Delhi, Jun 30: A Parliamentary Standing Committee on Information Technology, focused on the need to protect the rights of internet users of India is currently questioning tech giants like Google, Facebook, Twitter, etc. on their privacy policies.
In a deposition today, Google admitted that when users say “Hello, Google” on their smartphones or speakers, it is not just AI that listens to what the users are saying. Some Google employees listen in too.
The Parliamentary Standing Committee has members from all parties and is headed by Mr. Shashi Tharoor.
In response to a specific question by Shri Nishikant Dubey, Member of Parliament from Godda (Jharkhand), Google admitted that:
- When users use “Hello, Google” to activate their voice based smart search, employees do listen in to what is being said.
- In some cases, voice is recorded even when Google’s voice search is not activated.
- Google said that sensitive information is not heard, but could not indicate how it identifies ‘sensitive’ information.
4. Google did not mention why employees listen in on user conversations.
Why is this important?
- Google’s Terms of Service clearly mention that audio recordings will be stored. But they do not say that humans will listen to these recordings.
- Google mentions that data will be shared with third parties only with users’ consent. But user experience has been different. Users see ads related to something they have searched on Google on all other platforms, sometimes almost immediately.In 2019, Google was found listening in on conversations of European users. At that time, Google had apologised and promised to correct its processes. Apparently, that has not happened.Amazon’s Alexa also listens in on user conversations even when Alexa has not been activated. These conversations are also recorded and heard by Amazon employees at random.
