Amazon Echo and the Alexa voice assistant have had widely publicised issues with privacy. Whether it is the amount of data they collect or the fact that they reportedly pay employees and, at times, external contractors from all over the world to listen to recordings to improve accuracy, the potential is there for sensitive personal information to be leaked through these devices.

But the risks extend not just to our relationship with Amazon. Major privacy concerns are starting to emerge in the way Alexa devices interact with other services - risking a dystopian spiral of increasing surveillance and control.

The setup of the Echo turns Amazon into an extra gateway that every online interaction has to pass through, collecting data on each one. Alexa knows what you are searching for, listening to or sending in your messages. Some smartphones do this already, particularly those made by Google and Apple who control the hardware, software and cloud services.

But the difference with an Echo is that it brings together the worst aspects of smartphones and smart homes. It is not a personal device but integrated into the home environment, always waiting to listen in. Alexa even features an art project (not created by Amazon) that tries to make light of this with the creepy "Ask the Listeners" function that makes comments about just how much the device is spying on you. Some Echo devices already have cameras, and if facial recognition capabilities were added we could enter a world of pervasive monitoring in our most private spaces, even tracked as we move between locations.

This technology gives Amazon a huge amount of control over your data, which has long been the aim of most of the tech giants. While Apple and Google - who face their own privacy issues - have similar voice assistants, they have at least made progress running the software directly on their devices so they won't need to transfer recordings of your voice commands to their servers. Amazon doesn't appear to be trying to do the same.

This is, in part, because of the firm's aggressive business model. Amazon's systems appear not just designed to collect as much data as they can but also to create ways of sharing it. So the potential issues run much deeper than Alexa listening in on private moments.

Tracking health issues

Health is another area where Amazon appears to be attempting a takeover. The UK's National Health Service (NHS) has signed a deal for medical advice to be provided via the Echo. At face value, this simply extends ways of accessing publicly available information like the NHS website or phone line 111 - no official patient data is being shared.

But it creates the possibility that Amazon could start tracking what health information we ask for through Alexa, effectively building profiles of users' medical histories. This could be linked to online shopping suggestions, third-party ads for costly therapies, or even ads that are potentially traumatic (think women who've suffered miscarriages being shown baby products).

An Amazon spokesperson said: "Amazon does not build customer health profiles based on interactions with nhs.uk content or use such requests for marketing purposes. Alexa does not have access to any personal or private information from the NHS."

https://theconversation.com/amazon-echos-privacy-issues-go-way-beyond-voice-recordings-130016

Required:

a.Identify and apply the PAPA framework for ethical issues related to personal information collected by Amazon Alexa (5 marks each category = 20 points).