Alexa, tell me more!

0
320

Can Siri and Alexa help in crime investigation? The Minister of the interior of Union and SPD want to allow recordings of the language assistant as evidence in court. But privacy advocates warn of abuse.

Watch the Video
01:58

Share

Speaker-Bugging?

Send

Facebook

Twitter

google+

Tumblr

VZ

Xing

Newsvine

Digg

Permalink https://p.dw.com/p/3KO3w

Alexa helps in the fight against crime?

The devices look according to the weather report, play on the desire to the favourite music and to remind you of appointments – all on demand. Hot Alexa and Siri, and they are protectors of the dream of every totalitarian government, and the nightmare of data people deliver with your Internet-connected voice assistant and “smart” refrigerators, TVs, or alarm systems the life of every day, valuable data on your private. Who has access to you and thoroughly evaluate know almost everything about the life of the user: their habits, preferences, opinions, contacts, and possible criminal offences. The Minister of the interior, who see it as a Chance to emphasize at least.

The law enforcement authorities must be according to the documents, the Minister of the interior in the situation, “to detect the digital traces to secure and evaluate”, to prevent crime or to educate. It is also an access to the data of Smart-Home devices, had recently admitted a spokesman for the Federal interior Ministry.

Distributed In the USA

The Opposition and privacy advocates have major concerns. Marco Buschmann, Parliamentary Secretary of the FDP group in the Bundestag, speaks of a possible “excessive intrusion into the privacy of the individual”, should get the state’s new monitoring powers. “The Internet of things with its Sensors and microphones would be to a world of potential bugs.” And Ulrich Kelber (SPD), the Federal Commissioner for data protection, warns: “the feeling of Unbeobachtetheit, the mind is also a democratic state, is gone.” He also doubts that more access would help the authorities really reaching.

Light in the Smart Home: The possibilities are large

Markus Beckendahl, editor-in-chief of the news website netzpolitik.org they are afraid that the trust of citizens in the new technologies to be shaken. You buy this equipment “with built-in microphone, which can also be used as bugs, rebuilt, and where you never know exactly whether or not someone is listening to another”. In the United States this Study to be widespread, much more. The security authorities resorted to “very frequently” to these devices or the storage of the data.

Wiretapping by remote control

The own apartment of the citizens is actually a taboo zone for the state. The also emphasized the German interior Minister, Horst Seehofer, once again, and promised the special protection of the private life environment, of course, is true now and in the future. Today, however, is also true: the state Has reasonable grounds to suspect an Offence has been committed, he may, in a narrow, legally defined limits and according to the judicial decision study already apartments. The possibilities, however, would grow at the wizard spoke clearly.

What and how the devices on the Internet save is different for each manufacturer. Apple’s Siri tries to fulfill his task as far as possible without access to the Cloud locally, and if the program needs the Cloud, then, according to the manufacturer, that do not enable the user to drag so. The language assistant “Alexa” by Amazon, the data will be stored in the Cloud, if you call the activation word “Alexa”. A wiretapping could look to the words of Markus Beckedahl so: “via remote circuit, the voice recording is always to run”.

The state should protect

But what role do corporations play? For anyone choosing a language assistant, and other “smart” household appliances, delivers its data to the developer and the manufacturer of the equipment, to corporations, which are mostly abroad, mainly based in the USA and other legislation. You he has to trust. Philipp Welte, Vice-President of the Association of German magazine publishers, believes: “The really massive danger for the freedom in our democracy is of the completely unregulated data collection American technology platforms in our households and in the intimate private life of the people of the spheres.”

The bugging of the old school is unnecessary if the records of the “Alexa” is accessed

Markus Beckedahl wants a strong state in the control function of the groups and a very weak state when it comes to Surveillance: “I would like to have data protection authorities, the Amazon, Google & Co very closely and also look at what is stored on the servers. But I would hate to security authorities, which would use, for example, for me as a Journalist such technologies to monitor me in my conversations with my sources.”

Beckedahl is, the wizard eased the lives of many people. At home, he does not want to have you but for the time being: “I imagine none of these devices in the privacy, because I can’t trust you. As long as there is no privacy-friendly, decentralized Alternatives, I prefer to be on voice control and I am in my privacy secured.”