California bill bans data storage and sharing with third parties
A hotly debated bill is currently being considered in California that could spell bad news for all smart speaker manufacturers. According to this, Google, Amazon, Apple and Co will no longer be allowed to store any audio recordings from their devices in the future.
This is also intended to prevent the relevant data from being passed on to third parties. Exceptions are only possible if users expressly agree to storage and further processing, it is said.
“People don’t read contracts.”
“This bill in the USA is basically aimed at something that is already regulated in the current data protection regulation in Europe,”
Hans Zeger, chairman of Arge Data , explains in an interview with pressetext.
In the EU, smart speaker systems can only be operated based on a contractual agreement or the express consent of the user.
“If I want to get an Alexa or Siri, I sign a contract. It states that in order to ensure the performance of the product, data must be stored in the cloud or passed on to third parties.
explains the expert.
The problem is that the vast majority of consumers do not deal with the details of these contracts.
“People just don’t read it carefully. These are very important parts of the contract,”
says Zeger. But more sensitivity is needed in this context not only among the users of such devices, but also among the manufacturers.
“These passages must be clearly highlighted in the contract texts. I have my doubts that this will actually be done,”
said the data protection officer.
Recent revelations about Amazon
“Recent revelations about certain companies employing employees to listen in on private conversations through networked speakers have reinforced why stricter laws are needed to protect our privacy,”
“TechXplore” quotes California Representative Jordan Cunningham, who introduced the current bill.
The background is as follows: Last month it was leaked that Amazon had its employees listen to recorded user commands and even type them out in order to improve the Alexa assistance software's own voice recognition.
“We only annotate an extremely small number of interactions from a random group of customers to improve the user experience,”
the US trading giant justified itself.
Notes:
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