Cayla...

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It's nice to have a friend who's a good listener, but a doll called My Friend Cayla listens a little too well, according to German regulators who say the toy is essentially a stealthy espionage device that shares what it hears and is also vulnerable to takeover by third parties.

"Cayla ist verboten in Deutschland," says Jochen Homann, the president of Germany's Federal Network Agency, announcing a ban on the doll in Germany. His agency oversees electronic privacy; Homann also cites a special obligation to protect the privacy of children, calling them the most vulnerable members of society.

The heart of the problem is that Cayla looks like an everyday doll and gives no notice that it collects and transmits everything it hears in this case, to a voice-recognition company in the U.S. whose other customers include intelligence agencies.

Nuance, the U.S. company in question, has said in response to similar criticisms that it "does not share voice data collected from or on behalf of any of our customers with any of our other customers." To ban the doll, regulators invoked a federal law against espionage devices.  [NPR-2-17-17 ]