Information & Ethics committee  Presumably all of that is merged into a bucket of data that Amazon holds about me in terms of my purchasing habits and other things as well.

Information & Ethics committee  It's a lot of data.

Information & Ethics committee  Is that used by the company, or is that just used to inform the response to my device?

Information & Ethics committee  To get at what the Siri purposes are, are the Siri purposes just actually making Siri more responsive to my voice—

Information & Ethics committee  —or is the data kept by the company to understand what sorts of things people ask? Do you have metadata profiles of people based on how they use Siri?

Information & Ethics committee  Mark Ryland, does Amazon do that? I'd be interested to know the difference between how Amazon uses data gathered from voice compared to how Apple does. There was a recent case of a user who actually put in a request for data that Amazon held. That included a series of voice reco

Information & Ethics committee  The representative from Apple has said that the device is constantly listening, but only for the Siri command. It would appear that if you have an Alexa device in your home, that is different. The device is always listening and it is actually retaining in the cloud the things it

Information & Ethics committee  I know from my own personal experience that Alexa responds to commands other than the wake word. It might be triggered by something it has heard in the room that's not necessarily the wake command.

Information & Ethics committee  Roger McNamee, who gave evidence to us yesterday, discussed how he put his Alexa in a box after the first day he got it because Alexa starting interacting with an Amazon TV commercial. I think most people who have these devices know that all sorts of things can set them off. It's

Information & Ethics committee  If you were retaining data from the device that is based on things that it's heard and is then retained in the cloud—which seems to be different from what Apple does—are you saying that it's only sound data that is based on commands that Alexa has been given?

Information & Ethics committee  Would Amazon be in a position to respond to a police request for data or information about a crime that may have been committed in a domestic setting based on sound picked up from Alexa?

Information & Ethics committee  That would suggest you're retaining more data than just simply commands to Alexa.

Information & Ethics committee  You're saying that when someone gives the wake word to the device, then the command they've given—their dialogue with Alexa, if you like—is retained?

Information & Ethics committee  You're saying that unless the wake word is given, the device isn't triggered and it doesn't collect ambient data.

Information & Ethics committee  Okay. I'm interested in the data case I referenced earlier. The concern there seemed to be that ambient sound was being kept and recorded and the company was using it for training purposes.