I’m guessing that a significant number of those who don’t have a smartphone nor shop online, also don’t have credit cards. (Presumably none of those people are online to read this comment, either.) Many years ago I read a suggestion that any non-cash form of payment is just a method for the government to monitor one’s spending habits. I followed it to the extent that, in certain establishments, I’d only pay with cash.
There’s quite a few comments in this thread from actual Echo owners who think the author is being ridiculously paranoid.
But given the number of comments from others who won’t even walk into a house if they know there’s an Echo or other voice assistant present, I’d say you’re half right.
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Let’s assume that all the data is captured and stored forever. Ten years from now, the political climate will likely be very different than it is today. But all that data will still be sitting there. You might be accused of something, or just seen talking with someone under some sort of investigation. Investigators could conceivably examine all that audio and data. They might transcribe all of the conversations, looking for statements that might be used against you. And none of us can predict what sort of things might be problematic or even criminal decades in the future.
At my work, we keep a record of events. One of the first things I was taught about that is that you should write each word with the expectation that someday you might have to explain in court exactly why that word was chosen, instead of another.
The intrusion by marketers does not really bother me. It is government abuse that is more scary. The Stasi, NKVD, or the Gestapo never even dreamed of having that much access.
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Neither do voice assistants. They only wait for the wake word. Plenty of experts have done traffic analysis to prove this.
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And how difficult would it be for that to be changed?
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Until the “voice assistant” is hacked, as the above article mentions.
If someone did that, I’d know about it within a few hours at most.
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If I wanted to share a house with someone who listens in all the time I would still live at my mum’s.
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Timers and alarms are great for cooking, and trying to get a bunch of kids out the door. The music is OK over the speakers, I have an Echo Dot in the kitchen too. A few of the apps are neat there’s one Curiosity where Alexa will proffer a choice of two topics, there’s one for Mars news, an app for short bedtime stories and one where you can add other news feeds (I have CBC, BBC, the Economist and NPR news loaded). And if you have young children who want to know what day it is, what time it is (even when the clock is right next to the Echo), basic info about historical figures, or any simple math problem it’s great (especially pre-Coffee in the morning). It can (maybe obviously) be configured to let you order from Amazon, but I’m not comfortable with that yet. Right now it’s a fun gadget and not much more; but the next few generations of devices might have something more surprising or interesting; like if they can connect to web apps and local filestores (securely).
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Paranoid, maybe; but not “ridiculously” so. (And in this day and age, there’s nothing wrong with a small dose of paranoia.)
All tech equates to another tool; and like all tools they can be used wisely or abused.
So yes, our tech could potentially be used against us, and each of us needs to weigh the risk vs the value we get from our devices.
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My caveat is that I do not think the author is being ridiculous; I think they’re being a bit alarmist while failing to acknowledge the realities of the security of an Echo, and it comes off as quite paranoid. Basically: if you believe what Amazon, Google, and Apple say about the security of their devices, there’s nothing to worry about. If you distrust them, then it’s fair to avoid the technology they produce. I think the majority of people on BB distrust them.
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But that’s kinda Corey’s thing, though.
Agreed. Just like politicians, I don’t actually “trust” any of them; but I utilize them sparingly when they are useful to me, and I take my risks.
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But once an intruder finds a way into your network (perhaps a router exploit, maybe a remote access Trojan that connects outward to its command-and-control system), then all bets are off.
This can be mitigated; if you have a router, switches, and wireless access points that support VLANs, you could always put your Internet of Shit devices on their own VLAN and set up some firewall rules so you could access the devices from your real LAN without them being able to access your PCs. Unfortunately, most people don’t really want to spring for enterprise-class network hardware.
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So, nobody should own a smartphone either (iPhone, Pixel, Samsung, etc…) which also has a microphone that is always listening and could always be recording? All to say, while I undertand the concern, I just wonder why are the smart speakers the culprit. I think It’s more likely that the App developer of XYZ solitare game, installed on your smartphone would hack/tap into your iphone mic settings enabling it to record you. That’s more likely than the big brands attempting that… For Google, Amazon, if they get caught recording (when the trigger word is not said), they are dead in the water - it it was done on purpose.
There is no inherent technical reason that voice recognition has to stay on the cloud. The only advantage is giving a uniform user experience across all hardware, low to high end.
I suspect a major reason for going that way was the patent-lock on voice recognition that a handful of companies had, such that doing it “on the cloud” bypassed them.
Now that cloudless solutions like Mozilla’s engine are coming out, that will probably become a major selling point in the market.
I dunno the other contributors here seem to love their amazon assistants.
It exists today.
The open source project Jasper is a voice interface for your home. It can do speech recognition in one of several ways, using Google, Amazon, or if you have the horsepower, it can process voice locally with the open source Sphinx voice recognition software.
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so they should pay me for that - or is that the value I am paying to subsidize the price of this device. but how would i monetize that otherwise? perhaps we need a new p2p?
They don’t do much, that’s true, but what they do is very convenient. We just moved and I ask my echo to ring my phone a few times a day, that alone makes it worth it. 
The cool thing about it is that you don’t actually have to keep your cellphone with you to make a conversion, do some quick math or google the point in contention in the middle of a conversation.
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That is my anecdotal experience with the Echo.
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