Ted Greenberg, who served as a federal prosecutor in the US justice department, and investigated money laundering, terrorist financing, fraud and corruption during his time there, has an OpEd in The Guardian that begins:
No one wants their most private activities secretly monitored. That’s why wiretapping is strictly regulated in the US and most of the world. Federal law makes it a crime for the government to surveil communications without a court-ordered warrant. This is not the issue here. Nor is this a case involving one-party consent. Who authorized the makers of Apple’s Siri and their vendors to listen to private conversations in my home? Not me. So why should Apple be allowed to do this? This is what we must find out.
Greenberg’s opinion piece is predicated on a whistleblower complaint by a former contractor for Apple who worked in Ireland.
…. in a 20 May letter to EU privacy regulators, the whistleblower, Thomas Le Bonniec, renounced his non-disclosure agreement with Apple and demanded that regulatory authorities investigate Apple. He told the EU that while working for Apple his work included listening to the private conversations of people all over Europe talking about their cancer, dead relatives, religion, sexuality, pornography, relationships and drug use, among other topics, in secret recordings made by Siri and sent to Apple without their knowledge. Le Bonniec said regulators needed to take action because big tech companies “are basically wiretapping entire populations”.
Read more on The Guardian.
h/t, Joe Cadillic