this post was submitted on 25 Sep 2026
295 points (96.8% liked)

Technology

88348 readers
3585 users here now

This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.

Our Rules

  1. Follow the lemmy.world rules.
  2. Only tech related news or articles.
  3. Be excellent to each other!
  4. Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
  5. Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
  6. Politics threads may be removed.
  7. No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
  8. Only approved bots from the list below, this includes using AI responses and summaries. To ask if your bot can be added please contact a mod.
  9. Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
  10. Accounts 7 days and younger will have their posts automatically removed.

Approved Bots

founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
L3s@lemmy.world
enu@lemmy.world
technopagan@lemmy.world
L4s@lemmy.world
L3s@hackingne.ws
295
Apple's new watches are always listening (techxplore.com)
submitted 5 days ago by gedaliyah@lemmy.world to c/technology@lemmy.world
54 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

The latest Apple Watch models have some new features: they can listen to the sounds around you all day, transcribe snippets of conversation on demand and write up summaries of everything they heard.

The new features may run into problems with privacy laws, particularly those that require consent from people being recorded, but also with unspoken social conventions about speech.

When we talk with other people, we have some expectations about what happens to our words. Our comfort comes from what information scientist Helen Nissenbaum calls contextual integrity: the expectation that information moves around according to the norms of the setting in which it is shared.

What you say across a cafe table, in a bathroom, at a dinner party, at a town hall meeting or during a television broadcast is said for the people present and for the purposes apparent in that moment. Until now, our ambient conversations were not said for an auto-magical summarizer to fold into someone else's searchable life records.

Apple can encrypt, minimize and delete all it wants, but data protection isn't the problem. The problem is that a conversation has been quietly rerouted from the room where it happened into a device, service and product.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] illpillow@lemmy.ml 12 points 4 days ago (1 children)

In practice you need to either disallow people entering private rooms or force them to take off the Apple watch. I can't wait for the first person to tell this and see the outraging reaction.

[–] Zwuzelmaus@feddit.org 11 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (2 children)

In practice you need to either disallow people entering private rooms or force them to take off

Well, I could do that anyway but that's not what the law is about.

The law says, who uses such a device in a private room (restroom, bedroom), goes to jail for several years.

So it doesn't need me to tell that person "do not enter" or anything.

There is another law (harder to explain in foreign language) that forbids to create or have (!) any devices that do recording and telecommunication but look like something else.

[–] illpillow@lemmy.ml 1 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Sure, not trying to tell you something else. Theoretically that's going to happen, but only if someone reports it (probably you in this scenario) and evidence is sufficient for conviction. That's why I was adding my expection about reality.

[–] Zwuzelmaus@feddit.org 1 points 3 days ago

The charming part: it wouldn't be me against Mr Recorder-user, but the public against Mr Recorder-user, and then I would be the witness.