The Volokh Conspiracy
Mostly law professors | Sometimes contrarian | Often libertarian | Always independent
Smart Home System = Home System That Amazon Can Mess With If It Doesn't Like What You Say?
From a Medium post by Brandon Jackson, a Microsoft engineer:
Wednesday, May 31, 2023, I finally regained access to my Amazon account after an unexpected and unwarranted lockout that lasted nearly a week, from Thursday, May 25. This wasn't just a simple inconvenience, though. I have a smart home, and my primary means of interfacing with all the devices and automations is through Amazon Echo devices via Alexa. This incident left me with a house full of unresponsive devices, a silent Alexa, and a lot of questions.
I do want to note that since I host many of my own local services and many devices are local only. I only lost the ability to use Alexa. My home was fine as I just used Siri or locally hosted dashboard if I wanted to change a light's color or something of that nature. However, this was a huge over reaction and I'm hoping we as consumers get more protections and will truly be able to own our devices….
The sequence of events that led to this digital exile began innocuously enough. A package was delivered to my house on Wednesday, May 24, and everything seemed fine. The following day, however, I found that my Echo Show had signed out, and I was unable to interact with my smart home devices….
[I] received an email … from an executive at Amazon…. When I connected with the executive, they asked if I knew why my account had been locked. When I answered I was unsure, their tone turned somewhat accusatory. I was told that the driver who had delivered my package reported receiving racist remarks from my "Ring doorbell" (it's actually a Eufy, but I'll let it slide)….
Here's where things got even more baffling. First, I have multiple cameras recording everything that happens on my property. If the driver's claims were accurate, I could easily verify them with video footage. Second, most delivery drivers in my area share the same race as me and my family. It seemed highly unlikely that we would make such remarks. Finally, when I asked what time the alleged incident occurred, I realized it was practically impossible for anyone in my house to have made those comments, as nobody was home around that time (approximately 6:05 PM).
I reviewed the footage and confirmed that no such comments had been made. Instead, the Eufy doorbell had issued an automated response: "Excuse me, can I help you?" The driver, who was walking away and wearing headphones, must have misinterpreted the message. Nevertheless, by the following day, my Amazon account was locked, and all my Echo devices were logged out.
Here's the customer video follow-up; he notes that, though he had his items configured so that (starting at around 4:18) "if something did fail I have fallbacks," "I wrote this from the perspective of someone who didn't do all of that; what if they bought their Alexa, they bought some smart lights, they bought a smart garage opener … and that's it—if they did lose access to their Alexa, they wouldn't be able to control their other stuff."
When I e-mailed Amazon for their story, I got a prompt response, within three hours:
Amazon statement attributable to Simone Griffin, an Amazon spokesperson: "We work hard to provide customers with a great experience while also ensuring drivers who deliver Amazon packages feel safe. In this case, we learned through our investigation that the customer did not act inappropriately, and we're working directly with the customer to resolve their concerns while also looking at ways to prevent a similar situation from happening again."
So Amazon does seem to acknowledge that the blocking of the Amazon account (and thus the logging out of the Echo devices) happened—and indeed that, if the customer did "act inappropriately" and made the delivery person "feel [un]safe," their policy would indeed be do this. I asked them a follow-up:
Say someone does say something racist, sexist, anti-religious, anti-gay, anti-trans, etc. to an Amazon delivery person. Would Amazon then block the customer's access to Amazon's smart home technology?
I got no response, in the last three days. I also asked yesterday:
I appreciate the importance of protecting the safety of the drivers, but do you have guidelines about which actions, statements, or displays by customers would justify cutting off services? For instance, say a customer is displaying a Confederate flag on his home, or has political statements that disapprove of gay rights or trans rights, or sharply criticize particular religious groups; would that suffice, or is your policy limited to slurs said specifically to the driver?
(By way of comparison, note that, according to news accounts, some tech companies, such as Airbnb, terminate user accounts just because they believe they 'are members of or are actively affiliated with hate groups," and the term "hate groups" is of course itself quite vague and potentially broad.) I got no response.
Here's my view: I appreciate Amazon's desire to protect their drivers, including from personal insults. If, for instance, Amazon says "if you say rude things to our drivers, we'll stop delivering to you," that might be reasonable (though one would hope that the policy would be narrow and clear, and would ask the customer for his side of the story before cutting off deliveries, at least absent outright violence or threats of violence). But it's hard for me to see how this can justify cutting off access to the Amazon account as a whole.
Of course, Amazon, as a private company, isn't legally barred from cutting off such access (so long as its user agreement provides for this), under current law. But I think all of us should think many times before turning over control of our homes to companies who claim the right to cut us off at any moment.
I like technology. I like, in principle, the value that can be provided by products that are connected to the supplier, and not just stand-alone toasters, light switches, cars, etc.
But I don't like empowering companies to police my morals, politics, and speech, especially when it comes to things that help run my home. And if a company assured me—in a legally binding contract—that it would continue providing its services regardless of my supposed politics or alleged speech (again, perhaps with narrow exclusions for services that require interactions with staff, if I were to insult or threaten those staff members), that would make me much more willing to deal with it.
For some analysis on a related subject, see my new article, The Reverse Spider-Man Principle: With Great Responsibility Comes Great Power.
