User privacy in a technological age
Leadership|December 2019/January 2020
Arguably the most pervasive technology conspiracy is that your smartphone is listening to your private conversations. We have all felt some discomfort with the types of advertisements that pop up on our phones. Have you ever had a conversation or searched for a certain product on your browser, only to start seeing ads that correspond exactly with that conversation or browser search? Do you ever get the distinct impression that your phone is tailoring pop-up and SMS ads for you and your specific interests, without you knowing how it got that information? And it is an “open secret” that your mobile device uses your personal information in order to tailor your user experience. But to what extent? And with whose permission?
Wela Mlokoti
User privacy in a technological age

Earlier this year, the Guardian published a report which revealed that Apple was secretly paying human contractors to listen to recordings of customers talking to its Siri digital assistant in order to improve the service. Siri is Apple’s voice-controlled personal assistant and it uses speech recognition and natural language processing technologies to process voice commands that operate the mobile device and its apps.

Although not explicitly disclosed in consumer-facing privacy documentation, it was discovered that a small proportion of Siri recordings were being passed onto Apple’s contractors around the world so that they could grade the responses based on various factors including whether the activation of Siri was deliberate or accidental, whether the query was within the range of what Siri could expect to assist with, and whether Siri’s response to the query was appropriate. As part of their job of providing quality control, Apple’s contractors were regularly privy to private material including confidential medical information, crimes being committed and couples having sexual intercourse.

In the aftermath of that report, Apple issued a formal apology for its privacy practices, noting its failure to “fully live up to its high ideals”. In its statement, Apple announced that it would suspend the grading program along with other changes including the discontinued retention of audio recordings of Siri interactions in favour of computer-generated transcripts; the option for users to opt into the use of audio samples of their requests, and if opted in, the deletion of any inadvertent triggers of the Siri assistant. However, Apple was just one of several major tech companies that were caught using paid human contractors to review recordings from its digital assistant.

Who else is listening in?

This story is from the December 2019/January 2020 edition of Leadership.

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This story is from the December 2019/January 2020 edition of Leadership.

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