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Comment by fragsworth | Hacker News Reader

I was given one as a gift, but I can't bring myself to plug it in.

The device sends sound to their servers to process what you are saying. They probably aren't sending all the sound, but if they aren't, I can't be bothered to keep up to date on if they change that policy.

Is it unreasonable to assume that the NSA is logging (or will eventually be logging) everything sent over the Internet with this device around?

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If you're seriously worried about the NSA logging things - I'd be more concerned with the device you carry on your person every day, with a microphone, two cameras, a GPS device, 24 hour battery, and probably 10x the processing power of the Alexa.

It seriously is no worse than OK Google or Siri and you should seriously be more worried about your cell phone.

The device I carry day-to-day needs to be specifically compromised. With voice assistants using an internet service, only that internet service needs to be compromised. For bulk surveilance, I think it's far more likely for the Echo servers to be attacked than my smartphone.

Amazon says that only after you say the hotword it transmits voice to servers.

Well then we can definitely trust them.

If they lie about this in general(and enable blanket surveillance), it would be relatively easy to detect , and hurt Amazon's brand.

How? If you say "by analysing the amount of data it transmits when not in use", then not really - they could record it locally and then sneak it alongside a normal request.

I don't know how Echo's update, but they potentially could also sneak in an update that does listen 24/7, then a couple days later push an update that turns that off.

You can trust them as much as the manufacturer of your phone. No difference there, phones could also always listen.

I'm starting to get tired of this. I really don't understand this sentiment on a forum called "hacker news" of all places. You don't have to trust anyones word about it not listening 24/7. It is t r i v i a l to look at the data from the echo transiting across the network. You can see that the traffic spikes after you say alexia as it sends the audio data out.

What does this mean, "specifically compromised"? You bought it compromised if we are being congruent with these sorts of accusations or precautions. If you assume the Echo is always listening, you should also assume that Apple, Google, and Facebook are also always listening... and, in fact, I recall earlier this year a quite vast conspiracy that Facebook did exactly that[0]. This was denied by Facebook, for the record – or do you not believe them?

0. http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/new...

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