Got Chrome? Google Just Silently Downloaded This Onto Your Computer

[Suzanimal]

“Don’t Be Evil” – Google

On June 17th, Google did not announce (the news broke) that the DARPA affiliated corporation has been silently downloading audio listeners onto every computer that has Chrome.

This effectively means that Google sees your privacy as piddly-squat, which does not necessarily come off as a surprise, when one considers Google’s censorship of We Are Change – this very organization as nothing. The website Private Internet Access‘s Rick Falkvinge reported how he came to understand this new policy:

“It looked like just another bug report. “When I start Chromium, it downloads something.” Followed by strange status information that notably included the lines “Microphone: Yes” and “Audio Capture Allowed: Yes”.

Without consent, Google’s code had downloaded a black box of code that – according to itself – had turned on the microphone and was actively listening to your room.”

Without going into detail, Falkvinge describes the nature of open-sourced/free-software and how it relies on transparency and the innovation of many software programmers before being finished as a final product. The transparency allows the user to know that the open-sourced software truly does what it claims to do. Chromium, the open-source version of Google Chrome is supposed to operate the same way. Only Google abused the nature of open-sourced transparency, and by-passed the process that would have prevented this from happening.

Google rationalized that enabling the ability to be eavesdropped via your personal computer was well worth it, because now “Ok, Google” works! Now when you say certain words, Chrome begins searching preliminaries – is it truly worth losing the stability of your privacy though? Obviously, it is Google’s servers that respond to what is being said along with your computer. So a computer black-box was installed, hooked onto a private corporation’s server and now has the ability to eavesdrop on you and Google had no intention to let anyone know about it!

Eventually Google did respond to the accusation, in which Falkvinge “paraphrased”:

“1) Yes, we’re downloading and installing a wiretapping black-box to your computer. But we’re not actually activating it. We did take advantage of our position as trusted upstream to stealth-insert code into open-source software that installed this black box onto millions of computers, but we would never abuse the same trust in the same way to insert code that activates the eavesdropping-blackbox we already downloaded and installed onto your computer without your consent or knowledge. You can look at the code as it looks right now to see that the code doesn’t do this right now.

2) Yes, Chromium is bypassing the entire source code auditing process by downloading a pre-built black box onto people’s computers. But that’s not something we care about, really. We’re concerned with building Google Chrome, the product from Google. As part of that, we provide the source code for others to package if they like. Anybody who uses our code for their own purpose takes responsibility for it. When this happens in a Debian installation, it is not Google Chrome’s behavior, this is Debian Chromium’s behavior. It’s Debian’s responsibility entirely.

3) Yes, we deliberately hid this listening module from the users, but that’s because we consider this behavior to be part of the basic Google Chrome experience. We don’t want to show all modules that we install ourselves.”

...

http://wearechange.org/got-chrome-go...your-computer/

[GunnyFreedom]

Sounds like someone opened up way too big of a rat-hole in order to make “OK Google” work, and someone caught them at it. They will probably shrink the hole back down to OK Google size, but there will be a lot lest trust going forward.

[angelatc]

Reading Google's response, and not the conspiracy theorist's interpretation of this, it's related to the Google Voice Search function. It is not activated unless you opt in to that.

I think there are a number of separate issues here so I'll address each one.

* 1. Hotword activates / records audio without asking for user permission.

First and foremost, while we do download the hotword module on startup, we *do not* activate it unless you opt in to hotwording. If you go into "chrome://settings", you will see a checkbox "Enable "Ok Google" to start a voice search". This should be unchecked by default, and if you do not check it, the hotword module will not be started.

You don't have to take my word for it. Starting and stopping the hotword module is controlled by some open source code in Chromium itself [3], so while you cannot see the code inside the module, you can trust that it is not actually going to run unless you opt in.

As for Chromium, it's not a Google product and they've never claimed to support it.

[CPUd]

Yeah, I stopped reading at "Chromium". Should have stopped at "Google’s censorship of We Are Change"

[presence]

I'm already a firefox user. This is pretty sketch.

[acptulsa]

Reading Google's response, and not the conspiracy theorist's interpretation of this, it's related to the Google Voice Search function. It is not activated unless you opt in to that.

'We just installed a back door in your bank vault that leads out into the alley. It's a wood door with a Kwikset lock. But it's locked! We promise we left it locked!

[Ronin Truth]

'We just installed a back door in your bank vault that leads out into the alley. It's a wood door with a Kwikset lock. But it's locked! We promise we left it locked!

And you now have SOME of the keys.

[nayjevin]

Yeah, I stopped reading at "Chromium". Should have stopped at "Google’s censorship of We Are Change"

Google is not the reason that there is no such thing as privacy.

[fisharmor]

I stopped paying attention to these claims the first time Google Maps told me there was slow traffic on a totally clear road.
I got close to the point of the "traffic jam" and saw that there was a regularly changing light there. Every other car got caught at a red light.

Then I recognized that Google isn't asking for your location information because they want to funnel it all to the NSA. They ask you to supply your location information so they can make the traffic system work. Because 8-10 location-reporting Google users had been caught by that light recently, the map was showing slow traffic.

The object of this exercise should not be to prevent people getting data on you. That's simply unavoidable. The object should be stopping them from using the data in an inappropriate way.

Considering we live in a time when a cop can strangle you to death on the sidewalk in broad daylight without so much as a warrant, that the whole thing can be captured on video, and that absolutely nothing will happen to the cop who did it, I think bitching about Google trying to give you useful services you didn't ask for is a useless endeavor. Quit grousing about first world problems when you have plenty of third world problems happening right next door to you.

[Anti Federalist]

Google is not the reason that there is no such thing as privacy.

Yes, it is.

One of them anyway.

Everybody has their own pet technology, or app, or appliance or government program that chips away their privacy, but they dismiss theirs as being "no big deal" and "not part of the problem".

And bar by electronic bar, the silicon prison was built.

[Anti Federalist]

I disagree.

We built this technological terror, these silicon chains, and of our free will we wore them.

Why is anybody acting surprised then, when government starts acting like the jailers they truly are.

I stopped paying attention to these claims the first time Google Maps told me there was slow traffic on a totally clear road.
I got close to the point of the "traffic jam" and saw that there was a regularly changing light there. Every other car got caught at a red light.

Then I recognized that Google isn't asking for your location information because they want to funnel it all to the NSA. They ask you to supply your location information so they can make the traffic system work. Because 8-10 location-reporting Google users had been caught by that light recently, the map was showing slow traffic.

The object of this exercise should not be to prevent people getting data on you. That's simply unavoidable. The object should be stopping them from using the data in an inappropriate way.

Considering we live in a time when a cop can strangle you to death on the sidewalk in broad daylight without so much as a warrant, that the whole thing can be captured on video, and that absolutely nothing will happen to the cop who did it, I think bitching about Google trying to give you useful services you didn't ask for is a useless endeavor. Quit grousing about first world problems when you have plenty of third world problems happening right next door to you.

[nayjevin]

Yes, it is.

One of them anyway.

Everybody has their own pet technology, or app, or appliance or government program that chips away their privacy, but they dismiss theirs as being "no big deal" and "not part of the problem".

And bar by electronic bar, the silicon prison was built.

That's a good point, it's part of the whole. I mean that Google is not unique. If there was no Google the problem wouldn't be any better. I think it would be worse, because I think Google has made a lot of headway in privacy issues and has some extremely privacy driven employees.

It seems anti-capitalism and anti-libertarianism to me to think that technology should somehow be stopped. I wish I grew up before microphones were invented. But that is not reality. As such, I'd rather have everything recorded and under my control, for my own protection. Google provides the technology that makes that possible. It's a terribly stunted world that way, and it sucks. People will have trouble being themselves and sharing intimate moments. It may be extremely emotionally and spiritually damaging forever, or maybe just for the generations that don't grow up with the understanding that everything is recorded. But it is what it is, and Google, though very bad in some obvious ways, is far better than I would have bet the leading corporation would be about privacy issues.

[opal]

When I rebuilt this computer, I intentionally did not install chrome. I use waterfox and/or pale moon. One day, my avast updated itself and chrome rode in for free. I never turn it on but somehow it ends up with a browser "history" and try as I might.. I can't get rid of the damn thing.
I did go to the avast forums and raise hell .. didn't get any responses and I think the post disappeared

[DamianTV]

... and the sheeple will continue to think "oh, thats cool!" while giving up every shred of privacy they have left by which to defend themselves against the abuses of those who have any different opinions.