REUTERS: According to a federal judge, Google must confront a large portion of a lawsuit accusing it of illegally capturing and broadcasting private conversations of people who unintentionally activate its voice-activated Voice Assistant on their devices. Plaintiffs in the proposed class action were allowed to pursue claims that Google and its parent company Alphabet Inc violated California privacy laws, some claims that they violated federal privacy laws, and some claims of breach of contract in a Thursday night decision by U.S. District Judge Beth Labson Freeman.
The plaintiffs’ California consumer protection claims were similarly dismissed by the judge in San Jose, California, but he stated they might be re-filed.
Similar to Apple Inc.’s Siri, Google Assistant is supposed to respond when users of mobile devices use “hot words” like “Hey Google” or “Okay Google.”
The plaintiffs, on the other hand, claimed that Google had no right to use their chats for targeted advertising because Google Assistant mistook their phrases for hot words, a practice known as “false accepts.”
Freeman ruled the plaintiffs demonstrated they used Google Assistant-enabled devices frequently enough to have a reasonable expectation of privacy when speaking in a 37-page judgement.
She went on to say that while Google explains how it collects information for targeted advertising in its privacy policy, “it does not adequately tell users that it will use recordings made in the absence of manual activation or a hot word utterance.”
In its motion for dismissal, Google claimed that the plaintiffs had failed to establish that they had been harmed or that it had breached any contractual obligations. “Google never guarantees that the Assistant will only activate when plaintiffs want it to,” the company claimed. Purchasers of Google Assistant-enabled devices in the United States since May 18, 2016, are included in the proposed class seeking unspecified damages. On Friday, Google and its lawyers did not respond to demands for comment. Similar inquiries were not immediately responded to by the plaintiffs’ counsel.
The case is In re Google Assistant Privacy Litigation, No. 19-04286 in the United States District Court for the Northern District of California.
(In New York, Jonathan Stempel and Sara Merken contributed reporting; Bill Berkrot edited the piece.)/n
