Professor Joel Reidenberg, the founding academic director for the Center on Law and Information Policy, was quoted in a CNN article regarding the clash between investigators seeking technology-based evidence and the privacy rights of citizens.
Joel Reidenberg, the founding academic director for Fordham University’s Center for Law and Information Policy, told CNN it’s the first such case he’s seen, but he isn’t surprised that smart speakers are already the subject of a court battle.
While some might argue that voice technology such as Echo, Siri or Google Home, which assist users with queries and tasks, come with a different expectation of privacy than, say, social media postings or Internet searches, Reidenberg said he feels such an attitude is naive.
“I think Amazon is likely going to lose that motion if it goes up the chain of appellate courts,” he said.
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“How is that any different from you sitting at your keyboard typing?” Reidenberg asked.
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Weber is adamant in her assertion that devices like the Echo are designed to make life easier around the home and “shouldn’t be used against you.” While Fordham’s Reidenberg understands the sentiment, he expects attitudes to change as the devices become more ubiquitous. We’ve already witnessed it with mobile phones, he said.
“We haven’t yet seen, but we will see, the same kind of things happening with these voice-activated home devices,” he said, predicting the content of smart speakers will soon be regularly featured in divorce cases. “These are the perfect surveillance devices, if they aren’t treated with care.”
Another question, he said, is how a device that’s “always listening” processes what it hears. Sure, Amazon says the Echo records only after users utter the wake word, but, Reidenberg asks, will that always be the case?
“That could change tomorrow,” he said. “That’s just today’s architecture for it.”