Smart Home Tech, Police, and Your Privacy: Year in Review 2019
upstart writes in with an IRC submission for Runaway1956:
Smart Home Tech, Police, and Your Privacy: Year in Review 2019:
If 2019 confirmed anything, it is that we should not trust the microphones and cameras that large corporations sell us to put inside and near our homes. Thanks to the due diligence of reporters, public records requesters, and privacy researchers and activists, consumers have been learning more and more about how these "smart" home technologies can be hacked, exploited, or utilized by the police and other law enforcement agencies.
Because many technologies that record audio and video store their data on a cloud maintained by the company, police can gain access to stored content by presenting a warrant to those companies-bypassing consumers altogether. For instance, in November, police in Florida obtained a warrant for the recordings from an Amazon Echo that may have overheard a crime. This means that whether people think their Alexa is listening or not, their Alexa could be listening. Because Amazon stores and maintains that data, things said in the device's presence can be made accessible to police via a warrant presented to the company.
Law enforcement's access isn't the only concern associated with smart speakers. Researchers recently learned you could hack an Alexa or Google Home by shooting a laser at it.
In 2019, however, no piece of household tech has worried privacy advocates more than Amazon's surveillance doorbell, Ring.
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