There are reports that a lawsuit filed against Amazon’s Alexa voice assistant. The lawsuit claims that the voice assistant from Amazon is illegally recording the children without consent. According to the lawsuit, Amazon’s Alexa voice assistant “routinely records and voiceprints millions of children without their consent or the consent of their parents,”.
This, according to the lawsuit filers, is against the law in 9 states of the United States. Now, we have also received reports previously blaming Amazon’s Alexa voice assistant for hearing people’s conversations and sending them to its servers.
According to the lawsuit claimant, the lawsuits were filed on behalf of two children, one 8 years old and other 10 years old, from California and Massachusetts respectively. The lawsuit claims that they seek damages under the privacy laws of nine states which are California, Florida, Illinois, Michigan, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, and Washington.
As per the law, it is illegal in these 9 states’ privacy laws to record children without the consent of their parents. “What all nine have in common is they are what’s known as two-party consent states,” Keller Lekner who filed the lawsuit says.
He adds that “An audio recording of a conversation or of another person requires the consent of both sides to that interaction in these states and when such consent is not obtained these state laws contain penalties, including set amounts of statutory damages per violation.”
In the lawsuit, it is claimed that “a permanent recording of the user’s voice” is recorded and saved by Amazon’s Alexa voice assistant. Also, when the “wake word” for Alexa is uttered then the voice assistant start recording everything and transmits clips of recording. Alexa also does not ask for the consent beforehand as well as does not bother to notify that permanent recording will be created, according to the lawsuit.