By Julia Horowitz
SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) --Readers who scanned the user manual for a new Samsung smart TV may have been surprised to learn their household conversations could be recorded without their knowledge.
State Assemblyman Mike Gatto certainly was.
"The passage was almost word-for-word comparable to a passage of the book '1984,'" Gatto, D-Glendale, said, referring to a line in the privacy policy that said conversations, including personal or sensitive information, could be captured and transmitted to a third party if users turned on wireless voice recognition.
After taking a lashing in the media and online, the company changed its user manuals in February to make it clear that its smart TVs do not record or store conversations. Samsung says it will only record voice commands if a user clicks an activation button and talks into the remote or a microphone.
Still, Orwellian anxieties have already taken hold, and Gatto's Committee on Privacy and Consumer Protection is pushing a bill to rein in spying TVs before the problem becomes worse.
His AB1116 is the first legislation of its kind in the United States, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. After unanimous passage in the Assembly, the bill now goes before the full Senate before the Legislature finishes on Sept. 11.
It would require that users be explicitly informed when their smart TVs are installed that the devices could start collecting conversations.
It also forbids TV manufacturers and related third parties from using or selling stored conversations for advertising purposes, and would allow manufacturers to reject law enforcement efforts to use the feature to monitor conversations.
Samsung declined to answer questions from The Associated Press and has not taken a public position on Gatto's legislation but said in a statement that it supports consumer privacy.
"Protecting our consumers' privacy is one of our top priorities. Our TVs are designed with privacy in mind," the company said in a written statement.
Despite the bill's limited scope – it requires prominent notification but allows manufacturers to decide what is sufficiently explicit – Gatto said he has struggled to garner support from the technology manufacturing industry and said it was "news to us" that Samsung now supports it.
Privacy experts say the changes, while important, may not go far enough to protect consumers.
Potential uses for the information could go "way above and beyond advertising," said Jim Dempsey, director of the University of California, Berkeley's Center for Law and Technology.
The information collected could still be used to make psychological or cultural assessments of people for insurance or customer relations companies, he said, noting that human resources companies already use automated systems to profile callers based on their voices.
"It could determine what kind of offers you get made," Dempsey said.
The legislation is also technology-specific – a potential issue as voice control spreads to other technologies such as cars, Dempsey noted. He said the bill also makes no mention of how long conversations or transcripts may be stored by the third party.
Storage is so practically impossible that it isn't necessary to make it illegal right now, Gatto said.
The bill does a lot of things right, said Lee Tien, a lawyer for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a group that advocates for the protection of civil liberties online. The legislation notably acknowledges the risk of spying by law enforcement but may place too much faith in consent policies, he said.
"Notice is not consent," Tien said.
Dempsey agreed.
"It's not like you're going to change your behavior in your house just because there's a little icon on the screen," he said.
Rom-Com Mainstay Hugh Grant Shifts To The Dark Side and He’s Never Been Happier
After some difficulties connecting to a Zoom, Hugh Grant eventually opts to just phone instead.
"Sorry about that," he apologizes. "Tech hell." Grant is no lover of technology. Smart phones, for example, he calls the "devil's tinderbox."
"I think they're killing us. I hate them," he says. "I go on long holidays from them, three or four days at at time. Marvelous."
Hell, and our proximity to it, is a not unrelated topic to Grant's new film, "Heretic." In it, two young Mormon missionaries (Chloe East, Sophie Thatcher) come knocking on a door they'll soon regret visiting. They're welcomed in by Mr. Reed (Grant), an initially charming man who tests their faith in theological debate, and then, in much worse things.
After decades in romantic comedies, Grant has spent the last few years playing narcissists, weirdos and murders, often to the greatest acclaim of his career. But in "Heretic," a horror thriller from A24, Grant's turn to the dark side reaches a new extreme. The actor who once charmingly stammered in "Four Weddings and a Funeral" and who danced to the Pointer Sisters in "Love Actually" is now doing heinous things to young people in a basement.
"It was a challenge," Grant says. "I think human beings need challenges. It makes your beer taste better in the evening if you've climbed a mountain. He was just so wonderfully (expletive)-up."
"Heretic," which opens in theaters Friday, is directed by Scott Beck and Bryan Woods, co-writers of "A Quiet Place." In Grant's hands, Mr. Reed is a divinely good baddie — a scholarly creep whose wry monologues pull from a wide range of references, including, fittingly, Radiohead's "Creep."
In an interview, Grant spoke about these and other facets of his character, his journey... Read More