'Google has been recording our voices without our consent,' say Chromium users

Company admits it has been capturing audio - but only if a particular box has been ticked...

Users of Google's Chromium open-source browser project Chromium have complained that the search giant has placed code inside the project that listens covertly to conversations, records them, and sends them back to the company.

The code was officially included for download into Chromium - the codebase from which Google Chrome is drawn - in order to activate the "Okay, Google" voice function that Google is making standard among its search services. In coding terms, this is known as the "hotword" module, which is designed to begin recording a voice when it hears a key word or phrase.

However, the code also seems to have an 'eavesdropping' function that is fully equipped to record and send audio back to Google without consent - and, by default, users found that it was turned on.

After this had been discovered and reported by Chromium users, Google released a fix, which it discussed on its Code forums on 9 June 2015, to add a toggle switch to the so-called ‘black box' that was recording users' audio. This was followed by further information from Google on 17 June to "clear up a couple of misconceptions" around the recording issue - after the privacy infringements had already begun to spread via outlets such as Hacker News.

Google emphasised that "we *do not* activate the [hotword module] unless you opt-in to hotwording". This appears, at least in part, to contradict the "fix" of 9 June that treats opting out of hotwording as an update.

Google went on to argue against user complaints that Chromium, as an open-source project, is downloading proprietary code - placed there by Google - into its distributions.

Google's defence here is two-fold arguing, first of all, that Google Chrome (which Chromium feeds into) is not open source and that individual code distributions (for example Debian, which runs Chromium on Linux) are responsible for their own policies, and should disable hotwording themselves.

It is therefore, according to Google, not the company itself at fault for pushing the audio recording ‘black box' into Chromium distributions.

Secondly, Google says that it doesn't need to show the "hotword" module as an extension in Chrome's extension list because extensions are considered "part of the basic Chrome experience".

To summarise, Google considers the "hotword" module's practice of recording and sending audio an essential part of voice search, takes no responsibility for its ‘default on' nature of recording anything being said in a room at any time, and puts the onus on people building Chromium distributions to disable such features.

Facebook also came under fire last year for its similar "listen" function, which operates on its smartphone application, designed to allow status shares drawn from recording external information.