A judge from Northern California has just dismissed a whole class action lawsuit that is alleging Apple of certain "unlawful and intentional" actions. The allegations are that Apple records confidential Siri communications even without having user consent.
Allegations against Apple
According to an article by MacRumors, the class action lawsuit was initially filed back in August 2019 after it started to become public that Apple had certain employed contractors listen as well as grade some of the anonymized Siri conversations in order to improve the product said product.
The contractors had reportedly told The Guardian that they had actually overheard some confidential medical details, private information, drug deals, and more coming from the accidental Siri activations. Some of them also expressed concern that users were actually not adequately informed regarding the said recordings.
How does Siri collect data?
As noted by a report coming from Bloomberg, the US District Judge Jeffrey White noted that the given plaintiffs in the whole class action case were unable to provide sufficient details regarding the alleged recordings that Apple had supposedly collected. The plaintiffs are also required to be able to prove that they have been suffering injury coming from Apple's actions in a given "concrete and particularized" way that is also not conjectural or even hypothetical.
All the allegations within the lawsuit were said to be based on the information that was included within the original story coming from The Guardian which reportedly highlighted Apple's very own use of contractors to analyze the Siri data. It also noted that certain plaintiffs provide no proof that their personal private data was also accidentally collected by Apple then misused.
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Case dismissed
It was noted that The Guardian article technically does not plausibly suggest that all of the devices from Apple were subject to the accidental triggers and also reviewed by certain third-party contractors. Much less, it also notes that such interception had occurred in a reasonably private setting. The article also discusses the frequency of these accidental triggers that were primarily in relation to either the Apple Watch or the HomePod speakers which were not owned by the said plaintiffs. Moreover, the article had also expressed that just a "small portion" of the total daily Siri activations that were included were sent to the said contractors and that they also reportedly included both accidental activations and deliberations.
Finally, although the said article describes the private communications among the said recordings that were sent to the contractors, Plaintiffs now allege that no facts in order to suggest that they themselves were victims or that their very own private communication were in fact intercepted by the said accidental triggers. Although Apple's motion to be able to dismiss the whole lawsuit was granted, the judge also noted that consumers involved are allowed to revise as well as refile a case within 20 days, so Apple is still not yet out of hot water.
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This article is owned by Tech Times
Written by Urian Buenconsejo
