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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70 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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      1. You’ve inspired me, Wynne, to create a page on my site that tracks AI issues that affect children and writers.

        AI executives decide based on their selfish reasons, seldom for altruistic purposes. The potential and actual harm grows daily. However, few take the time to understand the technology or impact.

        Despite the hype and promises of productivity, AI steals copyrighted material, kills creativity, and ruins reputations.

        We don’t have to watch a science-fiction movie to sense there will be a day of reckoning.

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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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  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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      1. OpenAI is now in the news in Canada because of a school shooter and his ChatGPT activities prior to carrying out their act. I think big tech has a social responsibility to intervene in situations when personal safety is at risk.

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      2. Oh, that’s fascinating. I just read Proving Ground by Michael Connelly. Even though it’s fiction (a legal thriller), he did a great job arguing that big tech does bear responsibility! I’m so sorry about the school shooting. So surprising and sad to see it on your side of the border.

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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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      1. I’m so sorry for the family and that they don’t have any answers. In our case, the police told us that our homeless guy wasn’t dangerous. But who knows? They may not be dangerous until they are. I’m so grateful to be out of that situation.

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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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  17. The Guthrie case is so tragic and baffling, isn’t it?

    I’m with Mark; I just assume everything’s being recorded now, especially with how cheap data storage is.. When I first started dating Dr. Zeus, who used to work in IT, he showed me how Google Maps had logged everywhere I’d ever been, and that was 13 years ago. I deleted Google, Facebook, and most of the rest soon after and am hugely skeptical of everything now.

    Most of our friends in tech or AI use dumb phones or open-source systems. They know how valuable our data is and don’t trust big companies to handle it responsibly. When you say, “Hey, Alexa,” how does the device know you’re calling? 👀

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  19. I like Simon Sinek. I watch podcasts where he is the interviewee.

    With AI, everything now seems advance, and sometimes complex. Sometimes, I dislike verification, but very important indeed.

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  21. I want desperately for Nancy to be found.
    And it was unsettling that video could be pulled up despite her choosing not to record anything.
    Like many of your other commentors have said, companies don’t respect privacy, and we have to assume nothing is private.

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  22. Great and interesting post. Well, I have a doorbell camera, and I don’t have a subscription, but I’m able to keep at least a month’s worth of snapshots. I don’t have all the details, but maybe that’s what they have.

    What you said about meetings is so important—not just for companies, but for regular people like us. If the service is free, I don’t trust it. Back in the day, our online meetings were conducted on a portion of the cloud that we owned. Even though the space was provided by Amazon or Microsoft, we were responsible for managing it, including disaster recovery, and they were not authorized to see the contents of that bucket unless they had clearance.

    I’m not sure if private or public companies operate the same way, but I would assume the operation is similar. If not, I wouldn’t enter into an agreement with them. The same goes for email—if it’s free, I don’t trust how they handle privacy. There is a huge difference when you’re paying for services.

    Thank you for bringing up this important subject, especially with everything we are witnessing these days.

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    1. You make such an important point about paying for services, Edward. With Microsoft, if you are a paid user, you receive end-user data protection. With that, they will not use your data to train the model and prevent prompt injection (of marketing material). They even provide some level of search security.

      But I’m seeing that users are not necessarily tuned in to what accounts they are signed in as – whether it’s their paid or a free account.

      It’s another level of awareness that we need to cue in to.

      Thanks so much for the thoughtful and helpful comment, my friend!

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      1. You’re very welcome, my friend. If users are not paying attention to their login and authentication, then that’s definitely no bueno. It’s always great to chat with you. As a matter of fact, I read an article in the WSJ this morning about oversharing, and it immediately reminded me of you and your first podcast.

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  23. I don’t know how technology and the people propigating it can be reigned in, given the speed with which change and “advancement” is occurring. Perhaps future generations will marvel that humans ever enjoyed privacy at all.

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  24. I saw a recently retired high ranking fbi agent being interviewed on msn about how this came about. I’ll do my best to retell what he said.

    as you said, she had a nest camera but did not have a subscription, so there absolutely should not have been any video of it available anywhere. that being said, someone contacted someone very high up at google who is a former navy seal, an expert involved in ‘dark operations’ who was able to access a recording of what was on her camera on an unknown location on the web. this is why there was a delay and why it took so long to come out. even the fbi agent seemed to express some dismay about how this could be available as far as privacy/access rights. he also said, now that they knew this was possible, they might also ask the neighbors to access their camera footage in the same way even if they don’t have subscriptions. think about the Super Bowl commercial with the ring camera that can find your lost dog in a day, but also can track a human in the same way.

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    1. Interesting. Love having you add that perspective. The capabilities are amazing and I wish it would lead to a good outcome in this case. Your point about accessing the other neighbors cameras is so fascinating!

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  27. You raise several important questions, particularly regarding question number three.

    I recently discussed the use of AI in medical charting with my students and colleagues. While I recognize its efficiency, I am concerned about inaccuracies that could remain in a patient’s record throughout their life. Additionally, I have significant concerns regarding data privacy and storage, specifically where this sensitive health information is kept and whether it is ever truly deleted. Thanks for giving us something to think about

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