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Comment by jakevn | Hacker News Reader

Certainly, as long as the device does not trivialize the violation of those rights. If a car designed for road use by a human driver did not have a windshield to see out of, I'd say it is designed in a way to violate the rights of others.

Are Alexa and others designed to reasonably ensure only consenting users are being recorded?

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I have practically no doubt that Alexa and others are malevolently spying on their users, I hate to argue their case but I would like to be able to buy one if I wanted to.

Should I be allowed to buy a vehicle without a clear view of my surroundings if I only intend to use it on private land? Should I be allowed to buy a recording device with no privacy features if I intend to use it only in private? Does the potential harm produced by the availability of tools without bells and whistles for public safety outweigh the desires of users who would gladly pay for the bare-bones version and use it private?

I don't believe Alexa and others are malevolently spying, but if the data exists, you should expect nothing less than it to be public at some point, or at least be accessed by someone you'd not expect to share your life with.

You _should_ absolutely be allowed to buy a non-street legal vehicle to operate on private land. You _should_ be able to buy a recording device that has no privacy features. You should _not_ be able to sell a recording device that by default is streaming all audio all the time for common consumers without a big label saying "everything this device is within hearing distance of is now public data and you agree you are in violation of the law, where applicable, for using it".

We are no longer in the days where consumers can be expected to know what their devices are even capable of, let alone what rights are being trampled.

I mean, that is technically impossible? You have to record a voice to be able to analyze it to determine if the voice is of a person that consented.

This basically would outlaw ANY device that is voice activated, because it has to constantly be 'recording' to be able to be activated.

No, it's not. We can use facial recognition, we can use voice signatures. It doesn't even have to be recorded, as the device setup can record those signatures of consenting users and refuse to transmit or save any data that does not match those signatures.

Tell me, which of these do Alexa and the like perform?

Would it be more difficult? Yes! This is the reality for any company where rights and laws actually matter. If you can't abide, you can't release. Very simple.

Ok, you are using a different definition of recording than me. I would say your definition is "recorded and stored"

I was thinking that in order to fingerprint a voice, you have to "record" it to a digital format that you can process to determine if it is the user who has consented. Even if it is deleted after processing, it was still "recorded" for a few milliseconds at least.

Does the law as written make that distinction? Would recording locally to check a fingerprint not still break the law?

the law on "copying" was abused by the music industry to try to get royalties on the buffering in dismal music devices and computers. The law eventually caught up and now there is no copyright violation in transient cacheing and buffering. I imagine the same will eventually happen for de minimums "recording" used to figure out if you may record or not (e.g. face recognition, voice printing and the like).

You don't need to record it, or at least you only need to record locally the part being spoken while you're doing the analysis; if they've consented you upload the recorded section and then realtime info; if they aren't one that consented you discard the cached snippet and stop recording that person.

Right, but that is still recording, even if it is only temporary and local.

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