Smart Home Makers Hoard Your Data, But Won't Say If the Police Come For It

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: Thermostats know the temperature of your house, and smart cameras and sensors know when someone's walking around your home. Smart assistants know what you're asking for, and smart doorbells know who's coming and going. And thanks to the cloud, that data is available to you from anywhere -- you can check in on your pets from your phone or make sure your robot vacuum cleaned the house. Because the data is stored or accessible by the smart home tech makers, law enforcement and government agencies have increasingly sought out data from the companies to solve crimes. And device makers won't say if your smart home gadgets have been used to spy on you. We asked some of the most well-known smart home makers on the market if they plan on releasing a transparency report, or disclose the number of demands they receive for data from their smart home devices. For the most part, we received fairly dismal responses. Amazon did not respond to requests for comment, but a spokesperson for the company said last year that it would not reveal the figures for its Echo smart speakers. Facebook said that its transparency report section will include 'any requests related to Portal,' its new hardware screen with a camera and a microphone. A spokesperson for the company did not comment on if the company will break out the hardware figures separately. Google also declined to comment, but did point TechCruch to Nest's transparency report. Apple, the last of the big tech giants, said that there's no need to disclose its smart home figures because there would be nothing to report, adding that user requests made to HomePod are given a random identifier that cannot be tied to a person. TechCrunch also asked a number of smaller smart home players, like August, iRobot, Arlo, Ring, Honeywell, Canary, Samsung, and Ecobee.

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