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Saint Louis University Is Outfitting Student Living Spaces With Thousands of Echo Dots (techcrunch.com)

Posted by BeauHD on from the scaled-to-size dept.

Saint Louis University announced this week a plan to outfit living spaces with 2,300 Echo Dots. The smart speakers will be ready by the time classes start later this month. TechCrunch reports: SLU is quick to note that it's "the first college or university in the country to bring Amazon Alexa-enabled devices, managed by Alexa for Business, into every student residence hall room and student apartment on campus." It's certainly not the first to adopt Amazon's smart speakers, but it's among the largest scale for this sort of deployment. While the product has become a mainstay in plenty of American homes, it does seem like an odd choice dorms and student campus. SLU has worked with Alexa for Business to create 100 custom questions, including, "What time does the library close tonight?" and "Where is the registrar's office?"

The company addressed [the privacy concerns] on a privacy page, writing: "Because of our use of the Amazon Alexa for Business (A4B) platform, your Echo Dot is managed by a central system dedicated to SLU. This system is not tied to individual accounts and does not maintain any personal information for any of our users, so all use currently is anonymous. Additionally, neither Alexa nor the Alexa for Business management system maintains recordings of any questions that are asked."

6 of 174 comments (clear)

  1. Currently by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    All use is currently anonymous. Let's just nudge that temperature a degree higher. You won't notice yet.

  2. Re:Trust us,,no one is listening to you! by supremebob · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Yeah, knowing that the platform is managed by SLU instead of Amazon would make me worry even more about the platform being abused.

    I'm sure that Amazon has some safeguards in place about safe storage and destruction of voice recordings, but SLU's IT department? Some student intern will probably start using it to snoop on the ladies dorms to get the latest juicy gossip.

  3. Re:Just because it's "anonymous"... by postbigbang · · Score: 4, Interesting

    If you thought facial recognition was getting good, think about voice recognition.... that ostensibly isn't used.

    Just that the questions have an IP address (dorm, library, etc.) time of day, context, and therefore can be fingerprinted.

    This will not turn out well.

    --
    ---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
  4. This is creepy as hell. by sjgman9 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Disconnect the things, or failing that, put it in a soundproof box, or wrap it with duct tape. Lots of duct tape.

    There should be a choice to install these things, an informed choice!

  5. FERPA by mrwireless · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Form what I can tell there's some debate about whether FERPA laws would allow this.

    FERPA (Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act):
    https://www2.ed.gov/policy/gen...

    This school admin even asks how he can remove Alexa form the network:
    https://community.spiceworks.c...

  6. Brave New World, not Big Brother by Solandri · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Huxley, not Orwell. In Orwell's 1984, the masses are subjugated by an elite. In Huxley's Brave New World, the masses are seduced by all sorts of entertainment and conveniences available in a modern society, so they can be controlled by the elite. Any form of dissent is viewed as socially abnormal, so it was society you had to fear, not retribution by the elite. Actually, I'm not sure if an all-controlling elite even existed (it could be inferred since the social structure would make it possible). It may have just been all of society being self-guided by hedonism and self-appointed morals.