Ethical Issues with Passive Listening Technology in Virtual Assistants

This report discusses the ethical issues that arise from the use of passive listening technology in virtual assistant software. It analyzes the potential breach of privacy and security threats to users, and provides recommendations to handle these issues.

Running head: VIRTUAL ASSISTANTS IN SMARTPHONES
Virtual Assistants in Smartphones
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

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Executive Summary
The purpose of this report is to study the ethical issues that arises from the use of passive
listening technology to virtual assistant software. Classical ethical theory analysis shows that
nothing can compensate the loss of personal data over the internet and identity fraud. The
report states various problems relating ethical issues. Finally, the report concludes with a
section where some recommendations are provide to handle the discussed ethical issues.

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Table of Contents
Introduction................................................................................................................................3
Discussion..................................................................................................................................3
Recommendations..................................................................................................................5
Conclusion..................................................................................................................................6
Reference List............................................................................................................................7

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Introduction
In the digital age, smart phones and other smart electronic devices are being equipped
with various software that are implemented to improve the lifestyle of the users. The latest
technology being utilized is a virtual assistant that is an artificial intelligence enhanced
software. It captures the requirement of the user, mostly by voice, transfers the query to the
cloud and automatically searches for the right answer to deliver back to the user. Some
popular virtual assistants include Siri by Apple, Alexa by Amazon and Cortana by Microsoft.
The purpose of this report is to study the ‘always listening’ feature of Apple’s Siri and other
software with the same technology. The report would discuss about the ethical validity of the
use of the passive listening technology and that listening to everything is not ethical as it
invades the privacy of the user.
Discussion
Apple had developed Siri and released it in 2016 bundled with iOS 10 (Assefi et al,
2015). A certain button had to be pressed on the iPhone and the software would then listen to
every command that the user gave it. The updated version was released where Siri will
always be listening to everything. The user needs to say a certain keyword to make the make
Siri aware of the queries that she needs to address. This feature created a completely new
field of opportunities and uses in daily lives of people. Amazon had developed Echo where
the user can just talk with the speaker and it would listen to everything (Jacobs, 2015).
Passive listening had created quite a stir among the privacy experts as they saw it as
potential breach in the privacy of the users. The microphone captures every single sound and
stores them to the cloud. This means that the gadgets are always listening to detect the key
phrases that would trigger them (GRAY, 2016). It is not stated clearly by any of the
companies as to what happens with the data that they had stored to the cloud and who are the

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people that can access this data. The queries can be erased any time from the servers but that
does not guarantee that the data will never fall into the wrong hands. Any number of people
might have access to the audio data.
Professionals in the field of Information and Communication Technology must
always respect the privacy of the clients. Serious breach of privacy and ethics takes place in
the event that they might share data of their clients to third-party sources for monetary or any
other form of incentive (Staiano et al, 2014). The companies always share private data with
the Government, which is again a breach of privacy. The Government has the capabilities and
the equipment to listen in on the conversations of any person who owns an iPhone.
Security threat to virtual assistant users is high as cyber criminals might hack the data
that would result in identity theft of the users (Kahn & Liñares-Zegarra, 2016). The hackers
might learn some secret or embarrassing information about the users that might be used for
extortion purposes.
The data might contain information about intellectual property owned by the users. As
an example, an architect is using an iPhone with passively listening Siri. The person is
attending a meeting where new building designs are being discussed. Siri is recording all of
this data as it is ‘always listening’ (Caras, 2015). The recorded data is Intellectual Property
and if sold to the competitor firms can jeopardise the career of the architect (Sharkey, 2016).
Violation of any intellectual property rights is a punishable offense by law but no actions had
been taken to counteract these types of scenarios (Drahos, 2016).
The opinion of the society in general is never given much importance to as most of
the grievances are posted online through social media. The topic is discussed for maybe one
or two weeks and then it is completely forgotten. The users never reads the entire license
agreements and just accepts the terms and conditions given to them by a company before

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using the software. The users unknowingly give their consent to being passively recorded.
This poses serious ethical issues. From the utilitarianism perspective, the utility of virtual
assistant software does not outweigh the need for the security and privacy of the users
(Broad, 2014). The privacy of every person must be respected. Any offender of the law who
physically trespasses in another’s property is punished. However, using virtual assistants the
companies can trespass into other people’s homes and yet they are not being challenged for
doing so.
Pervasive Computing is referred to as the application of microprocessors to any
system and thus introducing computation capabilities to everyday objects. More and more
sophisticated surveillance techniques are being developed as the number of gadgets
connected to the Internet is rising at a rapid rate. As long as a device remains connected to the
Internet or has the ability to be connected, any cyber-criminal can use that device to invade
the privacy of the users (Hong & Langheinrich, 2014).
Recommendations
Some steps can be incorporated in the marketing strategy of the companies where
they can apply different policies to handle the ethical issues behind the implementation of
passive listening in virtual assistant software.
 The existing customers and any potential customer must be made aware of the
technology’s surveillance capabilities. They should know that they are giving consent
to surveillance when they are accepting to the terms and conditions of using the
software.
 Passive listening must be kept turned off by default in the devices and it should be the
customer’s decision whether they want to turn the setting on or not. There might be
conflict among the existing customers who might not like the passive listening

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technology. Such customers can be handled by making them aware that there are
options in the settings menu of the software where passive listening can be turned off.
 The data stored in the cloud can end up in the hands of a cyber-criminal. Thus, better
compartmentalization of the stored needs to be achieved. This can be done by creating
a special department that would handle all the sensitive user data. The individuals of
this group has to agree to a Non-Disclosure Agreement where they would not divulge
any information to any third party including the Government. Any special
circumstances must be accompanied by valid proof that the need for such a
surveillance is for national security only.
Conclusion
Thus, it can be concluded that passive listening is a great technology that had
reshaped the use of virtual assistant software in the daily lives of people but there are certain
limitations and the privacy of the people must be respected. The various ethical issues that
had been generated in the past and those that might be generated in the future should be
treated with the utmost delicacy and importance. The companies must understand that it is
their duty and responsibility to aid in the privacy protection of their customers. The problems
stated in the discussion is only a small outline of the vast problems in privacy issues that the
present virtual assistants are creating. The recommendations that are provided in the
discussion of the report are only some concepts that when implemented in the policy making
steps might help in aiding and securing the privacy of the users.

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Reference List
Assefi, M., Liu, G., Wittie, M. P., & Izurieta, C. (2015). An experimental evaluation of apple
siri and google speech recognition. Proccedings of the 2015 ISCA SEDE.
Broad, C. D. (2014). Five types of ethical theory (Vol. 2). Routledge.
Caras, J. (2015). The genie in the machines. XRDS: Crossroads, The ACM Magazine for
Students, 22(2), 32-35.
Drahos, P. (2016). A philosophy of intellectual property. Routledge.
GRAY, S. (2016, April). Always On: Privacy Implications of Microphone-Enabled Devices.
In Future of privacy forum.
Hong, J., & Langheinrich, M. (2014). Privacy challenges in pervasive computing. Computing
Now, 7(6).
Jacobs, A. (2015). Amazon Echo User Guide: A Great Guide for Amazon Echo User.
Kahn, C. M., & Liñares-Zegarra, J. M. (2016). Identity Theft and Consumer Payment Choice:
Does Security Really Matter?. Journal of Financial Services Research, 50(1), 121-
159.
Sharkey, C. M. (2016). Can Data Breach Claims Survive the Economic Loss Rule. DePaul L.
Rev., 66, 339.
Staiano, J., Oliver, N., Lepri, B., de Oliveira, R., Caraviello, M., & Sebe, N. (2014,
September). Money walks: a human-centric study on the economics of personal
mobile data. In Proceedings of the 2014 ACM International Joint Conference on
Pervasive and Ubiquitous Computing (pp. 583-594). ACM.