California is weighing whether to ban smart speakers from storing customer voice recordings by default.

The Anti-Eavesdropping Act moving through California's state legislature would require all smart speaker vendors, including Amazon and Google, to get explicit written consent from customers before voice queries are stored.

The same legislation also seeks to ban smart speaker vendors from sharing voice-recording data with a third party, unless the customer has opted into it. "Companies shouldn't be able to record and retain conversations that happen within the privacy of our homes," the bill's sponsor, California assemblyman (R-San Luis Obispo) Jordan Cunningham, tweeted.

On Thursday, the bill cleared its first committee, paving the way for its consideration in the state legislature. Republican state lawmakers originally introduced it in January as part of a "Your Data, Your Way" legislative package.

Proud to announce that the Anti-Eavesdropping Act #AB1395 has passed the Assembly Privacy Committee. People shouldn't have to sacrifice privacy in the home in order to live in a modern home. #YourDataYourWay pic.twitter.com/jYsK209lBQ — Jordan Cunningham (@Cunning_Jordan) May 1, 2019

Since then, the bill's relevance has only grown. In April, Bloomberg reported that Amazon employs thousands of people to listen to saved voice recordings made through the company's Alexa-powered smart speakers. The company uses that data to refine its voice assistant's listening and comprehension abilities. But according to Bloomberg, the workers can also end up hearing moments some customers would probably want private.

To stop Amazon from using your voice recordings for test purposes, you'll have to go to the Alexa Privacy setting, and opt out of it. (You need to do the same with Google.)

In its defense, Amazon has said: "We only annotate an extremely small number of interactions from a random set of customers in order to improve the customer experience." The company also claims to have strict safeguards in place that can prevent employees from identifying the owner of the Alexa smart speaker. However, a follow-up report from Bloomberg contends that Amazon employees can learn the location data from a smart speaker and pinpoint the owner's approximate home address.

So far, Amazon hasn't commented on the proposed legislation in California. Google told PCMag it's monitoring the bill. "That said, we believe that the combination of strong and balanced regulations, with products that are designed with privacy in mind, will help provide individuals with confidence that they're in control of their personal information," the company added.

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