ACR and Alexa: The Mandatory Surveillance of the Modern Smart Home

Smart devices like Amazon's Alexa and modern smart TVs are perpetually monitoring domestic life, utilizing technologies such as Automatic Content Recognition (ACR) to harvest viewing habits and inadvertently recording private conversations through frequent, long-duration misactivations. These recorded interactions are sent to the cloud for training sophisticated AI systems through human review, a mandatory data collection process that companies are reinforcing by eliminating user privacy options, such as Amazon discontinuing the "Do not send voice recordings" feature. We explore how this pervasive data harvesting fuels targeted advertising and investigate the technical lengths users must go to—such as deploying network-level ad blockers like PiHole or building local, internet-free systems like Home Assistant—to regain privacy.

 

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