I wanted to know more about the other sources they burned, because I hadn't heard of additional cases and wondered why they didn't learn from their experience.","title":null,"type":"comment","url":null}],"created_at":"2022-02-17T22:32:25.000Z","created_at_i":1645137145,"id":30379585,"options":[],"parent_id":30378753,"points":null,"story_id":30377058,"text":"Distinction without a difference. "The Intercept employs a journalist who has burnt 3 sources".","title":null,"type":"comment","url":null}],"created_at":"2022-02-17T21:13:09.000Z","created_at_i":1645132389,"id":30378753,"options":[],"parent_id":30378070,"points":null,"story_id":30377058,"text":"This part?
> NSA whistleblower John Kiriakou and Guantanamo Bay detention camp whistleblower Joseph Hickman have both accused the same reporter accused of revealing Winner's identity, Matthew Cole, of playing a role in their exposure, which, in Kiriakou's case, led to his imprisonment.
I don't see where Kiriakou and Hickman were sources to The Intercept.
The [35] links to https://www.peterbcollins.com/2017/06/30/in-depth-interview-... which says:
> In the final 5 minutes of the interview, both men share their stories of being burned by "journalist" Matthew Cole, whose work at ABC compromised Hickman and sent Kiriakou to prison. Cole was involved in the recent episode at The Intercept, where NSA leaker Reality Winner was apprehended after Cole shared her leaked document in an effort to verify it.
The [36] links to https://www.cbc.ca/radio/asithappens/as-it-happens-tuesday-e... with (emphasis mine):
> He later spent two years in prison for disclosing the identity of a fellow CIA officer to then-freelance journalist Matthew Cole, one of four authors of Monday's Intercept report. While Cole did not publish the name, his email exchange with Kiriakou was used as evidence against him.
So while I see Cole burning several sources, I only see The Intercept burning one.","title":null,"type":"comment","url":null}],"created_at":"2022-02-17T20:14:38.000Z","created_at_i":1645128878,"id":30378070,"options":[],"parent_id":30377982,"points":null,"story_id":30377058,"text":"It also lists two other whistle blowers who blame that journalist.","title":null,"type":"comment","url":null}],"created_at":"2022-02-17T20:06:32.000Z","created_at_i":1645128392,"id":30377982,"options":[],"parent_id":30377287,"points":null,"story_id":30377058,"text":"What other sources have they burned? That Wikipedia page only lists Winner.","title":null,"type":"comment","url":null},{"author":"barkingcat","children":[{"author":"skybrian","children":[{"author":"barkingcat","children":[],"created_at":"2022-02-17T20:41:37.000Z","created_at_i":1645130497,"id":30378371,"options":[],"parent_id":30378279,"points":null,"story_id":30377058,"text":"Many reporters use personal recording and pinhole cameras, etc. regardless of what they agree to. tools of the trade.","title":null,"type":"comment","url":null}],"created_at":"2022-02-17T20:33:13.000Z","created_at_i":1645129993,"id":30378279,"options":[],"parent_id":30378112,"points":null,"story_id":30377058,"text":"That's assuming there is a recording. If you meet in person somewhere and agree that they're only allowed to take notes, maybe there wouldn't be one? Or alternately, answer questions in writing and be careful what you say.","title":null,"type":"comment","url":null}],"created_at":"2022-02-17T20:18:34.000Z","created_at_i":1645129114,"id":30378112,"options":[],"parent_id":30377287,"points":null,"story_id":30377058,"text":"isn't this always the case? not every reporter works for the nyt and even then it's super leaky.
if you talk to a reporter, 100% assumption your full name/full transcript/full video recording is going to be out there.
"off the record" never meant anything.","title":null,"type":"comment","url":null},{"author":"pessimizer","children":[],"created_at":"2022-02-17T22:02:29.000Z","created_at_i":1645135349,"id":30379280,"options":[],"parent_id":30377287,"points":null,"story_id":30377058,"text":"A reporter is just some person, and may be a government informant, a corporate spy, or in the case of John Connolly a literal spy for the Church of Scientology.","title":null,"type":"comment","url":null}],"created_at":"2022-02-17T19:13:53.000Z","created_at_i":1645125233,"id":30377287,"options":[],"parent_id":30377058,"points":null,"story_id":30377058,"text":"Just like how The Intercept keeps burning its sources https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Intercept#Reality_Winner_c... you pretty much have to assume any time you talk to a reporter you're like one step removed from talking to a cop. You cannot assume any security competence at all. Putting the source's full first and last name on the recording and then sending it to a third party, sheesh.","title":null,"type":"comment","url":null},{"author":"n8cpdx","children":[{"author":"CasperDern","children":[],"created_at":"2022-02-17T20:09:11.000Z","created_at_i":1645128551,"id":30378006,"options":[],"parent_id":30377890,"points":null,"story_id":30377058,"text":"Silero[0] seems to have decent performance (although you will have to some minimal coding). I believe there are better ones if you're willing to tinker a bit more.
[0]: https://github.com/snakers4/silero-models","title":null,"type":"comment","url":null},{"author":"discreditable","children":[],"created_at":"2022-02-17T20:13:22.000Z","created_at_i":1645128802,"id":30378056,"options":[],"parent_id":30377890,"points":null,"story_id":30377058,"text":"The Recorder app on Pixel phones offers on-device transcription. I'm not sure if it's available on other phones though.","title":null,"type":"comment","url":null},{"author":"ghaff","children":[{"author":"yorwba","children":[{"author":"ghaff","children":[],"created_at":"2022-02-17T20:37:11.000Z","created_at_i":1645130231,"id":30378333,"options":[],"parent_id":30378188,"points":null,"story_id":30377058,"text":"No but the parent's second line seemed to be a complaint about Otter specifically. I would probably trust Amazon to have good privacy practices generally though there's still some sensitivity line beyond which I wouldn't use an online service period even if they seem trustworthy in general.","title":null,"type":"comment","url":null}],"created_at":"2022-02-17T20:26:24.000Z","created_at_i":1645129584,"id":30378188,"options":[],"parent_id":30378150,"points":null,"story_id":30377058,"text":"I don't think Amazon Transcribe works offline.","title":null,"type":"comment","url":null}],"created_at":"2022-02-17T20:23:10.000Z","created_at_i":1645129390,"id":30378150,"options":[],"parent_id":30377890,"points":null,"story_id":30377058,"text":"You can use Amazon Transcribe. The output is just a block of text but that's fine for a lot of interviews you're just going to grab a few sentences from.
There are some various other services along similar lines to Otter.ai but don't remember names off the top of my head.","title":null,"type":"comment","url":null},{"author":"notjulianjaynes","children":[{"author":"habitue","children":[{"author":"kadoban","children":[],"created_at":"2022-02-17T21:39:27.000Z","created_at_i":1645133967,"id":30379033,"options":[],"parent_id":30378629,"points":null,"story_id":30377058,"text":"That analysis would be a lot more compelling if it didn't assume that all 3rd parties are the same.
A 3rd party sending around a sketch apk that calls back to them is _definitely_ going to try to do something bad with it.
Otter is unlikely to do something bad with it (it'd be bad for their business). So you should really compare the odds otter gets hacked vs the odds the apk is compromised.","title":null,"type":"comment","url":null},{"author":"notjulianjaynes","children":[],"created_at":"2022-02-17T23:29:22.000Z","created_at_i":1645140562,"id":30380178,"options":[],"parent_id":30378629,"points":null,"story_id":30377058,"text":"Actually, I still have the bootleg apk installed, because sometimes you've just gotta live a little, right? Also happen to have the Otter app. Just checked netguard and guess which one has connected to the internet 6 times since I last opened it.","title":null,"type":"comment","url":null}],"created_at":"2022-02-17T21:02:44.000Z","created_at_i":1645131764,"id":30378629,"options":[],"parent_id":30378507,"points":null,"story_id":30377058,"text":"> But for privacy or opsec that's probably even worse than a saas option.
Probably not, the attack vector of an apk of dubious provenance is probably that it sends all of your transcriptions to some 3rd party server. There's some non-zero probability that it does that, and it's possible you could run it in a network-less sandbox somehow to mitigate it.
But with the saas service, you know for a fact it's going to a 3rd party server, who can store it for as long as they want. And if they aren't hacked now, they could be in the future.","title":null,"type":"comment","url":null}],"created_at":"2022-02-17T20:54:05.000Z","created_at_i":1645131245,"id":30378507,"options":[],"parent_id":30377890,"points":null,"story_id":30377058,"text":"Pixel phones have a voice recorder that works offline and does this. I've used a bootleg apk I got off xdadevs of it on my samsung phone, and it works well. But for privacy or opsec that's probably even worse than a saas option.
Ostensibly almost all newer/flagship iphone/android devices can do offline speech to text with passable accuracy. On Android it is (I suspect intentionally) nerfed to an accessibility feature called "live transcribe." It transcribes everything star wars style on the screen, but you can't save the audio or the transcription, you have to copy/paste the output which just disappears when you close the app. It's arbitrary and infuriating that it's like this.
I'm generally a "hater" of the cloud, and I have to admit that Otter is very good. I used it speaking with someone using airpods on a shitty internet connection, with no noticeable drop in accuracy. Even spelled uncommon last names correctly.
What I don't get is why none of these free apps can take a pre-recorded audio file as the input. Even for the paid services, this seems to be more limited than using the functionality 'live.' Is there some technical reason for this, or is it a sales department decision?","title":null,"type":"comment","url":null},{"author":"command_tab","children":[],"created_at":"2022-02-17T21:20:50.000Z","created_at_i":1645132850,"id":30378840,"options":[],"parent_id":30377890,"points":null,"story_id":30377058,"text":"I've had great success doing transcription on-prem with Speechmatics: https://www.speechmatics.com They offer both a VM and a Docker image that you can run behind your firewall, and even license offline if you really need to. I use it for generating closed captions of videos, but you could build a transcription tool out of it as well. Their engine's accuracy is the best I've found out there, too, which is a nice bonus.","title":null,"type":"comment","url":null},{"author":"totally_rad","children":[],"created_at":"2022-02-17T21:44:43.000Z","created_at_i":1645134283,"id":30379103,"options":[],"parent_id":30377890,"points":null,"story_id":30377058,"text":"I recently found this new service called revoldiv.com few months back here on HN and I have been using it to transcribe and edit some of my videos. They are based in US and use AI to process their audio and transcripts. I believe the audio and transcripts are deleted once you close out the browser. It\u2019s the only service that I found so far with that level of capability to transcribe/edit for free and seems safe\u2026 at least right now.
https://revoldiv.com/","title":null,"type":"comment","url":null},{"author":"pabs3","children":[],"created_at":"2022-02-18T03:11:42.000Z","created_at_i":1645153902,"id":30381735,"options":[],"parent_id":30377890,"points":null,"story_id":30377058,"text":"I haven't used it, but Coqui might be good:
https://coqui.ai/","title":null,"type":"comment","url":null},{"author":"tasha0663","children":[],"created_at":"2022-02-18T03:28:23.000Z","created_at_i":1645154903,"id":30381826,"options":[],"parent_id":30377890,"points":null,"story_id":30377058,"text":"> something like Otter but offline with tolerable performance?
Shorthand","title":null,"type":"comment","url":null}],"created_at":"2022-02-17T19:58:11.000Z","created_at_i":1645127891,"id":30377890,"options":[],"parent_id":30377058,"points":null,"story_id":30377058,"text":"Does anyone know of something like Otter but offline with tolerable performance?
Otter is the only thing approaching affordable for individuals, but I don\u2019t really trust it given they\u2019re playing fast and loose with user data.","title":null,"type":"comment","url":null},{"author":"carbocation","children":[{"author":"danso","children":[{"author":"carbocation","children":[],"created_at":"2022-02-17T20:14:35.000Z","created_at_i":1645128875,"id":30378069,"options":[],"parent_id":30377988,"points":null,"story_id":30377058,"text":"Confirmed that I am reading poorly\u2014thanks for pointing out this line, I had missed it.
Archive.today link demonstrating that this isn't a stealth edit by Politico: https://archive.is/etLpm","title":null,"type":"comment","url":null}],"created_at":"2022-02-17T20:07:34.000Z","created_at_i":1645128454,"id":30377988,"options":[],"parent_id":30377947,"points":null,"story_id":30377058,"text":"The author does state that they were using Otter \u2014 it\u2019s at the beginning of the anecdote
> The next day, I received an odd note from Otter.ai, the automated transcription app that I had used to record the interview.","title":null,"type":"comment","url":null},{"author":"magicjosh","children":[{"author":"ellen364","children":[{"author":"magicjosh","children":[],"created_at":"2022-02-18T04:19:58.000Z","created_at_i":1645157998,"id":30382101,"options":[],"parent_id":30379367,"points":null,"story_id":30377058,"text":"Agree that returning user information can be delicate. I would think journalists dealing with such a sensitive contact would be more careful, but that's a dangerous assumption. Sure, I can use Tails and Tor, but for someone without a tech background it may be difficult or impossible to use those tools properly. Making privacy-preserving tools and practices the default is way. I appreciate the various guides the EFF puts out on privacy and digital hygiene.","title":null,"type":"comment","url":null}],"created_at":"2022-02-17T22:12:43.000Z","created_at_i":1645135963,"id":30379367,"options":[],"parent_id":30378027,"points":null,"story_id":30377058,"text":"> Did you enter "Mustafa Aksu" as the title of the Otter recording? If so, they just took the text you entered and emailed it to you.
Returning information to users can be a surprisingly delicate matter. E.g. HIV clinics and mental health services (in the UK) are careful about the information they put in appointment reminders. Sure the patient signed up for the appointment, but they don\u2019t necessarily want a voicemail or text message to mention the type of clinic.","title":null,"type":"comment","url":null},{"author":"tasha0663","children":[{"author":"magicjosh","children":[],"created_at":"2022-02-18T04:26:54.000Z","created_at_i":1645158414,"id":30382134,"options":[],"parent_id":30381812,"points":null,"story_id":30377058,"text":"Well said. Exposes their own bad habits and understandings. Wonder if there are nonprofits that offer training for journalists on this stuff.","title":null,"type":"comment","url":null}],"created_at":"2022-02-18T03:25:13.000Z","created_at_i":1645154713,"id":30381812,"options":[],"parent_id":30378027,"points":null,"story_id":30377058,"text":"Yeah, it's worded like he's trying to write some expose about how dangerous otter might be, but really he's just exposing how terribly leaky his own journalistic tradecraft is. I guess I appreciate his unintentional candor? I hope he has less sensitive gigs lined up.","title":null,"type":"comment","url":null}],"created_at":"2022-02-17T20:11:03.000Z","created_at_i":1645128663,"id":30378027,"options":[],"parent_id":30377947,"points":null,"story_id":30377058,"text":"Ya the core of the article is missing a key point.
Did you enter "Mustafa Aksu" as the title of the Otter recording? If so, they just took the text you entered and emailed it to you. Why did you write this sensationalist article?
If they transcribed it and send it to you, maybe there's something here. But expecting Otter to be secure is an entirely different issue. But the article conflates this whole thing about the title with insecurity and it's unclear.
There is certainly an article to be written about the dangers of using Otter. But this stuff about the email and the title is a distraction. It attempts to "storify" something that doesn't need it. Automated recording means sending recordings to the cloud where you don't control them. That's a terrible idea for sensitive content. Full stop. That's the article.
Disclosure: have used Otter, like it, but wary of security issues. Self hosted option sounds good.","title":null,"type":"comment","url":null}],"created_at":"2022-02-17T20:03:58.000Z","created_at_i":1645128238,"id":30377947,"options":[],"parent_id":30377058,"points":null,"story_id":30377058,"text":"Maybe I'm reading this poorly, but it feels very poorly written.
The opening stanzas describe a conversation over Signal, followed by a message from Otter.ai. But there is no initial disclosure that the journalist sent the conversation to Otter. The way the story is written, it sounds like Signal was hacked or his phone was exploited.
Later, he states:
> "Otter said that the fact that Aksu was the focus of the survey was only because I\u2019d entered his name as the recording\u2019s title."
So OK, you submitted a recording to Otter? Why not disclose that you used Otter intentionally:
> Apparently I wasn\u2019t the only Otter user worried about this kind of scrutiny. \u201cThis survey has been discontinued over concerns that some customers (such as yourself) may include personal or sensitive information within the title of the conversation, and including this information within a survey may cause some concern,\u201d Lai said.","title":null,"type":"comment","url":null},{"author":"jamestimmins","children":[{"author":"nshm","children":[{"author":"invalidator","children":[],"created_at":"2022-02-17T21:49:28.000Z","created_at_i":1645134568,"id":30379147,"options":[],"parent_id":30378122,"points":null,"story_id":30377058,"text":"+1 for Vosk. If you want an easy way to get started with it, try mp4grep [1] which is a ready-made program you can unzip and run. To transcribe a whole file, simply:
mp4grep --model ~/apps/mp4grep-0.1.1/model/ --transcribe filename.mp3\n[1] https://github.com/o-oconnell/mp4grep","title":null,"type":"comment","url":null}],"created_at":"2022-02-17T20:19:46.000Z","created_at_i":1645129186,"id":30378122,"options":[],"parent_id":30378038,"points":null,"story_id":30377058,"text":"For offline transcription try Vosk https://github.com/alphacep/vosk-api","title":null,"type":"comment","url":null},{"author":"Spooky23","children":[],"created_at":"2022-02-17T20:20:44.000Z","created_at_i":1645129244,"id":30378129,"options":[],"parent_id":30378038,"points":null,"story_id":30377058,"text":"Dragon can do transcription and works pretty well. It\u2019s like $500.","title":null,"type":"comment","url":null},{"author":"hs86","children":[{"author":"djhn","children":[],"created_at":"2022-02-18T17:47:32.000Z","created_at_i":1645206452,"id":30388775,"options":[],"parent_id":30378262,"points":null,"story_id":30377058,"text":"A somewhat unrelated question: would you happen to know any libraries for autocomplete suggestions based on n-grams from a custom corpus?","title":null,"type":"comment","url":null}],"created_at":"2022-02-17T20:32:05.000Z","created_at_i":1645129925,"id":30378262,"options":[],"parent_id":30378038,"points":null,"story_id":30377058,"text":"If you are looking for a self-hosted Grammarly alternative, LanguageTool [0] might be for you.
I use LTeX [1] for VSCode, which sets up a local LanguageTool server, and its resource usage is quite significant. (I use it together with their n-gram data sets [2])
[0] https://dev.languagetool.org/
[1] https://github.com/valentjn/vscode-ltex
[2] https://dev.languagetool.org/finding-errors-using-n-gram-dat...","title":null,"type":"comment","url":null}],"created_at":"2022-02-17T20:11:34.000Z","created_at_i":1645128694,"id":30378038,"options":[],"parent_id":30377058,"points":null,"story_id":30377058,"text":"Obviously, a lot of companies prefer to host enterprise software on-prem rather than allow them to run in the cloud.
Is anyone aware if there's been a similar movement to create on-prem versions of popular ML-based products? Otter, Grammarly, etc.","title":null,"type":"comment","url":null},{"author":"speedgoose","children":[{"author":"Spooky23","children":[{"author":"Tepix","children":[{"author":"sho_hn","children":[{"author":"danShumway","children":[{"author":"Spooky23","children":[{"author":"danShumway","children":[],"created_at":"2022-02-18T00:33:25.000Z","created_at_i":1645144405,"id":30380801,"options":[],"parent_id":30380344,"points":null,"story_id":30377058,"text":"It's one specific problem with a solution that is invalidated by uploading the recording to a 3rd-party service. E2EE is not the only security measure a journalist should be taking, but it is one, and it is a fairly basic measure that isn't too tough for someone in the field to explain.
The reason why we advise E2EE is to make sure that the recording is only unencrypted and listenable on devices you control, it's not just because we like Signal. Transferring it raw to another service invalidates the point of doing your call over something like Signal in the first place, because the purpose was to not have the recording sitting unencrypted on someone else's servers that you don't own or manage.
My impression is that if a journalist is doing E2EE and then sending the recording off afterwards, they probably don't understand why that advice was given and they probably don't have an understanding of what the risks are we're trying to protect against when we tell them to do remote interviews over an E2EE service. We want journalists to be thinking about their source's privacy on a level beyond "I use Signal because I was told to."
I get what you're saying -- E2EE is not a solution to every problem, and you're right about that, there are other security risks that are in separate categories. But what I'm getting at is not to say that it does solve every problem; just that if a journalist doesn't understand not to send recordings off someplace, to me that indicates a lack of knowledge about other security concepts.","title":null,"type":"comment","url":null}],"created_at":"2022-02-17T23:46:26.000Z","created_at_i":1645141586,"id":30380344,"options":[],"parent_id":30379799,"points":null,"story_id":30377058,"text":"E2EE is irrelevant imo as it solves one specific problem, and many people have a tunnel vision beyond it.
Everyone has a smartphone. I can guarantee that at any scale, there is some nut recording their entire day. I\u2019ve worked at places where that\u2019s a real threat that is difficult to manage.","title":null,"type":"comment","url":null},{"author":"pabs3","children":[],"created_at":"2022-02-18T03:10:15.000Z","created_at_i":1645153815,"id":30381723,"options":[],"parent_id":30379799,"points":null,"story_id":30377058,"text":"The Mozilla DeepSpeech spin-off Coqui has an STT that is locally installable:
https://coqui.ai/","title":null,"type":"comment","url":null}],"created_at":"2022-02-17T22:52:06.000Z","created_at_i":1645138326,"id":30379799,"options":[],"parent_id":30379342,"points":null,"story_id":30377058,"text":"> If there's no safe alternative available in the space Otter is in (and if you need a transcription tool now to be competitive as a journalist, perhaps) it means there's a market for building one.
Right, but in the meantime, if a government is hunting me and a journalist asks me to interview them, I want to know I'm secure. I don't want that to be reliant on whether or not a market I know nothing about exists. Definitely, it looks like there's a need for a safe transcription app for journalists. But that's not a license for them to be dangerous while they're waiting for that product to exist. Journalists have a moral responsibility to keep their sources safe in the world that exists today.
Otherwise, the takeaway seems to be that nobody with really sensitive information or in a vulnerable position should talk to journalists until after the tech industry builds an entirely new product, which probably isn't the outcome that anybody wants.
We need to hammer out some degree of data security best practices that journalists won't break even in the instances where it makes their lives more inconvenient. Ideally, we should try to hammer out best practices that make it possible for a journalist to evaluate whether or not a service is appropriate to use. Otherwise we'll just play this endless game of cat and mouse where someone builds a transcription service that's private, and then another company builds this data-leaking collaboration or markup platform and that hole gets opened... at some point we have to teach journalists that there are certain types of services that they should stay away from unless they meet certain criteria, and it sounds like a lot of journalists don't have a good grasp on how to do that kind of security evaluation.
Certainly, there's at least lack of education here about why we're using E2EE and what specific attacks it guards against if it's not ringing alarm bells with journalists when a service asks them to upload the raw interview to a remote server.","title":null,"type":"comment","url":null},{"author":"Spooky23","children":[],"created_at":"2022-02-17T23:36:22.000Z","created_at_i":1645140982,"id":30380235,"options":[],"parent_id":30379342,"points":null,"story_id":30377058,"text":"That\u2019s a bit much. There are on-device dictation tools and services for transcription. Otter is an excellent tool, of course.
Iirc, Dragon is $500 and human services charge anywhere from $0.25-$7 a page of text depending on the quality level and turnaround time. If you have access to tech people, you could easily and more securely leverage AWS or GCP services as well.
I think it\u2019s appropriate to blast the author as if you\u2019re in the business of interviewing sensitive or high risk sources, you really have no business using something like Otter or Grammarly.","title":null,"type":"comment","url":null}],"created_at":"2022-02-17T22:09:54.000Z","created_at_i":1645135794,"id":30379342,"options":[],"parent_id":30379003,"points":null,"story_id":30377058,"text":"I get lambasting the author, but I think a more useful way to think here: They use Signal because they care (or think they should care) and because it's available. If there's no safe alternative available in the space Otter is in (and if you need a transcription tool now to be competitive as a journalist, perhaps) it means there's a market for building one.
"Safe transcription app for journalists". Go do it.","title":null,"type":"comment","url":null}],"created_at":"2022-02-17T21:37:10.000Z","created_at_i":1645133830,"id":30379003,"options":[],"parent_id":30378174,"points":null,"story_id":30377058,"text":"Yeah, it seems like a big no-no to pretend towards your source that you are using E2E crypto and then to upload it to a 3rd party tagged with his name.
You may have put their lives and the lives of their friends and family at risk.
Next time Phelim Kine asks you for an interview, will you agree?","title":null,"type":"comment","url":null}],"created_at":"2022-02-17T20:25:37.000Z","created_at_i":1645129537,"id":30378174,"options":[],"parent_id":30378093,"points":null,"story_id":30377058,"text":"It\u2019s one thing if you are covering the zoning board. But seems incredibly dumb when you are interviewing someone routinely surveilled by a foreign intelligence service.","title":null,"type":"comment","url":null},{"author":"dogman144","children":[],"created_at":"2022-02-17T21:23:36.000Z","created_at_i":1645133016,"id":30378876,"options":[],"parent_id":30378093,"points":null,"story_id":30377058,"text":"ya exactly haha. exactly.","title":null,"type":"comment","url":null}],"created_at":"2022-02-17T20:16:59.000Z","created_at_i":1645129019,"id":30378093,"options":[],"parent_id":30377058,"points":null,"story_id":30377058,"text":"What's the point of using end to end encrypted messaging apps if you are going to send the recordings in clear text to third party companies ?","title":null,"type":"comment","url":null},{"author":"sam0x17","children":[{"author":"mannykannot","children":[{"author":"sam0x17","children":[{"author":"fjorde","children":[{"author":"sam0x17","children":[],"created_at":"2022-02-17T21:55:58.000Z","created_at_i":1645134958,"id":30379214,"options":[],"parent_id":30378837,"points":null,"story_id":30377058,"text":"Right but my point is there is nothing surprising or groundbreaking about the the fact that the journalist received the survey and that it contained the information that it contained, but media coverage of this is treating it like there was some shocking breach or cooperation with a foreign power when really it's quite a mundane situation by all accounts.
The shocking revelation should be that journalists who normally are so careful they use end-to-end client-side encryption for their communications are using third party transcription services that have full access to their sensitive interviews. That's a faux pas and critical security blunder on the journalist's part, not otter's, though one learning here is maybe otter should consider offering some sort of secure enclave service for situations like this with additional guarantees and client-controlled encryption keys.","title":null,"type":"comment","url":null}],"created_at":"2022-02-17T21:20:46.000Z","created_at_i":1645132846,"id":30378837,"options":[],"parent_id":30378520,"points":null,"story_id":30377058,"text":"Journalists who deal in sensitive material should not trust any of that to any third parties to the greatest extent possible. If I were Chinese intel or the FBI, otter would be one of the richest targets imaginable for some of the most prized information on earth, i.e. high-value intel targets spilling secrets in "full-confidence" and divulging information they might never reveal even in court. otter also transcribes medical/psych convos and legal discussions as well, bringing the sum total of what they could "know" about any human, willing or not, to scary levels.
Journalists who are casual or reckless with this kind of data shouldn't be in the business, and companies that don't make these kinds of risks apparent to their user base, or go to lengths to disguise a clear conflict of interest as bad support should not be in that business either.","title":null,"type":"comment","url":null}],"created_at":"2022-02-17T20:54:42.000Z","created_at_i":1645131282,"id":30378520,"options":[],"parent_id":30378452,"points":null,"story_id":30377058,"text":"Could be something more, but Occam's Razor says it's just support being like wtf is this and dropping the ball in handling the request.
If support at your company got an email saying "omg! sensitive information in our recording is being referenced in this random survey we got from you!" I guarantee 2/3 companies would flub the initial response because the support person doesn't understand the technical side of the issue which is that titles are used in one of the survey templates","title":null,"type":"comment","url":null},{"author":"tedunangst","children":[{"author":"mannykannot","children":[{"author":"tedunangst","children":[{"author":"mannykannot","children":[],"created_at":"2022-02-18T12:00:47.000Z","created_at_i":1645185647,"id":30384631,"options":[],"parent_id":30381668,"points":null,"story_id":30377058,"text":"You wrote, in what is a complete paragraph, '"Not respond to that survey and delete it" is also the ending of a sentence that begins "if you would feel more comfortable, you can".' [my emphasis.]
'Is also' has very different implications than 'could have been'.","title":null,"type":"comment","url":null}],"created_at":"2022-02-18T03:01:01.000Z","created_at_i":1645153261,"id":30381668,"options":[],"parent_id":30381267,"points":null,"story_id":30377058,"text":"Well, that's the point. We don't know the first half of the sentence.","title":null,"type":"comment","url":null}],"created_at":"2022-02-18T01:54:10.000Z","created_at_i":1645149250,"id":30381267,"options":[],"parent_id":30379023,"points":null,"story_id":30377058,"text":"Well, that is interesting - when I access that article through the link above, the phrase "not respond to that survey and delete it" occurs just once, in the passage I quoted in my original post, which does not contain the phrase fragment "if you would feel more comfortable, you can..." - in fact, this phrase does not occur at all.
Where are you getting your information from - is there a link to this correspondence, in the article or elsewhere?","title":null,"type":"comment","url":null}],"created_at":"2022-02-17T21:38:34.000Z","created_at_i":1645133914,"id":30379023,"options":[],"parent_id":30378452,"points":null,"story_id":30377058,"text":"The whole story would be much more clear with a complete email chain. We're given fragments and interpretations, but since the whole episode stems from a misunderstanding, none of it is reliable.
"Not respond to that survey and delete it" is also the ending of a sentence that begins "if you would feel more comfortable, you can".","title":null,"type":"comment","url":null}],"created_at":"2022-02-17T20:48:50.000Z","created_at_i":1645130930,"id":30378452,"options":[],"parent_id":30378400,"points":null,"story_id":30377058,"text":""An initial confirmation that the survey was legitimate was followed by a denial from the same Otter representative, laced with a warning that I \u201cnot respond to that survey and delete it.\u201d My communications with Otter were all restricted to email and were sporadic, often confusing and contradictory."
That's where the story rises above the mundane.","title":null,"type":"comment","url":null}],"created_at":"2022-02-17T20:44:21.000Z","created_at_i":1645130661,"id":30378400,"options":[],"parent_id":30377058,"points":null,"story_id":30377058,"text":"The article was very sensationalist -- the survey was merely taking the title of the recording and trying to collect data on how users were using the platform. Normally I side against companies in these situation but there is literally no appearance of foul play or spookiness on otter's part -- most unsurprising thing ever really just a reporter that sees a survey asking about a title that he wrote himself and getting spooked because apparently even in 2022 tech is hard to grok for normies.","title":null,"type":"comment","url":null},{"author":"jdlshore","children":[{"author":"sho_hn","children":[{"author":"gowld","children":[{"author":"sho_hn","children":[{"author":"chrisweekly","children":[{"author":"sho_hn","children":[],"created_at":"2022-02-18T03:42:47.000Z","created_at_i":1645155767,"id":30381903,"options":[],"parent_id":30381424,"points":null,"story_id":30377058,"text":"I did!","title":null,"type":"comment","url":null}],"created_at":"2022-02-18T02:21:23.000Z","created_at_i":1645150883,"id":30381424,"options":[],"parent_id":30378967,"points":null,"story_id":30377058,"text":"+1 Insightful
Also, when you wrote "precept", did you mean "prerequisite"?","title":null,"type":"comment","url":null},{"author":"omnicognate","children":[],"created_at":"2022-02-18T08:16:17.000Z","created_at_i":1645172177,"id":30383317,"options":[],"parent_id":30378967,"points":null,"story_id":30377058,"text":"It obviously isn't and shouldn't be illegal to run such a service, and I don't agree with the idea that all data analysis should be done on the local device.
But I don't think "your data never leaves the phone" is something that only journalists and people with similar strong privacy requirements would or should value. All other things being equal, I would always prefer an app that keeps my data local, on principle. The difference being a journalist would make is that I would enforce it, and really journalists should know how to do that. They should be disabling network access, both cellular and wifi (which you can do on Android but I'm not sure you can on iOS) for any app they enter sensitive information into.","title":null,"type":"comment","url":null}],"created_at":"2022-02-17T21:33:22.000Z","created_at_i":1645133602,"id":30378967,"options":[],"parent_id":30378936,"points":null,"story_id":30377058,"text":"Sure. But it's not a crime to build a service that isn't fit for use with every type of data. I think it's OK if I build a service you upload some data to and that does some processing, as long as I make sure you understand what data I get and what I can do with it, so you can decide what data you don't want to give me (or the people who buy me out, or the people who can subpoena me).
And I think creating (or mandating) that transparency is probably a precept for offering an alternative product that runs on-device and doesn't have the same trust limitations - because the value prop has to be understood to make it a business. This article may inadvertently bring about a market for "safe translation app for journalists". We need the public to start thinking in these categories if we want a product landscape with both.","title":null,"type":"comment","url":null},{"author":"elb2020","children":[],"created_at":"2022-02-18T10:59:03.000Z","created_at_i":1645181943,"id":30384289,"options":[],"parent_id":30378936,"points":null,"story_id":30377058,"text":"I'm not an AI expert, at all, but can the neural network of an app like Otter run locally on a phone? Is it even possible, processing power wise?
Apart from that, I'm assuming that there's an enormous cost sunk into the training of the network. I imagine that alone would make Otter hesitant to let the trained network out of the house, even if it was technically possible.","title":null,"type":"comment","url":null}],"created_at":"2022-02-17T21:30:35.000Z","created_at_i":1645133435,"id":30378936,"options":[],"parent_id":30378858,"points":null,"story_id":30377058,"text":"This is why AI should be on-device.","title":null,"type":"comment","url":null},{"author":"danShumway","children":[],"created_at":"2022-02-17T22:40:10.000Z","created_at_i":1645137610,"id":30379679,"options":[],"parent_id":30378858,"points":null,"story_id":30377058,"text":"The story is that the author hadn't considered this, and there's a lot of different ways we could dig into that:
- the general quality of education we're giving journalists about privacy and security.
- whether or not Otter.ai (and other tech services in general) have a responsibility to turn away journalists that they think might be putting other people in danger by using the services.
- whether we in the tech industry are being irresponsible by just constantly assuring the public that AI-driven services don't involve interaction with human employees/contractors.
- whether we should have a set of general, open standards for how journalists conduct interviews that will help avoid problems like this.
- if you're being interviewed by a journalist about something sensitive, should you inquire into what their setup is, and should you explicitly make requests like asking them to promise not to use a 3rd-party for processing the interview.
And so on. I couldn't agree more, I don't think it's a non-story, I think it's a very important story. Otter.ai is a small part of it though, and the story is more about the context/environment that causes a story like this to be written and that causes this to be news.
----
> And if it is, good on the author for making it transparent
That's also a good point; part of the way you change journalist attitudes towards data security is you get journalists to research it and then talk to each other and very transparently say, "hey, these things we thought were safe aren't, and we are making mistakes with data right now." It's a lot more powerful and effective for a journalist to say that about themselves and about their field than for us to criticize them for bringing the issue up -- even if it feels at points in the article like the author hasn't really grasped all of the problems with what they're doing yet.","title":null,"type":"comment","url":null},{"author":"hguant","children":[],"created_at":"2022-02-18T08:10:55.000Z","created_at_i":1645171855,"id":30383293,"options":[],"parent_id":30378858,"points":null,"story_id":30377058,"text":"I think the sheer amount of data being transferred off of our various devices completely shocks the average, non-technical user. There's an assumption that unless you explicitly send something out, or actively make a post - something that involves clicking 'send' or 'share' - that the device is a receiver only when...that's just not the case. Part of this is technical education, but I think a lot of it also comes down to the fact that these devices are hermetically sealed from the average user, and even the average technical user. We have been trained to manipulate apps, not hardware; that's the only 'surface' visible to the user.
The cynic in me says that the lack of transparency about this is intentional; look at the outcry that happens when people learn about fb/meta snooping through their device, or the various apps turning on cameras and microphones when the user doesn't expect it. It's not that people don't care or have given up on privacy - it's that a lot of times developers lie to the user about what's happening, or at the least obfuscate it. Look at how torqued off people were when Apple forced apps to actually notify the user what they were doing!","title":null,"type":"comment","url":null}],"created_at":"2022-02-17T21:22:32.000Z","created_at_i":1645132952,"id":30378858,"options":[],"parent_id":30378499,"points":null,"story_id":30377058,"text":"I think the article is extremely interesting: As I kept reading, it eventually dawned on me that what had disturbed the author and gotten their attention at all was really just that a customer survey used the same title they had used when saving the interview recording file. The title was the name of their informant, and I think they were shocked Otter played an informant's name back at them.
It seems like they never before considered the implications of using the service and sending interview contents off-device at all.
If this is representative of the trade, I think as tech we have a lot of education left to do for everyone's safety. And if it is, good on the author for making it transparent. I feel like they learned a lot researching the article and basically put their own inadequacies on display for public scrutiny, which many others may not do.
Consider this next time you update your company's Privacy Policy and wonder if it's understandable, to who, can be discovered at all, etc. Do your users understand what of their data you have and how you use it?","title":null,"type":"comment","url":null},{"author":"0898","children":[{"author":"toyg","children":[],"created_at":"2022-02-17T22:54:32.000Z","created_at_i":1645138472,"id":30379824,"options":[],"parent_id":30379661,"points":null,"story_id":30377058,"text":"No, having said it was and then shortly after that it wasn't, and then eventually after 3 months that indeed it was.
It feels like, after the first candid response, somebody higher up went "oops, this looks bad, deny everything!", and eventually retracted it because the guy wouldn't give up.
Looks like the sort of misunderstanding that Pied Piper might find themselves into, to be charitable.","title":null,"type":"comment","url":null}],"created_at":"2022-02-17T22:38:49.000Z","created_at_i":1645137529,"id":30379661,"options":[],"parent_id":30378499,"points":null,"story_id":30377058,"text":"\u201cScrambled to respond\u201d is rather generous, I\u2019d say.
It took Otter.ai three months to confirm the email was genuine - having initially said that it wasn\u2019t.","title":null,"type":"comment","url":null},{"author":"bell-cot","children":[],"created_at":"2022-02-18T02:47:06.000Z","created_at_i":1645152426,"id":30381571,"options":[],"parent_id":30378499,"points":null,"story_id":30377058,"text":"The underlying story is that, in a world where Snowden's revelations were nearly 9 years ago, and stories like "$GigaCorp was hacked, umpteen million customers' personal information stolen" are a very regular thing, reporters are still utter simpletons about security, and should not be trusted with any secret hotter than the location of Santa Claus's North Pole workshop.
Quick Poll: Is there anyone here (on HN) who thinks that the details of Otter's privacy policy are relevant to whether or not an interested A-list national intelligence community accessed the author's data on Otter?
[/cynic]","title":null,"type":"comment","url":null},{"author":"EGreg","children":[{"author":"upwardbound","children":[],"created_at":"2022-02-18T03:16:31.000Z","created_at_i":1645154191,"id":30381761,"options":[],"parent_id":30381679,"points":null,"story_id":30377058,"text":"As of iOS 15 Apple does do Siri processing on-device. Source: https://www.theverge.com/2021/6/7/22522993/apple-siri-on-dev...","title":null,"type":"comment","url":null}],"created_at":"2022-02-18T03:03:32.000Z","created_at_i":1645153412,"id":30381679,"options":[],"parent_id":30378499,"points":null,"story_id":30377058,"text":"Why does Siri send your stuff to a server to be decoded? It should have been onboard computing. It was possible to do that even a decade ago with OpenEars and be good enough for most queries with 95% confidence.","title":null,"type":"comment","url":null}],"created_at":"2022-02-17T20:53:13.000Z","created_at_i":1645131193,"id":30378499,"options":[],"parent_id":30377058,"points":null,"story_id":30377058,"text":"The article raises a good point, but in a hamfisted and clickbaity way.
The underlying story is that there is no story: the author recorded a sensitive conversation and sent it to Otter. Otter sent him a survey in response and referenced the title of the recording. The author grew concerned that his recordings had been shared with China. Otter scrambled to respond, and eventually reassured the author that his recordings had never been shared with any foreign governments or law enforcement agencies.
The underlying point, that using transcription services puts journalists' sources at risk, is well taken. But the story unfairly tries to make it sound like Otter has a problem, when the author is really just using Otter as a vehicle for their story.","title":null,"type":"comment","url":null},{"author":"cracker_jacks","children":[{"author":"password4321","children":[],"created_at":"2022-02-17T21:52:42.000Z","created_at_i":1645134762,"id":30379186,"options":[],"parent_id":30378813,"points":null,"story_id":30377058,"text":"Like https://www.paypal.com/us/security/report-suspicious-message... ?
> Forward suspicious email to spoof@paypal.com","title":null,"type":"comment","url":null}],"created_at":"2022-02-17T21:18:03.000Z","created_at_i":1645132683,"id":30378813,"options":[],"parent_id":30377058,"points":null,"story_id":30377058,"text":"Can a viable business be made around targets/victims sending their phishing attacks to a reverse engineering lab? The more valuable the target, the more likely an unknown and valuable exploit might be surfaced. As a consequence, this increases the expected cost of attacking these targets/victims.","title":null,"type":"comment","url":null},{"author":"dogman144","children":[{"author":"radicaldreamer","children":[{"author":"dogman144","children":[],"created_at":"2022-02-17T21:49:14.000Z","created_at_i":1645134554,"id":30379146,"options":[],"parent_id":30379050,"points":null,"story_id":30377058,"text":"Personal opinion is it's irresponsible to exist since 2016 and have not hired someone for it yet, especially after these last years re: Solarwinds.
The careers page is hiring a software eng - security which means someone who can build tooling, but won't have any policy/process power beyond what a VP Eng allows them. So good luck deploying necessary changes that that impact dev/product flows.
This is the sort of stuff that gets security/privacy people upset at ex-Googler SV tech. Lot of hubris.","title":null,"type":"comment","url":null}],"created_at":"2022-02-17T21:40:59.000Z","created_at_i":1645134059,"id":30379050,"options":[],"parent_id":30378857,"points":null,"story_id":30377058,"text":"They're likely already compromised and definitely will be after this story... they should hire a security lead and harden their systems right away.","title":null,"type":"comment","url":null}],"created_at":"2022-02-17T21:22:29.000Z","created_at_i":1645132949,"id":30378857,"options":[],"parent_id":30377058,"points":null,"story_id":30377058,"text":"Otter.ai, collector of potentially incredibly sensitive user recordings, despite perhaps having a good privacy policy, has...
81 employees and no cybersecurity team from what I can tell.\nlinkedin[.]com/company/otter-ai/people/?keywords=security
Security and privacy isn't a tool, it's a set of tools in a logical stack and used according to correct processes. This is why focused newsroom security teams are so critical, but NYT fired their rep a few years ago and WSJ had or has generic security hires double-timing in that role. It sucks that Khashoggi wasn't more of a watershed moment for this.
I wouldn't worry about privacy, I'd worry about threat actors popping otter and it's 0 security team to expose sources.","title":null,"type":"comment","url":null},{"author":"axg11","children":[{"author":"mikepurvis","children":[{"author":"jfengel","children":[{"author":"mikepurvis","children":[{"author":"Spooky23","children":[],"created_at":"2022-02-18T02:49:42.000Z","created_at_i":1645152582,"id":30381584,"options":[],"parent_id":30379682,"points":null,"story_id":30377058,"text":"Even stranger, in many legal scenarios, verbatim reporters actually own the transcripts and license/sell copies to courts. Some of those transcripts are sealed or otherwise private.
If you have good relationships in the courthouse you can luck out with complex cases that result in appeals.","title":null,"type":"comment","url":null}],"created_at":"2022-02-17T22:40:16.000Z","created_at_i":1645137616,"id":30379682,"options":[],"parent_id":30379332,"points":null,"story_id":30377058,"text":"I wasn't hearing them directly, but I heard about them because I was asked about some acronyms that were unfamiliar to the person doing the work.
Definitely a grey area, but the point was more that literally anyone off the street can sign up to gig for one of these services and receive access to a bunch of potentially pretty sensitive audio.","title":null,"type":"comment","url":null}],"created_at":"2022-02-17T22:08:17.000Z","created_at_i":1645135697,"id":30379332,"options":[],"parent_id":30379229,"points":null,"story_id":30377058,"text":"I'm shocked that you got to hear those recordings that were supposedly under NDA.
Well, not that shocked. I'm sure your uncle was generally being diligent. But really, you shouldn't have been able to find out what he was working on.","title":null,"type":"comment","url":null}],"created_at":"2022-02-17T21:57:28.000Z","created_at_i":1645135048,"id":30379229,"options":[],"parent_id":30378931,"points":null,"story_id":30377058,"text":"I had a family member who briefly dabbled in online transcription and made maybe a few hundred bucks doing it. Obviously they were required to sign an NDA and so on, but nonetheless, I was shocked at the recordings that they were sent\u2014 for example, high level executive meetings where financial details and M&A strategy were being discussed.","title":null,"type":"comment","url":null},{"author":"skoocda","children":[{"author":"toyg","children":[{"author":"deadmutex","children":[],"created_at":"2022-02-18T08:07:58.000Z","created_at_i":1645171678,"id":30383276,"options":[],"parent_id":30379844,"points":null,"story_id":30377058,"text":"Pichai: "Yes, we use data to make products more helpful for everyone. But we also protect your information."
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/07/opinion/google-sundar-pic...","title":null,"type":"comment","url":null},{"author":"ai_ia","children":[],"created_at":"2022-02-18T11:11:14.000Z","created_at_i":1645182674,"id":30384346,"options":[],"parent_id":30379844,"points":null,"story_id":30377058,"text":"I believe you ought to check out Federated Machine Learning techniques.[1]
[1]: https://ai.googleblog.com/2017/04/federated-learning-collabo...","title":null,"type":"comment","url":null}],"created_at":"2022-02-17T22:56:18.000Z","created_at_i":1645138578,"id":30379844,"options":[],"parent_id":30379769,"points":null,"story_id":30377058,"text":""Privacy", "on-device", and "Google", all in the same sentence...? Sounds unrealistic.","title":null,"type":"comment","url":null}],"created_at":"2022-02-17T22:49:14.000Z","created_at_i":1645138154,"id":30379769,"options":[],"parent_id":30378931,"points":null,"story_id":30377058,"text":"I also tried and failed here. We ran our own speech engine with a custom model- but it's extremely expensive as a cloud service, and incredibly tough to reach acceptably high accuracy in different environments. Adding NLP on top of error-prone transcripts will multiply the error rate and lead to all sorts of weird actions.
I really think on-device models like we see in Android's Live Caption tool are a major privacy boon, and they're starting to reach an acceptable level of performance in Google's case. The main pathway to better performance is loading ever-more-massive models into memory, which isn't feasible for mobile devices but could be done on people's laptops in a meeting.","title":null,"type":"comment","url":null},{"author":"dillondoyle","children":[],"created_at":"2022-02-18T07:28:47.000Z","created_at_i":1645169327,"id":30383033,"options":[],"parent_id":30378931,"points":null,"story_id":30377058,"text":"Would it not be possible to 'ship' a model and have it run on the users device?","title":null,"type":"comment","url":null},{"author":"junon","children":[],"created_at":"2022-02-18T14:38:03.000Z","created_at_i":1645195083,"id":30386204,"options":[],"parent_id":30378931,"points":null,"story_id":30377058,"text":"This is why I stopped using Otter, personally. I was more worried about IP theft than anything personally sensitive but yeah. I don't use speech to text solutions anymore unless they can somehow run on my own machines.","title":null,"type":"comment","url":null}],"created_at":"2022-02-17T21:30:05.000Z","created_at_i":1645133405,"id":30378931,"options":[],"parent_id":30377058,"points":null,"story_id":30377058,"text":"I tried and failed to launch a startup in this space. The privacy concerns are huge. Most of the companies in this space (Fireflies, Otter, Vowel, ~Chorus, ~Gong) use external APIs for speech-to-text. That means unencrypted audio and plain text is traversing a 3rd party server. Most people don't care, but when there is eventually a security breach (only a matter of time) there will be a lot of surprised users and customers.
With that said, the core idea is great. These companies are starting with transcription but it's not difficult to envisage a future where (a) supplemental information is presented depending on conversation topics, and (b) actions are taken on your behalf. Example: no more need to manually send a calendar invite, just mention it in the conversation and the "AI assistant" will schedule for you.","title":null,"type":"comment","url":null},{"author":"tedunangst","children":[{"author":"none_to_remain","children":[],"created_at":"2022-02-18T06:17:15.000Z","created_at_i":1645165035,"id":30382662,"options":[],"parent_id":30378970,"points":null,"story_id":30377058,"text":"Also USG is another adversary","title":null,"type":"comment","url":null}],"created_at":"2022-02-17T21:33:42.000Z","created_at_i":1645133622,"id":30378970,"options":[],"parent_id":30377058,"points":null,"story_id":30377058,"text":"The conclusion of the article is that we need to change the law. Will that prevent China from hacking otter to obtain transcripts?","title":null,"type":"comment","url":null},{"author":"radicaldreamer","children":[],"created_at":"2022-02-17T21:43:06.000Z","created_at_i":1645134186,"id":30379075,"options":[],"parent_id":30377058,"points":null,"story_id":30377058,"text":"The way to do this properly as a reporter would be to record using a standalone voice recorder and transcribe using offline software (Dragon Naturally Speaking or something similar) on an air-gapped machine.
If you're a reporter working on human rights pieces which involve nation states, you need to step up your game here or you're putting sources at risk.","title":null,"type":"comment","url":null},{"author":"77pt77","children":[{"author":"robmsmt","children":[],"created_at":"2022-02-18T02:19:36.000Z","created_at_i":1645150776,"id":30381414,"options":[],"parent_id":30379278,"points":null,"story_id":30377058,"text":"Offline: Sphinx, VOSK, Nvidia NeMo, SpeechBrain, Coqui, Kaldi... some off the top of my head. Some of these require more setup & effort and are more research grade than others.
There are also proprietary ASRs which can run offline.
I wrote a small python application to evaluate some of them. Link in my profile!","title":null,"type":"comment","url":null}],"created_at":"2022-02-17T22:02:26.000Z","created_at_i":1645135346,"id":30379278,"options":[],"parent_id":30377058,"points":null,"story_id":30377058,"text":"What are my options for something like this that runs entirely in my machine?","title":null,"type":"comment","url":null},{"author":"xwowsersx","children":[{"author":"octodog","children":[{"author":"ectopod","children":[],"created_at":"2022-02-17T23:37:03.000Z","created_at_i":1645141023,"id":30380246,"options":[],"parent_id":30379471,"points":null,"story_id":30377058,"text":"Does management know that all meetings are being shared with another company?","title":null,"type":"comment","url":null}],"created_at":"2022-02-17T22:20:55.000Z","created_at_i":1645136455,"id":30379471,"options":[],"parent_id":30379309,"points":null,"story_id":30377058,"text":"Do your colleagues know that they are being recorded?","title":null,"type":"comment","url":null},{"author":"tasha0663","children":[],"created_at":"2022-02-18T03:31:20.000Z","created_at_i":1645155080,"id":30381844,"options":[],"parent_id":30379309,"points":null,"story_id":30377058,"text":"As someone with ADHD-PI, this sort of thing is so damn tempting. Like to the point where I could probably actually focus if I knew I could get a transcript.","title":null,"type":"comment","url":null}],"created_at":"2022-02-17T22:05:36.000Z","created_at_i":1645135536,"id":30379309,"options":[],"parent_id":30377058,"points":null,"story_id":30377058,"text":"I use Otter pretty religiously to record all work meetings that I participate in. That is probably overkill, but it is great to be able to go back and find details about something I didn't take notes on or wanted to review.
I work with a geographically distributed team and it doesn't do an amazing job with English in various accents \u2014 I've noticed Google Recorder on Android is better in this regard \u2014 but it's good enough.
Nice product.","title":null,"type":"comment","url":null},{"author":"fudged71","children":[{"author":"willhinsa","children":[],"created_at":"2022-02-17T22:18:24.000Z","created_at_i":1645136304,"id":30379442,"options":[],"parent_id":30379354,"points":null,"story_id":30377058,"text":"Personally I find Latin phrases to be more accurate and succinct than their English replacements. Plus, there's a lot of phrases that you're probably super familiar with that you just don't think about their origin being Latin. When I come across a new Latin phrase, I just treat it like a special kind of phrase that I can learn, in an ad hoc fashion. ;)","title":null,"type":"comment","url":null},{"author":"messe","children":[],"created_at":"2022-02-17T22:19:47.000Z","created_at_i":1645136387,"id":30379457,"options":[],"parent_id":30379354,"points":null,"story_id":30377058,"text":"As latin phrases go "Caveat Emptor" is a pretty common one; it didn't seem out of place to me.","title":null,"type":"comment","url":null},{"author":"sho_hn","children":[],"created_at":"2022-02-17T22:22:45.000Z","created_at_i":1645136565,"id":30379491,"options":[],"parent_id":30379354,"points":null,"story_id":30377058,"text":"Just a general linguistic phenomenon that source languages are sometimes invoked to elevate speech.","title":null,"type":"comment","url":null},{"author":"toyg","children":[{"author":"tasha0663","children":[],"created_at":"2022-02-18T03:40:38.000Z","created_at_i":1645155638,"id":30381890,"options":[],"parent_id":30379974,"points":null,"story_id":30377058,"text":"> conveys a set of concepts in a succinct manner by way of shared convention
Except that is not the case here. "Buyer Beware" is more succinct and in the same language as the rest of the headline. It's also not a domain-specific term, so shared convention is out. The author is sprinkling on some Latin to seem smarter.","title":null,"type":"comment","url":null}],"created_at":"2022-02-17T23:08:46.000Z","created_at_i":1645139326,"id":30379974,"options":[],"parent_id":30379354,"points":null,"story_id":30377058,"text":"Latin is a technical instrument of rhetoric and law. It conveys a set of concepts in a succinct manner by way of shared convention.
If you talked to your plumber and said you have a "web server" in your basement, he'd think you give funny names to spiders. The concept of "web server" is a technical shorthand for "computer attached to a telecommunication system, typically the global internet network, that is dedicated to responding to request from other computers for hypertextual media to be delivered over such network". But webserver is shorter and everybody in your sector understands what it is, so you use that. Sure, you could say "I have a computer connected to the network that does stuff", something that "would get the point across to more people", but it would be a very rough and incomplete image.
In the same way, people in literature, rhetoric, law, and medicine, use a lot of Latin words to convey specific meanings succinctly. Anybody worth their salt, in the sector, will appreciate them more than "plain English".","title":null,"type":"comment","url":null},{"author":"tasha0663","children":[],"created_at":"2022-02-18T03:43:08.000Z","created_at_i":1645155788,"id":30381906,"options":[],"parent_id":30379354,"points":null,"story_id":30377058,"text":"No worries. I took Latin for three years in school and did a double take because I confused it with "cave canem": Beware of the dog!","title":null,"type":"comment","url":null}],"created_at":"2022-02-17T22:11:06.000Z","created_at_i":1645135866,"id":30379354,"options":[],"parent_id":30377058,"points":null,"story_id":30377058,"text":"I feel dumb for thinking "Caveat emptor" in the title meant "end of story". I don't quite understand why latin terms are used so often when plain english gets the point across to more people.","title":null,"type":"comment","url":null},{"author":"danShumway","children":[],"created_at":"2022-02-17T22:13:06.000Z","created_at_i":1645135986,"id":30379377,"options":[],"parent_id":30377058,"points":null,"story_id":30377058,"text":"We can focus on Otter.ai, but the quote that jumps out to me is:
> Until those laws change, journalists and others who rely on transcription apps need to carefully consider the potential dangers.
What this article is revealing to me is that journalists who are dealing with sensitive information aren't well-trained enough to recognize all of the dangers in the services they use. Knowing what I know about AI-driven services, even really large ones like Alexa or Siri, it would never be acceptable to me to use a remote service to transcribe an interview that absolutely had to be private and that hadn't already had all of the sensitive info redacted. It's a lack of knowledge about how AI works and how these networks are built and maintained (real people do run into the information, and there are bugs even in giant products).
It's also a lack of knowledge about the security capabilities of the company: how is this information being stored, what encryption is being used, has the company been audited? It's really irresponsible, but I also believe the author when they said they just never thought about it before, I believe that it probably never crossed their mind that a big company might misplace data or that it might be forced to hand that data to a government.
What's frustrating is the qualifier "until those laws change". There are a lot of potential risks to using a remote transcription service even if the laws are different. For ordinary people, legislation around privacy is important. But when dealing with information of this type, you need better security fundamentals. So this feels like the author still doesn't realize just how dangerous they're being by using a service like Otter.ai for interviews where someone's life might be at risk.
----
On that subject, I also don't think calling out the journalist in this way is victim blaming; I think the victim here is the person being interviewed, and I think journalists have a moral responsibility to understand data security because the people who talk to them are trusting them to be able to keep that information safe. If you can't do that, then it's irresponsible to handle sensitive information that can harm other people. There are risks associated with handing any remote company an unencrypted interview with sensitive information that they will feed into an AI network, regardless of that company's intentions. That is not something a law can fix, you as a journalist need to be able to protect the people who trust you and you need to know the limitations of a company saying "we won't share this", you need to know what the inherent risks of the technology and process are instead of just trusting them.
Not to let Otter.ai off the hook here; if they're aware of the fact that people are sending interviews where information leaks could be dangerous, they need to do a better job of educating their clients about what the risks are. The tech industry in general needs to do a better job of education here, we share some blame. What we are seeing is the effects of Google/Amazon/Apple creating an inaccurate picture of what AI is and of how private it is: we create this narrative where people assume that Siri/Alexa are just isolated boxes that sit in a vacuum where nothing can touch the data. And it turns out that's not accurate at all, metadata (like transcript titles) gets leaked from those services, people review transcripts and use it to keep training the AI, there are bugs that leak data across accounts. And there are real-world consequences to us training the public to disregard the possibility that those leaks can happen; consequences like journalists believing us and using our technology in irresponsible ways.
I support privacy legislation, but privacy legislation will not make it OK for journalists to be irresponsible with sensitive information. There needs to be more of an understanding that for journalists who have clients who are in a position of extreme trust with them, some behavior is just inherently risky. It doesn't matter if there's legislation, if you're a journalist it's still not OK to send sensitive information over SMS, or do unencrypted phone calls to conduct sensitive interviews, or to send sensitive interviews to corporations that you don't have an extremely close relationship with. You have to learn data security, I'm sorry. To the extent we in the tech industry can help with that, it should be by making it clear that we mess up a lot and we leak a lot of data and we aren't magical wizards that can just decide to keep data safe -- all of that boasting about our privacy policies are just narratives we use to get more people to be more comfortable talking to their smart homes.
----
> In the three months since that initial exchange (and there was more to come), I\u2019ve gone down the rabbit hole \u2014 talking to cybersecurity experts, press freedom advocates and a former government official \u2014 to try and understand what vulnerabilities and risks are present in this app that\u2019s become a favorite among journalists for its fast, reliable and cheap automated transcription.
This doesn't require a complicated rabbit hole of research, I can tell you right now that if the person you're interviewing is being hunted by a government, if they are "a wanted man", you do not put their interview on any service that is not fully end-to-end encrypted so that even the service can not access the data, period. We have enough technology and good enough encryption tools that you don't need to take that risk anymore. That means transcription, (regardless of whether it's AI-driven or manual) needs to happen on your own hardware.
If it's not a sensitive interview, or if a leak would just be embarrassing or cost someone some money -- then sure, maybe you have different standards for that kind of information, use a remote transcription service for those interviews if you need to. But not for someone who's wanted by a government.","title":null,"type":"comment","url":null},{"author":"1-6","children":[],"created_at":"2022-02-17T22:37:56.000Z","created_at_i":1645137476,"id":30379647,"options":[],"parent_id":30377058,"points":null,"story_id":30377058,"text":"If you\u2019re looking for a good transcriber and know a little bit of Python, you can use Nvidia\u2019s Riva.","title":null,"type":"comment","url":null},{"author":"ramphastidae","children":[{"author":"weq","children":[],"created_at":"2022-02-18T03:13:13.000Z","created_at_i":1645153993,"id":30381744,"options":[],"parent_id":30379715,"points":null,"story_id":30377058,"text":"Yeh lol like WTF its so stupid to think about but unfortunately its how stupid and desensitiesed to giving away information on the internet people are.
I saw in a lawtech startup, when i arrived they were transfering data unencrypted over the internet. this data was everything todo with a matter, including documents. Suffice to say they were lucky i had experience building software on Secret networks and patches those holes quick smart (ie. re-wrote there entire stack which was built by 3rd-world-outsourced-devs who have zero care for your busisness continuity.
No wonder scamming is outpacing the drug buisness these days. People are dumb and the internet exposes dumbness to desperateness who are more then willing to take up the slack.","title":null,"type":"comment","url":null}],"created_at":"2022-02-17T22:43:25.000Z","created_at_i":1645137805,"id":30379715,"options":[],"parent_id":30377058,"points":null,"story_id":30377058,"text":"So Phelim Kine leaked a source\u2019s name and the details of their conversation to a third party because it was cheaper and more convenient than doing their own transcription, and is now trying to blame the third party?","title":null,"type":"comment","url":null},{"author":"telesilla","children":[],"created_at":"2022-02-17T23:03:33.000Z","created_at_i":1645139013,"id":30379923,"options":[],"parent_id":30377058,"points":null,"story_id":30377058,"text":"You can help. Offer your services and support to institutes such as Centre for Investigative Journalism. Training journalists to use tech is critical for keeping sources safe.
https://tcij.org/","title":null,"type":"comment","url":null},{"author":"upwardbound","children":[{"author":"bigiain","children":[{"author":"upwardbound","children":[],"created_at":"2022-02-18T02:06:21.000Z","created_at_i":1645149981,"id":30381346,"options":[],"parent_id":30380968,"points":null,"story_id":30377058,"text":"Understood; in truth my biggest specific concern is the ambiguity about whether or not they would comply with non-US regimes. In an ideal world they would (imho) comply with the US but not with foreign regimes. Better to have only one info leak rather than many.","title":null,"type":"comment","url":null}],"created_at":"2022-02-18T01:00:28.000Z","created_at_i":1645146028,"id":30380968,"options":[],"parent_id":30380171,"points":null,"story_id":30377058,"text":"Anybody who shares information on any 3rd party company platform in the belief that it's so private that they won't disclose it "to comply with a legal obligation" is kidding themselves.
Even Signal/WhisperSystems, who I have a great deal of respect for, would without question cave under government demands which come from the sort of people who've learn't from their failure to force Lavabit/Levison's compliance and silence. I have no doubt that successors to Levison's refusal to exploit their own previously-secure systems at the Government's request have been successfully threatened and manipulated into doing so using much more powerful threats and consequences that Levison's option of "OK then, I'll just shut my whole company down".
If a sufficiently powerful TLA decided I needed to be surveilled for a serious enough suspicion of a serious enough crime, I have no doubt that I'm "STILL GONNA BE MOSSAD\u2019ED UPON"*
The chance of _any_ non-privacy-obsessed tech startup/company like Otter deciding to lawyer up and fight the US government to protect _my_ individual privacy as a low-paying customer is literally zero. The _best_ I can expect of them is to have a solid process in place to ensure the people demanding my data have the appropriate paperwork and jurisdictional oversight in place, more realistically I'd expect them to have a "law enforcement portal" like Facebook/eBay et al. where bored cops can log in and stalk their ex girlfriends.
* https://www.usenix.org/system/files/1401_08-12_mickens.pdf","title":null,"type":"comment","url":null}],"created_at":"2022-02-17T23:28:55.000Z","created_at_i":1645140535,"id":30380171,"options":[],"parent_id":30377058,"points":null,"story_id":30377058,"text":"This part is a huge issue:
> When I asked Otter to clarify whether it shares user data with non-U.S. government or law enforcement agencies, the answer wasn\u2019t comforting. \u201cWe disclose Personal Information if we are legally required to do so, or if we have a good faith belief that such use is reasonably necessary to comply with a legal obligation, process or request,\u201d Denise Mutch, an Otter service team member, told me via email on Dec. 16.
Later in the article, a different Otter representative (Mitchell Woodrow) says the opposite, but that indicates to me that they don't have a consistent internal policy for whether to turn interviews over to totalitarian regimes, which is a huge, HUGE problem.","title":null,"type":"comment","url":null},{"author":"tasha0663","children":[],"created_at":"2022-02-18T03:18:26.000Z","created_at_i":1645154306,"id":30381771,"options":[],"parent_id":30377058,"points":null,"story_id":30377058,"text":"I recall the analogy attributed to Gene Spafford:
> Using encryption on the Internet is the equivalent of arranging an armored car to deliver credit card information from someone living in a cardboard box to someone living on a park bench.
Why the F would you even bother with Signal if you're just going to record the call to some other third party service? This is an enormous and stupid mistake.","title":null,"type":"comment","url":null},{"author":"gjsman-1000","children":[],"created_at":"2022-02-18T03:47:49.000Z","created_at_i":1645156069,"id":30381933,"options":[],"parent_id":30377058,"points":null,"story_id":30377058,"text":"I work for an education company\u2026 and an instructor said \u201cI think that.\u201d The teacher had her audio garble a bit when saying \u201cthink\u201d but to a human it was pretty clear.
Otter completely messed up and transcribed it as \u201cI Fuck That\u201d (not kidding) within Zoom.
And that\u2019s pretty bad when it\u2019s a bunch of Middle Schoolers\u2026","title":null,"type":"comment","url":null},{"author":"endisneigh","children":[],"created_at":"2022-02-18T04:01:57.000Z","created_at_i":1645156917,"id":30382001,"options":[],"parent_id":30377058,"points":null,"story_id":30377058,"text":"An interesting technical problem would be figuring a way to obsfucate audio such that it could be transcribed, but the transcribed text isn\u2019t actually really what was said.
Then you could take the text and put it through the same process that distorted the audio and get the original text.","title":null,"type":"comment","url":null},{"author":"flower-giraffe","children":[],"created_at":"2022-02-18T05:50:16.000Z","created_at_i":1645163416,"id":30382530,"options":[],"parent_id":30377058,"points":null,"story_id":30377058,"text":"From the article:\n\u201c So when I talked to Aksu in November, I made sure to use Signal, an encrypted phone app, to protect our discussion\u201d
The author apparently then recorded that call and uploaded it to a cloud transcription service.
Surely any journalist reporting on human rights abuse by state actors should know that recording the interview on an internet connected device is a risk let alone uploading it to the cloud.","title":null,"type":"comment","url":null},{"author":"Jaruzel","children":[],"created_at":"2022-02-18T08:56:25.000Z","created_at_i":1645174585,"id":30383542,"options":[],"parent_id":30377058,"points":null,"story_id":30377058,"text":"Not offline, but more secure (maybe?) than a random WebApp, is the Transcription option in the online version of Microsoft Word.
If you have Microsoft 365 via your employer, you can transcribe up to 300 minutes a month. I use it a lot for recorded work calls, as my memory is awful.
I just wish they'd roll it out to the Desktop version of Word, as the online version struggles with transcripts longer than 50 pages.","title":null,"type":"comment","url":null},{"author":"marginalien","children":[],"created_at":"2022-02-20T15:59:48.000Z","created_at_i":1645372788,"id":30406652,"options":[],"parent_id":30377058,"points":null,"story_id":30377058,"text":"This apps seems to offer on-device transcription. Any opinions?
https://apps.apple.com/de/app/ada-dictation-speech-to-text/i...","title":null,"type":"comment","url":null}],"created_at":"2022-02-17T18:53:28.000Z","created_at_i":1645124008,"id":30377058,"options":[],"parent_id":null,"points":234,"story_id":30377058,"text":null,"title":"Otter.ai has saved reporters hours transcribing interviews. Caveat emptor","type":"story","url":"https://www.politico.com/news/2022/02/16/my-journey-down-the-rabbit-hole-of-every-journalists-favorite-app-00009216"}