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Comment by VincentEvans | Hacker News Reader

Surprised that no one in this thread brought up any concern about putting an always-listening internet-connected device into their home... That is connected to other things, like phones and even electrical devices, like garage openers.

My wife likes to glue a sticky-note over the camera on my iMac.

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This is my concern as well.

My privacy threshold is pretty low (my username across most of the web is my real name, for example). This, though, is an always-listening device in your home, that connects directly to a company who's stated goal is to sell you more things. That, combined with the potential for abuse/hacks/subpoenas, crosses a line for me.

It feels a lot like the GPS trackers that insurance companies want to put in your car, which I also think is a bridge too far.

Echo only transmits the audio command to Amazon after you invoke the wake word "Alexa." It's "always-listening" but not "always-recording/transmitting." You can easily verify this by looking at your network activity.

... and there's absolutely no way it could ever be changed without your knowledge or consent to do anything other than described!

Right?

Couldn't the same be said about the phone in your pocket as well?

It could, yes. Perhaps everyone could be a little more suspicious of phones as well.

It seems to be some sort of not-quite-hardware thing where they download a neural net, based on what I remember hearing about the implementation and that it takes ~10min and flashes a lot of warnings when you switch from "Alexa" to "Amazon" as the available watchwords.

Not that this is completely secure, of course, but it does suggest it'd be non-trivial, at least.

I feel uncomfortable with the always-listening devices, too. At the same time I wonder if it's any different than carrying a device with a microphone in your pocket at all times. Is Echo more likely to become a privacy invasion than your cell phone is?

I suspect no one else mentioned it because it comes up in every single thread about Echo, and the exact same conversation plays out each time.

Ditto, although if you own a mobile phone you already have one of those - pretty much anything can be put into passive listen mode remotely, and you can be eavesdropped upon.

I don't understand why it matters whether it is "always listening"... any device with a microphone and an internet connection has the same attack surface. To me there's no difference between a device that says "always listening" on the box and one that simply has the latent capability to do so.

If you have a cellphone, I'm pretty sure that it can do everything that Echo can do with the proper app...

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