Subscribe
  • Home
  • /
  • Computing
  • /
  • Remote-activated Siri saves life, raises privacy concerns

Remote-activated Siri saves life, raises privacy concerns

Michelle Avenant
By Michelle Avenant, portals journalist.
Johannesburg, 07 Jun 2016

An Australian toddler has become the latest person to grace headlines for having her life saved by Apple's voice-activated assistant bot, Siri.

When mother Stacey Gleeson noticed, via a baby monitor, that her child had stopped breathing, she dropped her iPhone in panic as she ran to assist the child. Gleeson shouted "Hey Siri, call the ambulance" while she was checking her baby's airway and resuscitating the child, giving her crucial extra time to revive baby Giana, who had started breathing again by the time the ambulance arrived.

The incident has drawn praise for a late-2015 change in Apple's iOS mobile operating system, allowing Siri to be activated remotely via the user's voice. Previously, users needed to press their iPhone's "home" button to summon the voice-activated assistant bot.

Privacy concerns

Yet the surveillance technology used to implement Siri's remote availability has drawn criticism from experts concerned about users' data privacy.

Siri's remote availability works by means of continuous audio recording, as the iPhone constantly compares current recorded sounds with the unique sound of the user saying "Hey Siri", in order to identify when the user is calling for the assistant bot, and activate it accordingly.

In this way, users are vulnerable to surveillance via their iPhones' microphones.

Reassurances

In a September interview with TechCrunch, Apple assured users that the audio their iPhones collect is only stored by Apple or sent off their iPhones if and when they activate Siri. Until the user actually says "Hey Siri", TechCrunch paraphrased, all of the recordings used to passively "listen" for this command will apparently be deleted after being temporarily stored locally on the user's iPhone only.

Users of Apple's iOS 9 (and above) operating system have the option of deactivating Siri's remote summoning feature, or the entire Siri system itself, on their devices, revoking "passive listening" permission on their devices.

Share