"Big Brother is watching you", the famous phrase goes. But this time, it might be listening. The latest news comes from Samsung, whose privacy policies for voice-activated smart TVs warn that any verbal expression, including those containing personal or sensitive information, will be transmitted to a third party for voice recognition processing. As expected, the Web is on fire.
Imagine for a moment everything you've said, and why not, done, in front of a television. Up to now, that had no major consequences because the TV was still the classic boob tube. However, times have changed, and so have televisions. Now we have smart devices that connect to the Web, download updates, and accept voice commands. The remote control is about to become obsolete, and the direct replacement is our own voice. Samsung offers some models with the ability to recognize words as commands. This implies a certain level of connectivity and data transfer, which leads one way or another to privacy policies. The folks at The Daily Beast took the trouble to investigate those policies more closely, and what they found there is simply disturbing: Samsung admits that anything we say in front of the TV, even if it is personal and/or confidential information, will be transmitted to a third party through voice recognition.
A few days later, that small entry in its privacy policies became a firestorm for Samsung. First, we don't fully know who that third party is, although it has been reported that its function is to convert voice to text. And second, additional information is being collected to evaluate the function's performance. Samsung's damage control has been extensive: Users can disable voice recognition and disconnect the unit from the Web, the TV indicates its status with an icon on the screen, transfers are encrypted, the data consists only of search commands, and it does not retain or sell this data to other companies.
The underlying truth is that voice recognition is here to stay. Apple, Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Motorola and various car manufacturers have products on the market with active recognition systems. But what really irritates here is the way Samsung publishes its warning. Basically it tells the user "be careful what you say in front of the television". An EFF activist compared the entry to a passage from "1984", and it sends chills down our spine. The Korean giant rejected all the Orwellian accusations, calling them an exaggeration, but the story seems far from over. Is this just another effect of modern times, or have companies like Samsung gone too far? Comments are open.
The Daily Beast
