Klobuchar, who chairs the Senate Judiciary antitrust panel, hosted a hearing on the privacy and competition issues in the smart-home market.
Across a number of high-stakes tech policy topics, the smart home is where these issues become personal for consumers. During the hearing, executives from Amazon, Google and speaker maker Sonos got pressed on specifics of how their products do — and often don’t — work together, boxing out competition and limiting consumer choice.
Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) sharply criticized Amazon Vice President Ryan McCrate for how his company last week launched its controversial Sidewalk network on Echo smart speakers as an opt-out, rather than an opt-in. You can read my instructions on how — and why — to turn it off here. (Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos owns The Washington Post.)
After the hearing, I spoke with Klobuchar about why she wanted to turn a spotlight on the smart home.
She told me the issue is personal for her, too. During the hearing, she joked about using her smart vacuum cleaner to remotely surprise her daughter.
Klobuchar said she owns a smart speaker — she declined to name the brand — that she uses to check on the weather in Minnesota and listen to music. But she doesn’t totally trust it: “I unplug mine whenever I'm on the phone with a senator,” she said.
I can’t say I blame her. So what can Congress do to keep the smart home safe for consumers while also fostering new ideas and products? The following interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Fowler: Why focus attention on the smart home?
Klobuchar: Look at the numbers — 94 million people in the U.S. — having at least one connected speaker. And you just know this market is going to grow and grow. Everyone knows about the privacy concerns. It's also about looking at it from antitrust — looking at it from the fact that you've got a 53 percent market share with Amazon and 31 percent share for Google.
The major takeaway for me was the companies really did not make any commitments to interoperability. I mean, talking about working groups does not a commitment make.
Today Google and Amazon said they support the idea of voice assistants working across different devices, yet we’re still not able to, say, use Google Assistant and Alexa at the same time on a Google or Amazon smart speaker.
That just calls out for legislative action.
Fowler: What rules do we need?
Klobuchar: We've got our broad bill that would really help with all of this, with setting rules on exclusionary conduct. That would be a general term that could apply to pharma, to home tech, to app stores, you name it.
There are a lot of different ways we can go at this, including the most direct right now with enforcement through the Federal Trade Commission. And that means getting the resources — I just passed that bill with Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), which would greatly enhance their budget.
Fowler: Privacy was a big topic during the hearing. Do you worry about your smart speaker?
Klobuchar: I think everyone worries about it, but especially in a job like mine. We just can't allow the novelty of new technologies and innovation to blind us to the problems and the challenges that they present. It doesn't mean we hate them. We may even like them. It means we just know that we have to respond to them and in ways that will keep consumers safe.
Fowler: What privacy rules do we need?
Klobuchar: Just general privacy laws to protect data and also how companies monetize data, which is an issue we talked a lot about. There should be privacy provisions for this new economy we’re in. I have favored data taxes and the like, if they're going to use our data.
Fowler: Is the privacy solution to say there are certain things companies can’t do with our data? Or is the solution to make laws that say they just can't collect certain kinds of data?
Klobuchar: You want people to have a choice about having their data collected. And right now, we all know that’s not easy. You get these things pop up on your screen. I have this feeling all the time: I can't get to what I want to without answering the question, and then you have to look for the little box in the corner with the X to make it go away. It's ridiculous.
Fowler: Let’s talk about some news of the day: What does it mean to have Lina Kahn named as chair of the Federal Trade Commission?
Klobuchar: I think she is an out-of-the box thinker, someone who will look at these things in the forward-looking way we need to look at tech today.
Fowler: Are you aligned with her views on antitrust?
Klobuchar: I'm not going to say I support everything she's ever said in her life, but … I'm generally supportive of being aggressive when it comes to tech. These cases are against the biggest companies the world has ever known. They are complicated legal matters. Her background as a law professor, I think, will be very helpful because these are cases like the world has never seen.
Our top tabs
The surprise news that Lina Khan will chair the FTC could foreshadow a crackdown on Silicon Valley.
Reaction from Khan supporters and the tech industry reflected that expectation, as I reported with Tyler Pager. Khan’s appointment was immediately cheered on by members of the Democratic Party’s liberal wing, like Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.):
The Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, which is funded by major tech companies, blasted the appointment, calling Khan symbolic of “antitrust populism” that could make American consumers “collateral damage.”
A major Amazon warehouse burned through workers and left them in the dark during the pandemic.
Workers at the e-commerce giant’s massive New York City warehouse were forced to scramble amid a massive corporate bureaucracy and unresponsive human resources departments, the New York Times’s Jodi Kantor, Karen Weise and Grace Ashford report. The system often left the company’s workers scrambling; for example, the company offered unlimited time off to employees during the pandemic, and then saddled them with mandatory overtime.
The company limits the upward mobility of warehouse workers and Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos sees an entrenched, disgruntled hourly workforce as a threat, said David Niekerk, a former company vice president who built the company’s warehouse human resources system. The workers at the company become less efficient over time, company data shows.
Amazon spokeswoman Kelly Nantel acknowledged some issues at the company, such as the inadvertent loss of benefits for some workers. However, she also suggested that some problems and cases in the story were outliers. (Bezos owns The Washington Post.)
Rep. Nydia M. Velázquez (D-N.Y.), who chairs the House Small Business Committee, criticized Amazon in the wake of the report:
Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) blasted U.S. ad exchanges for sharing data with Chinese and Russian firms.
The eight digital ad auction houses at issue offered varying amounts of information on the foreign firms they share ad data with.
There’s a “clear national security risk” with the partnerships because U.S. adversaries “can use [the data] for online tracking as well as to target hacking and disinformation campaigns,” Wyden said. He also said he plans to introduce legislation to ban exports of Americans’ data to high-risk countries.
The ad auction houses defended their practices in letters to Wyden and other lawmakers, with many of them saying that they have rigorous privacy and data security policies.
Rant and rave
Andreessen Horowitz, one of Silicon Valley’s most prominent venture capital firms, launched a new website called Future (a representative told Axios it would offer an “optimistic” view of technology). The Daily Beast's Max Tani:
Gizmodo's Tom McKay:
Writer Maya Kosoff:
Workforce report
- A House Committee on Small Business subcommittee holds a hearing on broadband on Wednesday at 10 a.m.
- European digital enforcer Margrethe Vestager discusses artificial intelligence at an event hosted by Renew Europe at 9 a.m. today.
- Werner Stengg, a cabinet expert to Vestager, discusses the European Commission’s new proposal to regulate artificial intelligence at an event hosted by Stanford University’s Institute for Human-Centered AI on Thursday at noon.
- Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah), the top Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee’s antitrust subcommittee, speaks at a NetChoice event on June 22 at noon.
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