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posted by fyngyrz on Sunday April 01 2018, @06:11PM   Printer-friendly
from the IGNORE-ME dept.

Submitted via IRC for fyngyrz

There is patent activity afoot to cover Alexa and Google Assistant mining for more than activation words:

Amazon and Google, the leading sellers of such devices, say the assistants record and process audio only after users trigger them by pushing a button or uttering a phrase like "Hey, Alexa" or "O.K., Google." But each company has filed patent applications, many of them still under consideration, that outline an array of possibilities for how devices like these could monitor more of what users say and do. That information could then be used to identify a person's desires or interests, which could be mined for ads and product recommendations.

For many, this could change the landscape as to whether these devices are acceptable. It may also open the door wider for open-source, less invasive devices such as Mycroft.


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  • (Score: 2) by MrGuy on Tuesday April 03 2018, @12:53AM

    by MrGuy (1007) on Tuesday April 03 2018, @12:53AM (#661736)

    Nope. Not how the wiretap act works.

    What you're arguing is that an EULA would be sufficient to constitute "consent." That's not how consent works in this context - there's significant precedent that "consent" must be express, and not implied. It specifically can NOT be buried in terms and conditions. There must be a specific act of consent. Again, consider my example of the recording you hear all the time of "This call may be recorded for training and quality purposes." They have to give you that express notice at the time of the recording. "You already consented to this before" doesn't count. There are a lot of purposes for which implied consent, or consent as part of an EULA, might be binding. This isn't one of them. See below:
    https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/2017/04/06/the-fccs-broadband-privacy-regulations-are-gone-but-dont-forget-about-the-wiretap-act/?utm_term=.fbe6034bbdb4 [washingtonpost.com]
    https://www.cdt.org/files/privacy/20080708ISPtraffic.pdf [cdt.org]

    And even if implicit consent in an EULA was sufficient, that's insufficient in any state where ALL parties to a conversation must consent. I might have given implicit consent to allow Amazon to listen in to my conversations. If you come over to my house, you have not given that consent. Recording that conversation without your consent would fall afoul of the law. It's the burden of the person being recorded to obtain consent - Amazon can't pawn off on my the responsibility to obtain your consent.

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