Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) has demanded that tech giant Yandex provide round-the-clock access to its integrated smart home system and voice assistant Alisa, independent media reported on Thursday, citing court documents.
A Moscow arbitration court in June fined Yandex 10,000 rubles ($1,200) for refusing to comply with the request. Rights lawyers told the investigative outlet Agentstvo that it appears to be the first publicly known instance of the FSB trying to gain access to Alisa, which is similar to Amazon’s Alexa.
Experts say that the case shows law enforcement authorities are using a broad interpretation of Russia’s anti-terrorism laws, which require telecommunications and internet companies to store users’ communications and hand them over to security services when presented with a court order.
The business newspaper Vedomosti reported that Yandex did not send a representative to the June hearing, where the company was found guilty of failing to comply with the FSB’s request. An information security specialist told Vedomosti that it was cheaper for companies to pay relatively small fines than share user data with government agencies, a process that itself is said to be very costly.
The same Moscow court previously fined Yandex similar amounts for refusing to give the FSB access to its geolocation service, private chats and other information, according to the Telegram news channel Telecom Review.
Yandex has not publicly commented on any of the reported cases. Its developers maintain that Alisa only transmits voice data to cloud servers when users activate it by saying the words “Yandex” or “Alisa.”
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