Loud & Clear

Labor Secretary Alex Acosta abruptly resigned this morning amid a furor over a sweetheart deal that he gave accused billionaire sex trafficker and pedophile Jeffrey Epstein when he was US Attorney in South Florida. Acosta has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing, saying that his orders to offer Epstein leniency came from higher up in the Justice Department. A new Belgian news investigation has found what many US privacy activists have long suspected: Not only are smart devices like Google Assistant or Amazon Alexa listening to us literally all the time, but thousands of Google employees are listening to us through our devices, even when they’re not activated, ostensibly to help train the algorithm to be more precise. In a statement, the company admitted that the news was true, but tried to downplay it, saying that Google employees listen to only 0.2 percent of all recordings. Patricia Gorky, a software engineer and technology and security analyst, joins the show. A four-year study by the Bureau of Investigative J