The Digital Version of Trust, But Verify

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“Trust is built on telling the truth, not telling people what they want to hear.” – Simon Sinek

There is something that is bothering me about the Nancy Guthrie investigation. For anyone that hasn’t followed this, Nancy Guthrie is the 84-year-old mother of Today show host, Savannah Guthrie. Nancy was abducted from her home in Tucson, Arizona in the middle of the night on February 1st.

When she was first abducted, the news reported that no images were captured by her Nest doorbell camera because she opted out of the recording service.

Then sometime about 10 days later, some footage from the camera was “recovered.” I hope that provides some great investigative leads and helps to bring Nancy Guthrie home safely. But three things strike me as troublesome.

  1. That data was not supposed to exist. Users should be able to opt out of that service and be assured that recording is not happening.
  2. Nest is owned by Google. Their competitor, Ring, is owned by Amazon. Two companies that have spent billions on AI. [To be fair, Ring says that it doesn’t record if people opt out.]
  3. When the AI bubble bursts, will either Google or Amazon need a bail out from the government? And if so, what will they be willing to trade for that help?

I generally tend to believe that companies do the right thing for their customers. This is definitely the case with Microsoft. Not only because I have so many good friends who work there, but also because I’ve been helping companies implement MS software for more than 30 years.

I tell my clients not to transcribe or record sensitive meetings they hold online. Microsoft says they understand that clients should be able to choose what is and is not recorded.

Back in the day when software ran on machines that companies owned, we could check. Now that so much operates from “the cloud,” there isn’t any way to effectively do that.

Ronald Reagan used to quote the Russian proverb, “Trust, but verify.” We might need to start a movement to do just that.

(featured photo from Pexels)

You can find me on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/wynneleon/ and Instagram @wynneleon

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27 thoughts on “The Digital Version of Trust, But Verify”

  1. Excellent, Wynne. I spell ‘nondisclosure’ as ‘lie.’

    The cascade of legal actions has produced evidence that the various AI models keep significant information regardless of whether users pushed the opt-out button.

    Amazon’s new feature allows AI to scan an entire book, and the machine’s algorithm determines what to include in the summaries it provides to readers. Does it then forget? Recent court cases cast doubt.

    Data security breaches of AI models stole private conversations about the most intimate secrets. Treating AI like it’s some benign tool is nonsense. You cannot verify that which Big Tech hides from you.

    The only true glimpses we’ve gotten so far have been through legal discovery. But then, oops! Someone ‘accidentally’ deleted the requested dataset…

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    1. I’m still chuckling about “I spell ‘nondisclosure’ as ‘lie.’” Good one, Grant. You are spot on. We cannot verify what Big Tech hides from us. I find a little solace in the court cases as they seem to be the only thing regulating this industry so far. Thanks for your thoughtful and informative comment!

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  2. I am not nearly as up to speed on these things as you Wynne, but I remember way back when “the cloud” was first introduced and telling my wife..no way would I intentionally put anything from my personal computer on it for a back up. that’s just the part of me that has seen too many things pulled by our government over the years where we the people have been treated as guinea pigs in a lab. Combine that with big government and corporate and that’s a big no thank you all around. I don’t obsess about it, but yea, that did make me think about all of the smart things in people’s homes these days (Alexia/ smart TV’s etc)

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    1. A great response to the challenge of this day and age, Doug! Your perspective about the many things our government has pulled is such a great reminder we should be wary. Thanks for the great comment!

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  3. I found that exact part about the NEST camera footage to be so interesting and perturbing too, Wynne. I hope they find her mother, it’s such a strange and disturbing case, and that in the bigger picture, companies are more responsible about privacy practices. I, too, do not record virtual meetings for the reason you described.

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    1. I hope they find her too. I’m not surprised that you picked up on the same thing.

      Now that they’ve shown us they can, will Google go to the same lengths to “recover” footage in cases where it could be helpful to the families of people even if they aren’t so high profile?

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  5. Sometimes it feels like we are under constant surveillance. Which is downright creepy. One time my daughter got a scam call where the caller pretended they were another family member. I’m not a conspiracy theorist, but I decided we needed a secret ‘family word’ that we could use in case we needed to verify who we were speaking to remotely or digitally. To discuss and decide on the ‘family word’, I insisted that we go stand out by the street, leaving our phones in the house, so the phones couldn’t listen in. The flaw in my logic is that once we use the secret word via text, message, voice, etc, it will be out there and probably stored somewhere forever. Sigh.

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    1. That is terrifying that your daughter got a call from someone pretending to be a family member, Gwen! I’m not a conspiracy theorist either but I think your approach of creating a family word is brilliant. Yes, they might store it — but at least you have the ingenuity to create one and change it!

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  7. Unfortunately Simon Sinek’s quote has been altered in the political chaos of today to read, ” Tell people what we want them to hear hoping they’ll believe it and trust us.”

    I’m grateful this ole Duffer grew up in a more ‘agree to disagree’ conciliatory political environment vs. our present ‘I’m right, you’re wrong, let’s fight!’ combative one.

    I grieve for what our children must now navigate amidst our nation’s disunity to equitably ‘trust and verify’ objective fact from subjective fiction.

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  9. I love this post so much, Wynne. I feel like my brain’s in a twist, trying to understand and I think friends – like you – who understand the nuances of what’s going on with technology have a finer sense of the nonsense with the cameras, the footage…it all sounds ‘sus’. The Reagan quote is so apt…and the fact that it’s a Russian proverb made me smile. I didn’t know that, but I bet your mom approves! 💝

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  10. This is very interesting Wynne and super timely. The tech experts said it wasn’t easy “finding” the footage on Nancy Guthrie’s camera because they had to uncover layers of data (or something like that) vs. having the subscription to pull it up easily. That feels to me like when they say you can delete something, but they can still find it, or Alexa may be suspect with data privacy. It’s pretty gray. I’m glad to hear that Microsoft actually respects the customers’ choices.

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    1. Love this comment, Melanie because you do such a great job of uncovering the gray. Perhaps they did have to dig for it — but the cynical side of me (that doesn’t come out very often) wonders if that was because they had to spend 10 days deciding whether they’d help or not. Because now that they’ve shown us they can, will Google go to the same lengths to “recover” footage in cases where it could be helpful to the families of people even if they aren’t so high profile?

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  11. I have been perturbed by the strangeness of this case. I sincerely hope they find her mom; the ordeal has been going on for quite a while now.

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  13. The whole Nancy Guthrie story bothers me for many reasons. One is the creepy video they have on her Nest camera and other cameras in the neighborhood. Who knew there were so many sketchy people out in yards at night. It reminds me of the homeless guy we had in Palm Springs. I ran across two videos of him from our Nest cameras the other day and it gave me the willies. I may make a blog post with them….

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  15. It is disturbing that we hand over so much of our data to these mega companies without really knowing what happens to it. I am mistrustful of Google, although I do have Gmail but don’t store anything there. I use Microsoft for most file storage. Maybe it’s because I worked for a company that used Microsoft, but it just feels more secure to me.

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  16. Oh Wynne, I haven’t stopped following it but it is just so sad. At this point, I’m losing hope. What great quotes. The whole thing is beyond me that they can do so much and yet they waited on the release I just don’t get it. I think soon we’ll be recorded where ever we are.. soooo scary. Good to know about Microsoft, for now.. sigh.. 😘

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