Apple apologizes for Siri spying, pledges privacy fixes the headline at cultofmac.com proclaims. “A revamp of Apple’s program that had people monitoring Siri voice commands for quality control will soon ask users to opt-in first, and only Apple employees will be listening.” Only Apple employees? No more NSA contractors? Well that’s a relief. And now that that’s done . . .
you can wear your Apple Watch without worrying about anyone listening-in!
That said, Sherman set the Way Back machine to July 26th’s theguardian.com. Here’s a quick recap of how easy it is for an Apple Watch to suffer an “accidental breach” — a software issue that Apple’s announcement somehow fails to address:
Although Siri is included on most Apple devices, the contractor highlighted the Apple Watch and the company’s HomePod smart speaker as the most frequent sources of mistaken recordings.
“The regularity of accidental triggers on the watch is incredibly high,” they said. “The watch can record some snippets that will be 30 seconds – not that long but you can gather a good idea of what’s going on.”
Sometimes, “you can definitely hear a doctor and patient, talking about the medical history of the patient. Or you’d hear someone, maybe with car engine background noise – you can’t say definitely, but it’s a drug deal … you can definitely hear it happening. And you’d hear, like, people engaging in sexual acts that are accidentally recorded on the pod or the watch.”
Smartwatch, dumb people. Quite the combination wouldn’t you say?
Then again, you have the right to remain silent. Anything you say may be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to consult an attorney before speaking to the police and to have an attorney present during questioning now or in the future.