California bill aims to warn consumers about recording TVs

(AP) — Readers who scanned the user manual for a new Samsung smart TV may have been surprised to learn their household conversations could be recorded without their knowledge.

"The passage was almost word-for-word comparable to a passage of the book '1984,'" Gatto, D-Glendale, said, referring to a line in the privacy policy that said conversations, including personal or sensitive information, could be captured and transmitted to a third party if users turned on wireless voice recognition.

Samsung now says it will only record voice commands if a user clicks an activation button and talks into the remote or a microphone.

Despite the bill's limited scope — it requires prominent notification but allows manufacturers to decide what is sufficiently explicit — Gatto said he has struggled to garner support from the technology manufacturing industry and said it was "news to us" that Samsung now supports it.

The information collected could still be used to make psychological or cultural assessments of people for insurance or customer relations companies, he said, noting that human resources companies already use automated systems to profile callers based on their voices.