It's also absurd to think they didn't face safeguards. We can only speculate if the individual was fired, or if stronger policies were put in place since 2020, but it's naive to expect that whatever policy is put in place will stop a human data labeler from smuggling PPI for personal reasons.
Well, you'll find a Roomba spokesperson saying that, anyway.
I don't mean to imply that the spokesperson was lying and these were plain old roomba's instead of special R&D Roomba's.
I do mean to imply that I think a roomba spokesperson would describe "included in paragraph 12 of a 23 paragraph terms of service that they clicked through" as "specifically aware", but I would not consider that any kind of "proof" that the people actually were "specifically aware". At best it is an argument they ought to have been, which is a different thing (and it's an argument).
Therefore I don't agree with your implication as I just don't see any evidence to support it. Even the article's author, with the evidence they were given doesn't push this point.
You are making claims about what the owners "specifically knew". What is the evidence about what the roomba owners (or, uh, holders) did or did not know, "specifically" or otherwise?
> They were given to “paid collectors and employees” who signed written agreements acknowledging that they were sending data streams, including video, back to the company for training purposes.
So it hardly seems likely that they would not be aware of this.
But as a guy, I don't know if girls pull them down farther if they think they're not being watched. She might be the one who agreed to it.
Still, the owner of a space is making the decision for all people who come into that space.
I did not expect to see actual photos of the woman sitting on the toilet in this article. But damn, they're real and published dead center. It's awful and voyeuristic to feature, but in a way it brings to life the freakishly perverse Orwellian horror of all of this.
This piece hits hard, as it should.
How did neither Roomba nor ScaleAI have safeguards against PII of this nature? This is inside people's intimate spaces. It could have been sex. Or children. How did they not think of this?
This sort of disregard for privacy should be punished, and this woman should be able to sue Roomba and ScaleAI for a handsome sum.
Maybe they did have some kind of internal data privacy policy or 3rd party policy, but it was wholly inadequate.
My team once had a certain perennial Billboard chart topper's login credentials due to suspected mishandling by one of their team (I'm still afraid to say whom), but you'd better believe we treated it - and all of our customer data - as sacred taboo. Mishandling PII was fireable at minimum, and could probably land us in litigation with a permanent mark against our careers.
We need GDPR/CCPA++ protections here. As an added bonus, the companies that play nice will get a comfortable moat in the form of their compliance.