Voice Activation and Its Fundamental Disagreements with Privacy

-- By MattDial - 29 Nov 2019

It’s a trope of many science fiction movies, and seemingly necessary for any futuristic society. In many science fiction movies, having a voice-activated digital assistant is a staple of a futuristic society- the utopian vision of technology requires getting commands out of our hands and performed only by our voices. The modern realization of this idea, however, has come with myriad privacy concerns- namely that in order to activate such an assistant with your voice, it has to be listening. Herein I will look to whether such an assistant is possible within a legal framework prioritizing privacy.

The Current (Broad) Legal Framework

Assuming operation within a legal system prioritizing privacy is perhaps the first hurdle to overcome. We do not currently exist in an environmental law model for privacy of data, at least here in the United States. While the Supreme Court has recently stated that Fourth Amendment search-and-seizure concerns can apply to data-collecting such as cell-site location information, that data can still be accessed through a “probable cause” warrant. Carpenter v. US, 138 S. Ct. 2206 (2018). The voice data is still being collected by the tech companies developing these assistants. And with a slightly different makeup of justices on the Supreme Court, it is a distinct possibility that requirement could be relaxed so the data is even more easily accessible by law enforcement.

Outside of a law-enforcement or governmental interference context, there is the more general concern about our voice data being used or sold by the developers themselves. Apple and Google have denied taking part in this and there are internal options to turn off voice activation of their assistants. The centralization by these few companies and their reticence to address the underlying privacy concerns begs the more central question- is there any way to make this technology work without these privacy concerns?

Potential Solutions

Opting In

As the tech giants producing these products have had more of their eavesdropping habits exposed, they have begun to respond. But their baby steps exist in a field in need of huge leaps. Some of the giants have disclosed that human employees can review anything you say around the speakers, for purposes of refining the AI assistants. Amazon has said this aspect will be opt-in instead of opt-out, but this does not follow an ecosystem legal model of privacy, instead allowing for a waiver of rights affecting more than the individual speaker’s owner. If any guest in your home doesn’t want their words reviewed by an Amazon employee but you’ve opted in, too bad for them. Furthermore, it is unclear if not opting into the speaker or smart phone’s listening protocol would prevent third-party applications running through the device from discretely recording voice data on their own. What could help is a form of enforcement or oversight where the tech giants couldn’t allow third-party apps to access the microphones and cameras, beyond the current system of “we can terminate a developer’s system if we think they have impermissibly used user data”. They likely have this power now, but there is no incentive for them to investigate violations by third party apps or limit connection to their own servers.

The Kill-Switch

Another possible solution offered is a hardware “kill-switch,” where the microphone, camera, or internet connection within the device can be physically disconnected with a switch built into the product. But there are several issues with the implementation of this type of feature. Firstly, thus far this feature has been offered mostly in smart speakers, with some overtures to include them or a version of mic disconnection in future laptops from HP and Apple. But where such a feature would arguably be even more needed is smartphones, as they follow the users around more and are therefore a better target for collecting an all-inclusive picture of a user’s data. Secondly, these features borrow from the hardware developer Purism who developed kill-switches for its laptops starting in 2014. Purism’s implementation was a last-line defense to prevent hackers and malware from accessing these features, and ostensibly these switches in mainstream tech devices serve the same purpose. But most of the trust issues come from the developers of the devices themselves. Just look at Google’s Nest home security device, which contained a microphone that it failed to disclose to its consumers for two years. Consumers have to trust the less-than-trustworthy companies on the efficacy of their kill-switches. Lastly and most importantly, the kill-switch acts as a physical line of defense from unwanted listening and recording, but the switches undermine the entire purpose of a device taking commands from your voice. If you want to control the device with your voice, you would have to reconnect the microphone and send your voice data to the developer’s servers. The whole purpose of the device’s “functionality” is undermined by this protection. Perhaps that’s instructive on the wisdom of pursuing this type of technology.

Conclusion

Attempts to balance privacy concerns with the basic functions of a smart speaker or smart phone’s digital assistant fail with or without “protections”. As currently implemented, the products function as intended and track your voice data, but there is little to no privacy afforded. Activate a physical barrier like the kill-switch, however, and the product ceases to provide its stated function. The smart speaker or digital assistant is a design that cannot be compatible with any basic idea of secrecy or anonymity required for a private existence. They inherently listen to the substance of what you are saying to function, and companies from whom you might want protection can track your specific use of the device by virtue of your purchase and continued use. These concerns are baked into the very design of all these digital assistants, and there isn’t any current defense against them other than simply not using devices that contain them. Perhaps a future where digital AI assistants are ubiquitous is inevitable. But a future of controlling devices while also retaining our privacy likely cannot involve voice activation, and mechanical activation will have to stick around more than our science fiction predicted.

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