By Voice of Reason
Technology. It’s all fun and games until the technology turns on you, and the next thing you know a police crisis team and S.W.A.T. are outside your home with their guns drawn. Then, you’re in the back of a police cruiser wearing brand new silver bracelets headed for the grey bar hotel. All kidding aside, this is not the first time Amazon’s “Alexa” has been embroiled in a legal controversy. Recall that it wasn’t long ago, Arkansas police were demanding that Amazon turn over information collected from a murder suspect’s Echo.
In the following video, Right Wing News pokes fun at the humorous side of this story, but then immediately takes a far more serious tone with respect to the larger issues that a story of this type raises. Immediately two questions come to mind:
1. Why is data containing recorded conversations of private citizens’ conversations sitting on Amazon’s servers in the first place?
2. Are we now at a point when a person has to give informed consent to be recorded each time they enter an Alexa-outfitted home? Furthermore, if consent is required, which party has the burden? Does the homeowner need to ask guests if they consent to potentially being recorded, or is the burden of responsibility on the guest to inquire about whether the home is Alexa-outfitted, and therefore might be recording?
While these questions might give many Americans a moment of pause or concern when they’re considered alongside the fact that people are going to jail, and these issues are coming up in court during murder trials, but in reality it’s alreaady too late.
Americans have been asleep at the wheel for too long! Those questions are “so yesterday.” As you’ll learn in the links provided at the end of this post, our intelligence agencies have graduated to a level of spying that goes way beyond anything involving Alexa… Just ask President Trump!