Main PageFrance launches investigation into possible wiretapping of Apple users via Siri
France has launched a criminal investigation into Apple, which has been accused of using contractors to listen to voice recordings of users' interactions with Siri, despite pledging privacy, Bloomberg writes. The investigation began after a statement by the human rights organization Ligue des droits de l'Homme.
The human rights organization's complaint is based on the testimony of Thomas le Bonniec, a former subcontractor of Apple in Ireland, who publicly stated that he was analyzing confidential user records, including cancer patients.
The fact that Apple's third-party contractors listened to audio recordings of interactions with Siri for analysis in order to improve the quality of the service was reported in 2019 by The Guardian. The source of the resource was a contractor who was engaged in the "assessment" of Siri. The whistleblower said at the time that "Apple contractors routinely listen to sensitive medical information" as part of their "quality control" work on the Siri voice assistant.
In response, Apple suspended the program, giving customers the opportunity to opt out of using this option. Then the company began to add the option only in case of explicit consent of the user, and not his refusal. However, a class action lawsuit was filed after that, and Apple agreed to compensate users.
In January, Apple said in a blog post that it "does not save audio recordings of Siri interactions unless users explicitly consent to it to help improve Siri, and even then, the recordings are used solely for that purpose."
It would seem that the incident is over, and it remains unclear why, so many years after the incident, France decided to return to Apple's former violation.
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