Google’s Nest fiasco harms user trust and invades their privacy

Re:Google’s Nest fiasco harms user trust and invades their p... by wgjordan on Saturday March 16, 2019 @01:02PM (#19408813)

> The question is, does that really matter?

Legally speaking, it really does matter (18 U.S.C. 2511(2)(d) [1]) [my emphasis]:

> It shall not be unlawful under this chapter for a person [...] to intercept a wire, oral, or electronic communication where such person is a party to the communication or where one of the parties to the communication has given prior consent to such interception [...].

[1] https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/2511

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Re:Google’s Nest fiasco harms user trust and invades their p... by Pocketknife on Saturday March 16, 2019 @08:04PM (#19411257)

You say that as if Silicon Valley is subject to the law in the same way as you or I.

They learned to pay off DC around when Microsoft was taken to the anti-trust woodshed.

Now they are beyond accountability. Especially once it's clear to everyone that they control election results to a wide degree.

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Re:Google’s Nest fiasco harms user trust and invades their p... by MertsA on Saturday March 16, 2019 @10:35PM (#19411855)

That's not what he's saying. The section he is quoting is that if the user already consented to e.g. an Amazon Echo listening with a microphone then that's totally legal. Hence it does matter whether or not Google disclosed this to the end user although reading through the rest of that section there's nothing there that would implicate Google if they didn't actually use the microphone in some way. I'm not saying there isn't some law being broken here, but it isn't in 18 U.S. Code § 2511.

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