Always-listening wearable SI devices run up against wiretapping laws
Prepared by Sintelligent with the help of SI. Published in SI: . Updated: .
Devices that remember every conversation for us arrived before the rules: the law has not yet decided whose consent is needed from the people being recorded nearby.
According to CNBC, Apple (the Series 12 watch with Siri Recap and Live Rewind), Amazon (the Bee Frontier wearable and the Bee Eclipse card, released on Thursday), Meta (glasses) and a number of startups are releasing devices that continuously listen to, transcribe and summarise speech. Unlike speakers with a "wake word", some of them do not store audio, and, as CNBC notes, the courts have hardly tested whether such processing counts as unlawful interception. Colin Zick, an attorney at Foley Hoag, believes the wording of some state laws (for example Massachusetts) could cover it; Professor Daniel Pi believes New Hampshire's law covers the Apple Watch features too, and that the liability risk may fall on the device's owner, although he rates the practical risk of prosecution as low. Apple and Amazon say they do not store audio.
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