: ‘Hey Siri: Virtual assistants are listening to children and then using the data #IndiaNEWS #International Toronto, July 17: In many busy households around the world, its not uncommon for children

‘Hey Siri: Virtual assistants are listening to children and then using the data #IndiaNEWS #International
Toronto, July 17: In many busy households around the world, its not uncommon for children to shout out directives to Apples Siri or Amazons Alexa. They may make a game out of asking the voice-activated personal assistant (VAPA) what time it is, or requesting a popular song. While this may seem like a mundane part of domestic life, there is much more going on.
The VAPAs are continuously listening, recording and processing acoustic happenings in a process that has been dubbed “eavesmining,�? a portmanteau of eavesdropping and datamining. This raises significant concerns pertaining to issues of privacy and surveillance, as well as discrimination, as the sonic traces of peoples lives become datafied and scrutinized by algorithms.
These concerns intensify as we apply them to children. Their data is accumulated over lifetimes in ways that go well beyond what was ever collected on their parents with far-reaching consequences that we havent even begun to understand.
Always listening
The adoption of VAPAs is proceeding at a staggering pace as it extends to include mobile phones, smart speakers and the ever-increasing number products that are connected to the internet. These include childrens digital toys, home security systems that listen for break-ins and smart doorbells that can pickup sidewalk conversations.
There are pressing issues that derive from the collection, storage and analysis of sonic data as they pertain to parents, youth and children. Alarms have been raised in the past — in 2014, privacy advocates raised concerns on how much the Amazon Echo was listening to, what data was being collected and how the data would be used by Amazons recommendation engines.
And yet, despite these concerns, VAPAs and other eavesmining systems have spread exponentially. Recent market research predicts that by 2024, the number of voice-activated devices will explode to over 8. 4 billion.
Recording more than just speech
There is more being gathered than just uttered statements, as VAPAs and other eavesmining systems overhear personal features of voices that involuntarily reveal biometric and behavioural attributes such as age, gender, health, intoxication and personality.
Information about acoustic environments (like a noisy apartment) or particular sonic events (like breaking glass) can also be gleaned through “auditory scene analysis�? to make judgments about what is happening in that environment.
Eavesmining systems already have a recent track record for collaborating with law enforcement agencies and being subpoenaed for data in criminal investigations. This raises concerns of other forms of surveillance creep and profiling of children and families.

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