6 ms·

Amazon Alexa Secretly Records Children, Lawsuits Allege

93 points by gexos 7y ago

freehunter 7y ago
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.
- devoply 7y ago
  Did you read the article? That is not what the lawsuit is saying at all. And it would be pretty trivial to figure out if Alexa was recording all the time by putting a sniffer on your network and seeing how much data is being transmitted to the cloud when Alex is on vs. when Alexa is listening to you. Alexa on board does not have the tech to convert speech to text, it sends all the audio to the cloud for that.
  - freehunter 7y ago
    I think you misread my comment.
- Johnny555 7y ago
  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=201602230 https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=... https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=201602040 https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=... https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/talkingtech/2018/05/28/how-listen-what-amazon-alexa-has-recorded-your-home/649814002/ https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/talkingtech/2018/05/28/h... 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.
  - hunter2_ 7y ago
    Plastic bag packaging often says "keep away from children" and maybe privacy invasions should too. You might say there's a big difference in that one is life safety and the other isn't, but there's plenty of non-life-safety messaging applied to products such as "not for street use" on car mods affecting emissions in California. I mean I guess that's life safety at a macro level but then privacy invasions could be too. I think the car part manufacturer could be liable if they don't present a reasonable effort to keep the use of their products well contained.
    - daveFNbuck 7y ago
      The difference here is that the illegal part requires active ongoing support from Amazon. If these devices all communicated with a central hub located in the home that was owned and controlled by the user, I think this would be viewed very differently. Similarly, I don't think a car mod company could plausibly argue their mods weren't for street use if they had cloud support and GPS access but didn't make any effort to go into a street-legal mode when driving on public roads.
      - sokoloff 7y ago
        “Legal in California only for off-highway use” is a dodge of the law (at least in the intent of the law, though perhaps not in the fact) for at least 95% of products so labeled.
        daveFNbuck 7y ago
        My point is that the dodge wouldn't work if the company had to actively assist in making the product work on a highway and had enough data to determine that the product was being used on a highway. The dodge relies on customers being in control of whether the law is broken. You can buy any of these products and use them only in a car that you tow between locations where it's legal to use. The dodge works because the company can't tell whether that's what you're doing.
LMYahooTFY 7y ago
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.
- roywiggins 7y ago
  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.”
tmp2846 7y ago
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.
idlewords 7y ago
It's an always-on Internet connected home microphone. What do people think it is doing?
- mikeash 7y ago
  That description fits your cell phone too, except it’s “everywhere you go” rather than “home.” Do you expect it to record you?
  - idlewords 7y ago
    The cell phone is not voice activated. That said, I do expect the worst of it.
    - mikeash 7y ago
      Not that you know of....
    - btgeekboy 7y ago
      It can be. Both as a user-activated and potentially remotely via a security vulnerability.
    - giancarlostoro 7y ago
      Every smartphone has access some sort of assistant whether its Siri, Google, Alexa or even Cortana. Some of those come out of the box with annoying defaults.
    - saagarjha 7y ago
      Isn’t that literally what “Hey Siri”, “Ok Google”, etc. are?
      - tptacek 7y ago
        You can (and probably should) disable Siri on an iPhone and the phone works just great without it.
  - 7y ago
crazygringo 7y ago
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?
- jsty 7y ago
  "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.
  - ronsor 7y ago
    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 7y ago
      Throw out audio for any non registered profile.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

93 points by gexos 7y ago

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.

devoply 7y ago
Did you read the article? That is not what the lawsuit is saying at all. And it would be pretty trivial to figure out if Alexa was recording all the time by putting a sniffer on your network and seeing how much data is being transmitted to the cloud when Alex is on vs. when Alexa is listening to you. Alexa on board does not have the tech to convert speech to text, it sends all the audio to the cloud for that.
- freehunter 7y ago
  I think you misread my comment.
Johnny555 7y ago
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=201602230 https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=... https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=201602040 https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=... https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/talkingtech/2018/05/28/how-listen-what-amazon-alexa-has-recorded-your-home/649814002/ https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/talkingtech/2018/05/28/h... 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.
- hunter2_ 7y ago
  Plastic bag packaging often says "keep away from children" and maybe privacy invasions should too. You might say there's a big difference in that one is life safety and the other isn't, but there's plenty of non-life-safety messaging applied to products such as "not for street use" on car mods affecting emissions in California. I mean I guess that's life safety at a macro level but then privacy invasions could be too. I think the car part manufacturer could be liable if they don't present a reasonable effort to keep the use of their products well contained.
  - daveFNbuck 7y ago
    The difference here is that the illegal part requires active ongoing support from Amazon. If these devices all communicated with a central hub located in the home that was owned and controlled by the user, I think this would be viewed very differently. Similarly, I don't think a car mod company could plausibly argue their mods weren't for street use if they had cloud support and GPS access but didn't make any effort to go into a street-legal mode when driving on public roads.
    - sokoloff 7y ago
      “Legal in California only for off-highway use” is a dodge of the law (at least in the intent of the law, though perhaps not in the fact) for at least 95% of products so labeled.
      - daveFNbuck 7y ago
        My point is that the dodge wouldn't work if the company had to actively assist in making the product work on a highway and had enough data to determine that the product was being used on a highway. The dodge relies on customers being in control of whether the law is broken. You can buy any of these products and use them only in a car that you tow between locations where it's legal to use. The dodge works because the company can't tell whether that's what you're doing.

LMYahooTFY 7y ago

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.

roywiggins 7y ago
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.”

tmp2846 7y ago

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.

idlewords 7y ago

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

mikeash 7y ago
That description fits your cell phone too, except it’s “everywhere you go” rather than “home.” Do you expect it to record you?
- idlewords 7y ago
  The cell phone is not voice activated. That said, I do expect the worst of it.
  - mikeash 7y ago
    Not that you know of....
  - btgeekboy 7y ago
    It can be. Both as a user-activated and potentially remotely via a security vulnerability.
  - giancarlostoro 7y ago
    Every smartphone has access some sort of assistant whether its Siri, Google, Alexa or even Cortana. Some of those come out of the box with annoying defaults.
  - saagarjha 7y ago
    Isn’t that literally what “Hey Siri”, “Ok Google”, etc. are?
    - tptacek 7y ago
      You can (and probably should) disable Siri on an iPhone and the phone works just great without it.
- 7y ago

crazygringo 7y ago

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?

jsty 7y ago
"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.
- ronsor 7y ago
  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 7y ago
    Throw out audio for any non registered profile.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]