Google said this week it was testing software that would monitor phone calls for suspicious activity, such as fraud. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Some privacy advocates say they\u2019re terrified by Google\u2019s announcement this week that it\u2019s testing a way to scan people\u2019s phone calls in real time for signs of financial scams. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Google unveiled the idea Tuesday at Google I\/O, its conference for software developers. Dave Burke, a Google vice president for engineering, said the company is trying out a feature that uses artificial intelligence to detect patterns associated with scams and then alert Android phone users when suspected scams are in progress. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Burke described the idea<\/a> as a security feature and provided an example. Onstage, he got a demonstration call from someone impersonating a bank who suggested that he move his savings to a new account to keep it safe. Burke\u2019s phone flashed a notification: \u201cLikely scam: Banks will never ask you to move your money to keep it safe,\u201d with an option to end the call. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cGemini Nano alerts me the second it detects suspicious activity,\u201d Burke said, using the name of a Google-developed AI model. He didn\u2019t specify what signals the software uses to determine a conversation is suspicious. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The demonstration drew applause from the conference\u2019s in-person audience in Mountain View, California, but some privacy advocates said the idea threatened to open a Pandora\u2019s box as tech companies race to one-up one another<\/a> on AI-enabled features for consumers. In interviews and in statements online, they said there were numerous ways the software could be abused by private surveillance companies<\/a>, government agents, stalkers or others who might want to eavesdrop on other people\u2019s phone calls. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Burke said onstage that the feature wouldn\u2019t transfer data off phones, providing what he said was a layer of potential protection \u201cso the audio processing stays completely private.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n But privacy advocates said on-device processing could still be vulnerable to intrusion by determined hackers, acquaintances with access to phones or government officials with subpoenas demanding audio files or transcripts. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Burke didn\u2019t say what kind of security controls Google would have, and Google didn\u2019t respond to requests for additional information. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cJ. Edgar Hoover would be jealous,\u201d said Albert Fox Cahn, executive director of the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project, an advocacy group based in New York. Hoover, who died in 1972, was director of the FBI for decades and used wiretaps<\/a> extensively, including on civil rights figures<\/a>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Cahn said the implications of Google\u2019s idea were \u201cterrifying,\u201d especially for vulnerable people such as political dissidents or people seeking abortions. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThe phone calls we make on our devices can be one of the most private things we do,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cIt\u2019s very easy for advertisers to scrape every search we make, every URL we click, but what we actually say on our devices, into the microphone, historically hasn\u2019t been monitored,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n\n\n\n It\u2019s not clear when or whether Google would implement the idea. Burke said onstage that the company would have more to say in the summer. Tech companies frequently test ideas they never release to the public. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Google has wide reach in the mobile phone market because it\u2019s behind the most widely used version of the Android mobile operating system. About 43% of mobile devices in the U.S. run on Android, and about 71% of mobile devices worldwide do so, according to the analytics firm StatCounter<\/a>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cAndroid can help protect you from the bad guys, no matter how they try to reach you,\u201d Burke said. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Meredith Whittaker, a former Google employee, was among those to criticize the scam-detection idea. Whittaker is now president of the Signal Foundation, a nonprofit group that supports the privacy-centric messaging app Signal. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThis is incredibly dangerous,\u201d Whittaker wrote on X<\/a>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cFrom detecting \u2018scams\u2019 it\u2019s a short step to \u2018detecting patterns commonly associated w\/ seeking reproductive care\u2019 or \u2018commonly associated w\/ providing LGBTQ resources\u2019 or \u2018commonly associated with tech worker whistleblowing,\u2019\u201d she wrote. <\/p>\n\n\n\n When Google posted about the idea<\/a> on X, it got hundreds of responses, including many positive ones. Some said the idea was clever, and others said they were tired of frequent phone calls from scammers. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Americans ages 60 and older lost $3.4 billion last year to reported digital fraud, according to the FBI<\/a>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Tech companies have sometimes resisted dragnet-style scanning of people\u2019s data. Last year, Apple rejected a request<\/a> to scan all cloud-based photos for child sexual abuse material, saying scanning for one type of content opens the door for \u201cbulk surveillance,\u201d Wired magazine reported. <\/p>\n\n\n\n But some tech companies do scan massive amounts of data for insights related to targeted online advertising. Google scanned the emails of non-paying Gmail users for advertising purposes until it ended the practice in 2017 under criticism from privacy advocates<\/a>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Kristian Hammond, a computer science professor at Northwestern University, said the Google call-scanning idea is the result of a \u201cfeature war\u201d in which the big players in AI technology \u201care continually trying to one-up each other with the newest whiz-bang feature.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWe have these micro-releases that are moving fast. And they\u2019re not necessary, and they\u2019re not consumer-focused,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n\n\n\n He said the advances in AI models are legitimately exciting, but he said it was still too early to see what ideas from tech companies would take off. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThey haven\u2019t quite figured out what to do with this technology yet,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n\n\n\n