Just Say No to Google, Or Those Other Listening Devices In a Law Office

We love Amazon Alexa, Google, Siri and all those listening devices. They are fun, great at home, but an absolute no around offices. Lawyers, and any other profession handling confidential or sensitive information, simply can't have them around.

In this episode of the Legal Tech Podcast, Attorney and privacy expert Daniel J. Siegel explains why those devices are simply not for use in an office.

Transcript

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Hello and welcome back to the Legal Tech podcast sponsored by the Law Offices of Daniel J. Siegel, LLC and Integrated Technology Services LLC. I'm Dan Siegel, and I'm going to be taking you on a relatively short but important discussion about assistance like the Alexa, the Google doc, and all of those items. So without further ado, let's get right to the point. No, just now you have to say no. Absolutely not. Don't do it. What am I talking about? I'm talking about those smart devices that you have in your home and maybe in your office. I know because one attorney recently said to me, he keeps it in his office and he uses it all the time as an attorney or anyone else who has confidential information. That's not a good idea. What do I mean? Well, you can do it this way. Let's just look at what Google and Amazon say about their privacy of those entire thoughts, etc.. Google, go find the policy on it. That's the first point. If you have to really search and when you do searches for does Google listen or does the Google dot listen? You find lots of answers, but what you don't find are the answers on Google's site very often. Why? You can wonder. But really, you know that Google actually does record not everything, but it is recording. So you have to think about that. If you've got the Google doc or any other Google device, it is listening to you. If you've granted it access to your microphone and the Google assistant is active, Google is probably listening. It may not be recording, but if you have said any of the code words that make it active, it is listening and you don't know when it's going to stop. So Google, when is it listening? Well, who knows? But for an attorney who's discussing confidential information, sensitive information, that type of information, you can't take that chance. Because if it in fact goes to Google, then it is free game for anyone to look at it. Amazon, Alexa, what does that say about listening to you? The New York Times said the Alexa speaker, like the Echo or a dad is always on listening device, although it's only designed to listen when called upon. Sometimes it doesn't play by its own rules, and sometimes it as well as Amazon behaves in ways that would just overly viably make anyone worry about their security and privacy. The fact is that those devices are there to eavesdrop. This isn't anything surprising. We know that they're there to answer on the spot all kinds of questions. Maybe. What is the weather? It may be something more complicated and it gets that information because it's listening and then it records it. So you have to be careful. And anyone who uses a smart speaker, like a smart phone or a device posts on social media or otherwise acts interacts with the Internet, has also experienced these situations when, oops, the device turned on, even though you didn't say any of those words because it thinks so. And Alexa or the Google or any of the other items, they collect information on how users interact from it, from what they say. They ask what they do and which third party skills they interact with. That's how they develop the product and make them better. So you have to be thinking about that very carefully and understand. The Amazon voice. History says that the review voice industry section of the Alexa Privacy settings shows your voice interactions. You can filter by date, device and profile and choose and an entry to see what it heard and to see how you respond it. All of those recordings are saved by default. You can change how long your voice recordings are saved or choose to delete them, but they're there. So the real answer on this question of should attorneys or anyone with sensitive information be recording on these devices? No, it's not a great idea in theory, and it's terrible in practice. It's very simple. Those companies are listening all the time or could be listening all the time. And when it comes to confidential and sensitive data, you should not partake in their listening to you. They want a market. They want to sell. They can sell you whatever you want when you're at home and you want to have find out what the weather's going to be. But they can't be selling. They can't be listening. When you are recording or you are talking about client information that is confidential or sensitive. In other words, no, don't do it. No, absolutely not. Don't do it. This has been Dan Siegel from the Law Offices of Daniel J. Siegel, LLC, and Integrated Technology Services LLC. This has been the podcast that we sponsor periodically, the Legal Tech Podcast. So I hope you've enjoyed today's episode and you'll listen some more in the future. Thank you very much.