Of Hornblowers and Blumpkins

Now brace yourself for this startling revelation: your phone is listening to you. I know, right? But wait, there's more. There's always more. That's sort of the theme of the 21st century. Just when something sounds bad you wait a minute and find out it's much worse and no one's going to do anything about it. Climate change, the Mueller report and America's newfound love affair with internment camps. Welcome to the future!

Huh? No, we are going to talk about phones, but I just thought
I'd mention how we have internment camps again. Because we do.

Blow, blow your mighty horns!

Yup, our damn iPhones. A whistleblower came forward last week with-hey, can we stop calling these people whistleblowers? I think of of a whistle as piercing, shrill, obnoxious noise designed to get attention. Calling them whistleblowers makes them sound like hall monitors out to enforce petty and arbitrary rules. These are people who point out injustices and crimes at the risk of their jobs and sometimes lives. They're basically heroes sounding a call to action. I've got a better term: Hornblower. As in, holy shit, did you see that hornblower who revealed that Apple's been letting randos listen in on you having sex?

"The test results came back embarrassing,
so it's a good thing no one's listening in."

Because evidently they are. Listening to you. Having sex, talking to your doctor, planning a revolution. Everything. Yeah, Siri, the magical elf that lives in your phone is programed to 'wake up' whenever it hears the phrase hey Siri. But it's not perfect and will apparently activate when it hears anything remotely similar to the phrase hey Siri and then start 'listening' for instructions. That listening is the software recording what the phone hears and then trying to match it to a command. Ok, so your creepy sentient phone can hear you, big deal.

Pictured: a rando Lando.
Sorry, I couldn't not.

This is where the aforementioned randos come in. Apple, in there quest to make Siri work marginally better than it already doesn't (you heard me), is using outside contractors to analyze these recordings and Siri's responses and see where there's room for improvement. What our heroic hornblower has brought to light is that Apple doesn't tell us that they're sending recordings of our boning sessions to contractors who are under no obligation to maintain customer privacy. 

Holy shit, right? Well, yes. The slightly less alarmist side of this is that these recordings aren't associated with your name so really that could be anyone asking for a chili con queso honey bucket blumpkin.

Look, I'm not out to kink shame anyone, and I'm pretty sure that a chili con queso
honey bucket blumpkin isn't a real thing, but do yourself a favor and don't look it up...

"Apple: because resistance is futile."

-Apple's somewhat 

ill-advised new slogan

Anyway the point is that while Apple insists that there isn't really anyway to identify who's on these recordings short of recognizing the voice, the whistle-hornblower says: "These recordings are accompanied by user data showing location, contact details and app data." Soooo...like, which is it? Do we trust the concerned citizen who's putting their carrier on the line and possibly exposing themselves to legal action or the company that's been secretly making recordings of you having sex and sharing them with strangers?

I don't know, are we just supposed to take Apple at their word that they won't use this terrifying, god-like power against us or sell our private, most personal bumpkin-related secrets to the highest bidder? And before you answer, remember that this was the company that used to deliberately hobble your phone's battery life with updates every couple of years so you'd buy a new one.

Pictured: a chilling reminder that we are little more than
exploitable data points to the corporations that rule the world.
Also, did you know that you can make Siri British? 'ello 'ello!