Putin is trying to get access to the Russian smart home equivalent of Siri, potentially to listen in to people's private conversations Putin could be trying to spy on people in their homes (Image: AFP via Getty Images)

A Russian judge has fined tech company Yandex for refusing to grant the government 24/7 access to data from customers' smart speakers, Meduza reported. The country's Federal Security Service (FSB)'s goal could be to access information from, and control over, Alisa – a virtual assistant that powers smart homes. Comparable to Siri and Alexa, the Alisa system activates on voice command . ‌

Its developers say that only commands addressed to the assistant, and not other nearby speech, are sent to Yandex's servers. Yandex also provides the search engine that many

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