Always listening The Russian authorities are demanding round-the-clock access to home smart speakers. What could go wrong?

In the first case of its kind in Russia, the country’s Federal Security Service is demanding constant remote access to data from Yandex’s Alisa home smart speaker. Court records show that the company has so far refused to comply with the order, earning it a fine. Here’s what we know about the ongoing case.

A Moscow judge has fined Yandex for refusing to grant the federal authorities round-the-clock remote access to data from its Alisa smart home system, a Telegram channel dedicated to the digital signature industry reported on Wednesday.

Evgeny Smirnov, a lawyer with the human rights group First Department, told the independent outlet Agentstvo that the FSB’s objective could be to access information from — and control over — Alisa smart speakers, which are installed in users’ homes and interact with them directly.

The 10,000-ruble ($124) fine was issued for failing to comply with a legal order to correct violations, according to the court record.

The FSB issued a non-compliance report on May 28, and the judge issued the fine on June 10, but the case only came to media attention in late August.

The court ruling states that Yandex hadn’t previously been penalized for refusing to grant the FSB speaker access. According to an industry source who spoke to Vedomosti, however, the stand-off is “an old story.” The person said that providing the data would be costly and technically complex, so it’s easier for the company to pay the fines.

Lawyer and industry expert Maksim Ali told Agentstvo that the ruling indicates Russian authorities may be moving toward a broader interpretation of the 2018 “Yarovaya Law,” which requires companies to store clients’ voice recordings for six months and electronic correspondence for three months. “Virtually any IT company infrastructure can fall under the FSB’s enforced data-access requirements,” he said.

Like the Amazon Echo, the Alisa system includes a smart speaker with a voice assistant that activates on voice command. Its developers maintain that only commands addressed to the assistant — not other nearby speech — are sent to Yandex’s servers. Testing by the Internet freedom project Roskomsvoboda in 2019 supported this claim.

Smirnov suggested that if the FSB were granted the requested access, it could potentially exploit all of the system’s functions, including listening to user interactions and accessing other devices in users’ homes.