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Google Wants Your Voice Data
00_NOP writes "Peter Norvig, Google's director of research, has told New Scientist that one of the reasons the search engine launched Google Voice is that it needs more human voice data to perfect the sort of 'big data, simple algorithm' probabilistic approach to translating voices to text that drives Google Translate. Norvig says that no one is listening to your calls on Google Voice — it is simply their servers trying to get the translation right."
I can tell that they want the voice data badly. They make it very difficult to delete call and voicemail history. You can't delete more than 10 records at a time and even then they go into trash and keep piling up over there. You can delete the data from trash but again only 10 at a time. There is no option to empty the trash. Their help section says that the history is purged from trash after 30 days automatically but only that it isn't. My call history sits in the trash indefinitely unless I painstakingly delete all history 10 records at a time.
It's interesting that all the comments so far have been about the technology etc.
This breaks just about every federal and state wiretapping law that exists. If a person or organization wishes to record the phone conversation of two individuals, according to federal law, one party must have full knowledge that the call will be recorded and give her consent before the call.
Additionally, according to some states' law, both parties must have full knowledge and give prior consent.
The key here is the prior consent. Google is breaking all of these laws by recording first then telling the people after the call about it. By that time the recording is a criminal act, no matter what under federal laws and ALL state laws.