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Comment by brightball | Hacker News Reader

That's a valid point and at the same time, we have to wonder about things like bundled cameras and mic's on computers, cell phones, TV's. These days it seems like the act of having an internet connection at all can open this type of door.

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Quite. So it becomes a matter of trust. Amazon and Google are probably on the wrong side of that balance. For a lot of IoT apps the net isn't the appropriate place at all - local net is better. I'm not a fan of thermostats that prevent you having heating because some cloud server is being DDOS'd etc.

I had hoped and frankly expected that there'd be a few more privacy oriented choices in this space by now. There was Zoe[1], but that got canned at last minute. I really didn't want a refund...

[1] https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/protonet-zoe-start-your-s...

I spent a few minutes on the campaign page but couldn't find details about the closure of the project (it looks like it's still open). As someone with an interest in privacy-protecting home devices, can you explain a bit more about why it closed?

Click into the updates, 3 months ago. I think the only thing on the main page, now the funding has closed, is the updated FAQs at the end including info about refunds.

In short 5 months ago all seemed to be going OK, then they went a tad quiet. Three months ago there was another update including a CEO statement.

"Due to unforeseen delays in the development, we are not going to deliver the ZOE in the current form and all contributors will be refunded." They mention it's a partner having development delays in some critical component, but all very vague with no details.

Supposedly the project is alive and we'll get an update email when they're ready to try again. I infer from refunds all round it's not going to be soon. If it was just a few months I figure they'd ask for patience to work around whatever issue.

Ok, thanks. I'm certain all of the necessary technological building blocks exist to make this kind of thing a reality, but all the megascale funding goes to mediocre, insecure devices and services. These cloud consumer perceptions and make it difficult to know what would actually work in the market.

There's probably scope for an open project here. There might be one - never searched as Zoe ticked all the boxes for me. Local voice recognition, open to the cloud for better accuracy, and set exactly what gets to talk to the net. From a company with some experience in private cloud and hardware.

I don't know enough of IoT specs, protocols etc to know what would be needed other than the broadest terms. Probably yet another use for a Pi 3.

Yes, but in all those examples the camera/microphone defaults to "off", not "on".

That is the most important distinction. Sure my laptop has a camera but if I keep good security practices I can feel reasonably assured that it is not monitoring me unless I've switched it on for some reason. The Alexas and Google Homes of the world default to "on", and everything you do/say is monitored because "cloud processing".

I will always have a problem with anything that tries to use my actions to build a more predictable model of who I am or what I am/will be doing

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