And so it begins.
They’re listening to every word. https://t.co/4bKsB1Vjr9
— Lauren Boebert (@laurenboebert) June 18, 2023
A GED can get you places in life, like Congress. It doesn’t guarantee, however, that you’ll actually understand everything around you. Case in point, Lauren Boebert (again). The bastard 36-year-old grandma by her delinquent 18-year-old son, posted a link to a Breitbart article about a unique Amazon customer service fuck-up, but Boebs decided to spread a conspiracy theory about omnipresent surveillance constantly monitoring your behavior. Not only was that not the case, what Boebert complains about is actually the hero of the case.
The incident begins when an Amazon deliver driver mishears an automated statement from a “smart” doorbell as a racial slur, with the system recording the incident and reports it. Citing an investigation into the driver’s report, Amazon shuts down the customer’s Prime service, which included the Alexa smart network in the man’s home. This and the ensuing crap with the homeowner having to deal with Amazon for a week to straighten out the issue leaves the man so frustrated he writes a lengthy blog post about it. But Boebert’s take on it is ominous: “They’re listening to every word.” Of course, “they” weren’t.
But on another note, yeah, Boebs, they’re supposed to listen to every word. It’s a fucking smart doorbell. The owner installed it to monitor and record activities in the front of the house as a security measure because you and your conspiracy-minded cohorts want everyone to be paranoid all the time.
Boebert insinuates that there’s some government plot where “they” can listen to you… except the “they” in this case is a private company with which the homeowner voluntarily entered into an agreement to use its system, allowing them and others to access to footage in the system. It’s not the government. In this time when Republicans want the public to turn on the Department of Justice and the FBI, Boebert seems to want to stoke that by hinting that “they”–Big Brother, the Deep State, the Illuminati, or whatever group Boebs wants people to fear and target–are can access anything they want at any time.
Of course, Boebs is way off base. The homeowner, an engineer at Microsoft, signed up for the Alexa system to monitor his home. That gives Amazon access to data, including monitoring home security systems, and you can opt to allow Amazon access to your video, a convenient feature when monitoring a delivery, assisting with investigations, or if your system breaks down.
But guess what: The homeowner had apparently opted out of Amazon monitoring. According to the homeowner’s own account, he set up his own internal system to prevent third-party management of his household data. Instead of Amazon immediately having access to the footage of the incident involving the Amazon driver, the homeowner submitted the video to Amazon, which Amazon reviewed and used to resolve the incident, showing the driver misheard the doorbell.
The homeowner, who writes occasional posts for Medium, states in his original account that he used Amazon’s Alexa digital assistant a lot, but that he also used Apple’s Siri. He writes losing the service for a week as Amazon straightened everything out was inconvenient but not fatal. And he notes that he agrees with Amazon doing what it can to protect its drivers. The homeowner rightfully questions his future reliance on one system to run everything in his home, and reevaluates his relationship with the online retail giant, as one does after an unpleasant customer service experience.
In this case, however, the problem was with Amazon’s handling of this specific incident, nor with the functioning of the video camera. In fact, the video camera provided conclusive evidence that showed the homeowner did not make the offensive comment the driver misheard. Not once did the homeowner claim Amazon improperly accessed data on his system, but that’s what Boebert wants you to believe happened.
Once again, the conservatives have a knee-jerk reaction to what they think is the issue without actually understanding the incident. This wasn’t about Big Brother–in its governmental or corporate forms–constantly monitoring people. It’s not about a corporation “canceling” someone because of a political viewpoint. It’s about people who don’t understand the proper facts of a case, but intentionally warp them to meet their political needs–just as Donald Trump continues to misrepresent the Presidential Records Act as something that exonerates him when it actually condemns them.
As was proven by the released text message from Fox personalities in the Dominion case, truth is irrelevant to conservatives. If they can warp a story’s headline to meet their talking points, they will, and they know their followers won’t bother to review the details. Boebert, like Trump and others of the GOP, don’t want you to know the truth; they want you to know their version.