Sharing with law enforcement
One area of concern is the potential for putting the ears of law enforcement in our homes, schools and workplaces. Apple has a history of resisting FBI requests for user data, and Twitter is relatively transparent about reporting on how it responds to requests from governments. “Ring customers decide whether to share footage in response to asks from local police investigating cases. Local police are not able to see any information related to which Ring users received a request and whether they declined to share or opt out of future requests.” They added that although local police can access Ring’s Neighbors app for reporting criminal and suspicious activity, they cannot see or access user account information.
Tracking health issues
The crudeness and glitches of algorithmic advertising would violate the professional and moral standards that health services strive to maintain. Plus it would be highly invasive to treat the data in the same way many Echo recordings are. Would you want a random external contractor to know you were asking for sexual health advice?
Transparency
So if you have an Echo in your home, what should you do? There are many tips available on how to make the device more private, such as setting voice recordings to automatically delete or limiting what data is shared with third parties. But smart tech is almost always surveillance tech, and the best piece of advice is not to bring one into your home. This article has been amended to make clear the “Ask the Listeners” function is an art project created by a third party. This article is republished from The Conversation by Garfield Benjamin, Postdoctoral Researcher, School of Media Arts and Technology, Solent University under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
