
Amazon Alexa Secretly Records Children, Lawsuits Allege - gexos
https://threatpost.com/amazon-alexa-secretly-records-children/145708/
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crazygringo
I mean, not secretly. Amazon is very explicit that it saves recordings of all
commands for training and personalization -- you can even manually review and
delete them, or disable them completely.

And obviously if you have your children speak to Alexa, it will record them
too. Same with visitors in your home. It's not a secret... it's how it works.

Alexa does support voice profiles. But it's certainly not perfect -- voice
identification can be hard even for _people_ to do (depending on similarity),
_and_ there's a huge leap from distinguishing _between_ pre-identified voices,
versus determining if a voice _is_ one of those and not one of billions of
other people. And there's _certainly_ no magic way to analyze a voice a
determine that it's 12 (not allowed) or 13 (allowed).

So I'm not exactly sure what this lawsuit intends to change?

The only thing I can imagine is perhaps to allow disabling voice recordings
per voice profile, so you can create a voice profile of your child and then do
that -- but intriguingly, Amazon says voice profiles can only be created for
users 13+, so there's presumably something legal here.

But really, if you don't want your kids (or visitors) using Alexa, either tell
them not to use it, or don't have one in the first place. I really can't see
how this is up to anyone other than the parents?

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jsty
"but intriguingly, Amazon says voice profiles can only be created for users
13+, so there's presumably something legal here"

Presumably if they're banned from storing and processing the information of
under-13s, that includes doing so for the purposes of identifying that
individual as under-13.

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ronsor
well then, that's simply an impossible condition (if you can't find out
whether they're under 13, then you can't comply, and if you do try to find
out, you aren't complying: there's no way out)

~~~
toomuchtodo
Throw out audio for any non registered profile.

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freehunter
Important to note that if this allegation is true, it means Alexa is recording
_everyone_ and storing it indefinitely, not just children. The lawsuit just
says children because children have more privacy protections than adults so
it's easier to win a case when children's rights are being violated.

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Johnny555
I'm not sure you can call a documented feature of the product an "allegation".
Its well known that Amazon saves voice recordings that the devices capture
after the wake word.

[https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=...](https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=201602230)

[https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=...](https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=201602040)

[https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/talkingtech/2018/05/28/h...](https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/talkingtech/2018/05/28/how-
listen-what-amazon-alexa-has-recorded-your-home/649814002/)

Though I also don't see how Amazon is responsible when parents put a recording
device like the Echo, a Nest Cam, a recording baby monitor, a Ring Doorbell,
etc in the home and it ends up recording a child.

~~~
davnicwil
I completely agree with you that having an Alexa in your home means you must
accept that _your_ (i.e. you, the registered user) voice commands are being
stored indefinitely.

But to be fair, there is a distinction here. That is, if you're not the
registered Alexa user and you're not the one who agreed to the usage terms,
shouldn't Amazon try to recognise that your voice is different and _not_ store
your voice commands? It's clear they have the recognition tech to do this. I'd
say it's a pretty reasonable expectation.

Even if you posit that consent is implicit in using Alexa (i.e. if you use a
friend's, for example, in making that choice you're consenting to Amazon
storing your voice command) - something that's debatable but certainly within
reason - I'd say you definitely can't extend this to children, who simply
can't be expected to even know what this means let alone understand the
implications.

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koolba
(IANAL but...) I’m pretty sure it’s legal to record anything within your own
home if you’re the one that set it up. That’d cover placing devices that
delegate that recording to Amazon.

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darkpuma
> _California 's wiretapping law is a "two-party consent" law. California
> makes it a crime to record or eavesdrop on any confidential communication,
> including a private conversation or telephone call, without the consent of
> all parties to the conversation. See Cal. Penal Code § 632. The statute
> applies to "confidential communications" \-- i.e., conversations in which
> one of the parties has an objectively reasonable expectation that no one is
> listening in or overhearing the conversation._

~~~
koolba
Communication (say over the phone) is different than recording within the four
walls of your home.

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zorpner
This is addressed in the comment to which you are replying by the
prepositional phrase "including a private conversation".

~~~
koolba
That’s interesting. I’d have imagined it to be superseded by the castle
doctrine.

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User23
I’d imagine more of an implied consent angle. In any event the truly paranoid
can just put a small notice on the door.

~~~
dodobirdlord
It's sort of a chicken-and-egg scenario. Once someone tells you that there's
an active recording device it's no longer a "confidential communication"
because you no longer have an "objectively reasonable expectation that no one
is listening in or overhearing the conversation". You don't have to stop
recording just because someone wants you to stop, you just can't do it without
being upfront about it. Home assistant devices are common enough (ads in the
superbowl!) that I imagine a judge would consider the physical presence of the
device as being reasonable indication that there is no "objectively reasonable
expectation that no one is listening in or overhearing the conversation".

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idlewords
It's an always-on Internet connected home microphone. What do people think it
is doing?

~~~
mikeash
That description fits your cell phone too, except it’s “everywhere you go”
rather than “home.” Do you expect it to record you?

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idlewords
The cell phone is not voice activated. That said, I do expect the worst of it.

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saagarjha
Isn’t that literally what “Hey Siri”, “Ok Google”, etc. are?

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tptacek
You can (and probably should) disable Siri on an iPhone and the phone works
just great without it.

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LMYahooTFY
The critical question clearly seems to be what evidence do the plaintiffs
have?

Presumably, the plaintiffs could at the least have records of various
advertising that is uncannily targeting related subject matter to what the
children may have been consuming and outputting, though I wonder how they
could prove that the children didn't inadvertently activate Alexa and provide
this data. Perhaps that is enough to subpoena Amazon?

It seems like the marketing industry will be at the front line of the battle
over what age is enough to give your own consent in many aspects of life, and
I personally am standing on the other side of that line.

I hear that some scandanavian regions have laws prohibiting adverters from
targeting children, and I wonder how tech companies will deal with such
restrictions.

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roywiggins
No, they're talking about the recordings made when people say the wake word.
People, especially children, probably don't know that this recordings are
stored indefinitely: “At no point does Amazon warn unregistered users that it
is creating persistent voice recordings of their Alexa interactions, let alone
obtain their consent to do so.”

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tmp2846
Someone in my network who is in marketing at Alexa accidentally linked to one
of these articles instead of an internal blog announcing a new feature for
kids.

