Alexa and Google Home: A Whole New Can Of Worms

Most of us feel safe in the supposed anonymity the internet provides. And while it may seem like a place where there is little consequence for the things we do or say, the reality is very much the opposite. All of your data isn't just floating around somewhere, it's all taken note of and connected back to you by corporations who profit from it. We are approaching a surveillance state, only our version is one that is controlled by corporations rather than an Orwellian government.

As the Amazon Echo, commonly known as Alexa, and Google Home have become more common across the country, people have experienced this surveillance in a far more direct way. As convenient as these devices can be, some of their features can be a little off-putting. Because these devices need to be constantly listening to everything that occurs in your home in order to function, they have raised serious privacy concerns. While consumers can mute their device, doing so prevents it from processing commands, rendering it essentially useless.

Google claims that any speech that isn't processed only stays on the device locally for a short period of time before being deleted, and both Amazon and Google allow consumers to delete speech records through their Amazon/Google accounts. However, the companies still record a huge amount of data on what the device hears in order to improve the interface, allowing the devices to better help you. Everything that is spoken after the keywords “Okay Google/Hey Alexa” is recorded and eventually analyzed. Though this may not seem any worse than websites collecting information about your actions on the internet, we would do well to remember how problematic that can be. Based on what users shop for, ask questions about, who they interact with, and what music they listen to, websites build profiles about their users. Even if users give falsified information about things such as age or location, interactions with the website and with other people on the site often reveal the truth. Previously, only social media sites like Facebook or Twitter had access to enough information about their users to build such accurate profiles of who they are. However, with the rise of Home and Echo, both Google and Amazon now have the opportunity to compile these kinds of profiles on their users.

A huge issue with this collection of information is that these profiles can and have been used maliciously. Prior to the 2016 election, Facebook had provided a platform for fake news stories which often influenced undecided voters. These new stories and the effect they had on the audience Facebook gave them is believed to be one of the many reasons why President Donald Trump won the election. But many of us never realized this was even happening until after the election, because Facebook targeted these stories at voters who were undecided.

When companies pay websites to run their advertisements, they often ask them to be presented to a certain demographic which is more likely to take an interest in their products. Because the website has built up profiles of each of its users, singling out specific groups isn’t difficult. It isn’t that sites like Facebook or Google are selling your information to other parties; rather, they are using that information to control what is advertised to you as an individual. This can be extremely damaging, not only in situations like the last presidential election, but also because it sustains the structural racism that is inherent in our society. As Danah Boyd, a principal researcher at Microsoft Research, put it in a lecture, “[Societal] inequity gets baked in[to the internet].”

A good example of this is the research done by Harvard University Professor Latanya Sweeney, who in a study titled “Discrimination in Online Ad Delivery” found that a lot of the advertisements shown to her when she looked herself up on Google “were for companies offering criminal record background checks with titles like: ‘Latanya Sweeney, Arrested?’” This was implying that just because her name “sounded black” she likely had a criminal record. However, when Sweeney searched up more “white-sounding names,” she noticed that the advertisements Google presented made no mention of a criminal record or anything remotely related to one. Google made this assumption based solely on a name; with the information Google Home collects, Google has the potential to push far more targeted and discriminatory advertisements towards its users. Google and the companies who buy advertisements from Google are not deliberately being racist, but by pushing their advertisements towards certain demographics, they are perpetuating racial stereotypes.

Amazon, on the other hand, doesn’t pose the same kind of danger as Google because they maintain themselves by selling products rather than ads. But regardless of whether or not these profiles have already been used maliciously, the issue is the fact that they exist at all. These are companies who compile all sorts of information on their users, and whether or not they use it, that is still an invasion of privacy. At the moment, the public’s concerns revolve around Home and Echo listening in when they shouldn’t be. This concern is misdirected in that while users’ privacy is certainly something to be concerned about, it isn’t the main problem. The fact that users actively give away a huge amount of personal information through interactions with Home and Echo, all of which are used to build a profile on the user, is a far more pressing issue.

Every day we move towards a world where the surveillance of our every interaction with technology is inevitable. “Hiding” from Google and Amazon is arduous and rather pointless, because it diminishes the usefulness of their products. It is our responsibility as a society to define what Google and Amazon can and cannot use our data for. After all, the goal of these companies is to make money, irrespective of their impact on our society, so we have to be the ones to force regulation upon them. And while government regulation of extensive companies such as these would be difficult, it is also necessary in order to protect our privacy. It isn’t impossible, considering that the government already regulates who can access your medical records; it certainly has the power to regulate access to the rest of our personal information. Corporations need to be prevented from using user information maliciously, which includes using profiles that allow advertisers to single out and target certain demographics. Advertising based on past actions such as buying products and visiting certain websites is not harmful. But gathering information and using it to make assumptions about things such as race, gender, political views, and age, and then using that to target a certain audience definitely has the potential to be harmful, and should not be allowed to continue. While we cannot avoid this huge amount of user information being collected, the government can and must regulate it in order to preserve our privacy.