IN THE NEWS - Amazon's Alexa
Alexa (don’t read aloud) is listening … and recording … and sharing. To be clear, at the time I am writing this, that statement has yet to be proven in two cases filed in Massachusetts.
More specifically, on February 25, 2021, the law offices of Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan LLP and Keller Lenkner LLC filed separate actions in Suffolk Superior Court on behalf of two Massachusetts residents who allege Amazon recorded, retained, reviewed and released their communications without their consent. In describing the nature of their claims, the Plaintiffs allege:
“While encouraging people to speak with Alexa, Amazon is recording every conversation she has with users. What’s more, Amazon also records conversations when no one is speaking with Alexa. Amazon makes these so-called ‘false-wake’ recordings when a user says a word that sounds like ‘Alexa’ or another wake word – for example, Alexa will activate when a person says the word ‘election.’”
The complaints go on to allege that Alexa is one of the ways Amazon collects raw data on consumers and that Amazon designed Alexa devices to record and store the private conversations it captures through “false wakes” just as they do conversations with Alexa, even though users do not intend to activate Alexa with “false wakes”, resulting in
“thousands, if not tens of thousands, of permanent recordings in its database of not only the device owner’s voice but also the voices of their family members and anyone else who has ever spoken in a device’s presence” and a “massive database of billions of voice recordings containing the private details of millions of Americans.”
It may be difficult to imagine a database of that magnitude, but consider further – in January of 2019, Amazon reported having sold over 100 million total devices with Alexa pre-installed.
The plaintiffs further allege what I imagine most readers have already suspected:
“Amazon in turn discloses the Alexa recordings to some unknown number of Amazon employees and contractors around the world, who use Alexa recordings to improve and develop new technologies for Amazon,” including making “targeted advertisements based on what is said, or to hear when a person is sick to it can suggest purchasing cough drops.”
Massachusetts law prohibits the recording of a person who has not given prior authority to be recorded. While Amazon alleges it obtains consent through the terms and conditions of use for an Alexa-enabled device, the Plaintiffs allege they did not consent to be recorded:
“Amazon does not obtain actual consent to record users’ voices[,] … does note tell Alexa users it will keep an audio recording of everything they ask …[,] does not tell users that their voice will be stored and exploited for Amazon’s benefit … [and] could disclose these things and ask users to explicitly agree to them but it does not.”
Taking on Amazon will be no easy feat. I have no doubt that a great deal of time, money and emotional energy will be poured into these cases. The Plaintiffs and their attorneys knew this before they filed their complaints. But file them they did and we express our gratitude to them for doing so. In bringing these claims forward, they are seeking to protect not only their own privacy rights, but those of every resident of Massachusetts.
Written by: Michael P. Holden