Seth Moulton tackles Alexa data collection with new bill

Today, 2020 Democratic presidential candidate and Massachusetts Rep. Seth Moulton is expected to introduce a bill that would limit how smart device manufacturers like Amazon and Google can collect your data.

The Automatic Listening and Exploitation Act, or the ALEXA Act for short, would empower the Federal Trade Commission to seek immediate penalties if a smart device is found to have recorded user conversations without the device’s wake word being triggered. For Google’s home devices, for instance, that would mean recording a conversation without being prompted by “Hey, Google.” Moulton’s bill also addresses smart doorbells and their video capabilities.

“Smart speakers and doorbells are great, but consumers should have a way to fight back when tech companies collect more data than Americans have agreed to give up,” Moulton said. “More broadly, Congress should give Americans a bigger say in the data that companies collect. It’s time for a next generation of digital privacy laws, and it can start by holding corporations to their own privacy commitments.”

The bill would allow the FTC to seek up to $40,000 in penalties from the offending company per infraction. Customers who have these devices and services could also request these companies to delete any voice recordings, transcripts, or videos created and collected by these devices.

In an interview with The Verge, Moulton said that he would like to see his legislation spur a greater tech debate within the halls of Congress. “The Europeans are way ahead of us, and yet we have a Senate that doesn’t even understand Facebook,” Moulton said.

“The point is that Congress has been asleep at the switch here,” Moulton said. “There’s some industry forces in Congress that are preventing some members from moving forward with regulation, so we took the matter into our own hands with this bill.”

In the aftermath of Facebook’s Cambridge Analytica scandal, both chambers of Congress have reportedly begun to draft legislation that would create a federal data privacy framework. When asked if he would like to see something like the ALEXA Act considered as an amendment or part of a greater privacy bill, Moulton said, “That certainly could be an option, but this bill could also get passed on its own.”