Timmy Dooley (Clare, Fianna Fail)
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I thank the witnesses for coming in. This is helpful. Our concerns were probably aroused by the information that came about as a result of the situation Mr. Davis talked about at Apple. It was a surprise to many people that data was captured in this way, that it was stored, that it was later used and that it was reviewed by humans, albeit to enhance the user experience.

The biggest difficulty people have raised with me is that they were not aware that data was being captured at times other than when they used a particular word to initiate the capture of data. In some cases, it was activated by the use of some other word. We were not made aware that there was something that triggered an immediate closing down of the capture of the data. Could the witnesses tell us what happens in an interaction where there is an inadvertent capture of data, where the wrong word is used and where it becomes clear, although maybe it does not, that the request is not a valid? What have the witnesses succeeded in doing there?

Maybe I misunderstood him but Mr. Davis talked about data being stored for a considerable period of time. He said it was possible for people to have it removed within six months. For how long is this data stored? After it has been reviewed, is it automatically deleted or destroyed? We are all familiar with data that gets deleted, but is it ever deleted? The same questions apply to Mr. Meade.

There is almost an overload in terms of users' capacity to opt in and opt out, to the extent that people get absolutely frustrated and in order to proceed, they press "Yes", "I do", "I will" or "Yes, please".

From Mr. Davis's perspective, legally, he is covered because everything has been opted into, accepted or whatever. Does he not accept that with something as critical as the potential for capturing audio information that was not intended to be captured, it is incumbent on him to make the user more fully aware of the potential for that rather than having it as another tick box, another click or whatever?