News and journalism
Google must face Voice Assistant privacy lawsuit, U.S. judge says
NBC News, NBC News, 2021
Read the originalRead on October 17, 2026
- What it is
- Report on a 2021 federal ruling in San Jose in the proposed class action over Google Assistant false accepts, in which the judge let most of the claims proceed.
- How much weight it carries
- Mainstream news coverage that quotes the judge's 37-page decision. The ruling is a pretrial decision on a motion to dismiss, not a finding that Google broke the law.
Facts taken from this source
- The plaintiffs in the Google Assistant lawsuit said Google had no right to use conversations for targeted advertising when Assistant misheard speech as a hot word.
“the plaintiffs said Google had no right to use their conversations for targeted advertising when Google Assistant misperceived what they said as hot words” (Plaintiffs' argument paragraph)
- In 2021 a federal judge found that Google's privacy policy did not sufficiently tell Assistant users it would use recordings made without manual activation or a hot word.
“it does not sufficiently apprise users that it will use recordings made in the absence of manual activation or a hot word utterance.” (Judge's findings paragraph)