Apple, Alphabet CEOs polled by Congress on data tracking 07/10/2018

The CEOs of Apple and
Alphabet received Monday letters from the Energy and Commerce Committee asking for answers on data collection through their devices and services such as email, location data, and

Letters were signed by Committee Chair Greg Walden, Subcommittee on Communications and Technology Marsha Blackburn, Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations
Gregg Harper, President, and Bob Latta, Chair of the Subcommittee on E-Commerce and Consumer Protection

The letters specifically addressed Tim Cook, CEO of Apple and Larry, CEO of # 39; alphabet.
Page. Alphabet is the parent company of Google.

The letter to Cook was about Siri and
The operating system of Apple.

The letter to Page was centered on Android and Google Assistant.
In both cases, media reports formed the basis for the questions.

For Google, one of these reports, released in November 2017, cited the fact that Android phones collect information about nearby cell phones.
tours – even when location services, WiFi and Bluetooth are disabled, no third-party applications are installed or running, and phones lack subscriber ID modules ( SIM)
cards. "

The letter also raised reports that smart devices can collect non-triggered audio data from user conversations when the phone recognizes a" trigger "phrase
such as "okay Google."

The passages in the letters came through media reports of publications such as The Wall Street Journal, Quartz, and even Google and
The own online documentation of Apple.

The letters ask the Director General to answer the questions no later than July 23, 2018. For Page, the questions in the letter included follow-up questions most of the time.
about the Android operating system and data tracking.

For example, a question asks, "When an Android phone does not have a SIM card, it is this phone that is programmed to collect and store locally
information through a different data collection capability, if available, regarding "either a nearby cellular tower, a nearby WiFi access point or a nearby Bluetooth beacon?"

If the answer to
of these questions is "yes", he then asks if "the Android phones missing SIM cards programmed to send this information stored locally to Google when one or more networking capabilities are
established? "