one of the really
Speaker 1: interesting unique features UM of Astro that has kind of
Speaker 1: talked about more in the design documents than it is
Speaker 1: in the marketing. UM. It learns your floor plan, it
Speaker 1: moves around your home, It finds all the nukes and crannies.
Speaker 1: It's builds a rendering of your house in its memory. Uh.
Speaker 1: It also monitors the foot traffic of everyone in the
Speaker 1: house and learns what the hotspots are. According to the
Speaker 1: design documents we looked at, astro nos say that at
Speaker 1: three fifteen, the kids get home from school and the
Speaker 1: entrance to the house becomes a traffic hot spot, so
Speaker 1: it knows that it should avoid that. Um, it's monitoring,
Speaker 1: it's moving around the house except when it's charging, recording
Speaker 1: audio and video. Um, it's moving around on its own
Speaker 1: and making explicit maps of your residence. And we already
Speaker 1: know that hackers have been able to get access to
Speaker 1: Amazon servers before. Just like this is all a recipe
Speaker 1: for disaster, recipe for disaster. So after all that, it's
Speaker 1: up to you to decide. Is Amazon spying on us? Personally?
Speaker 1: I think yes, but your thoughts are yours. The Looking
Speaker 1: through all of this, though, it feels to me that
Speaker 1: Amazon is basically tricking us, consciously or unconsciously into consuming
Speaker 1: more and more trendy gadgets that actually all up as
Speaker 1: surveillance systems. Access is given to the police at the
Speaker 1: drop of a hat without your permission. Access has been
Speaker 1: stolen quite easily by hackers, and access has been given
Speaker 1: willingly to employees working at Amazon's tech security divisions. If
Speaker 1: you're using these products, all of the data, video, images,
Speaker 1: and voice recordings that they collect all stored in Amazon's
Speaker 1: Big Cloud. Up they hearing all of this, does that
Speaker 1: make you feel safe? In the next episode of Megacorp,
Speaker 1: will be looking into Amazon's connections to intelligence agencies across
Speaker 1: the world, including the CIA and m I six. Megacorp
Speaker 1: is made by my production company H eleven for Cool
Speaker 1: Zone Media. It's written, researched, and produced by myself, Jake Hanrahan.
Speaker 1: It was also produced by Sophie Lichtman. Music is by
Speaker 1: Some Black, graphics by Adam Doyle and sound engineering by
Speaker 1: Splicing Block. If you want to get in touch, follow
Speaker 1: me on social media at Jake Underscore Hanrahan. That's h
Speaker 1: A N A h A N