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Comment by CodeWriter23 | Hacker News Reader

From the privacy perspective, IMO, once you put a device in your home that you know is always listening, and is forwarding an unknown amount of audio from your home to a third party, at that point, you have surrendered your right to privacy.

Edit: not just my opinion, it's a matter of law. (thanks @mnm1) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third-party_doctrine

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No, you haven't, any more than when you buy a cell phone with a camera and microphone built in. People still have rights regardless of the products they buy.

Actually, according to the third party doctrine, you have. The difference between this and a cellphone is that you voluntarily give up this information whereas a cellphone does not transmit such data voluntarily. There are surveillance laws and other problems if a phone is recording you unknowingly. With Alexa, the recordings are submitted voluntarily. I'd be shocked if the police don't get their hands on this data. It's not like Amazon can claim, like Apple, that they can't themselves access it because it's encrypted.

'The third-party doctrine is a United States legal theory that holds that people who voluntarily give information to third parties—such as banks, phone companies, internet service providers (ISPs), and e-mail servers—have "no reasonable expectation of privacy."'

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third-party_doctrine

Except that the device (service) is not streaming / transmitting your audio except when you indicate to it - in exactly the same way as you would with "Hey Siri" or "Ok Google" - that you intend it to do so. (Or if it makes a mistake and falsely detects the wake word; again, something that your mobile phone is also capable of doing.)

How is any smart phone that supports OK Google and Hey Siri different from an Echo in this respect?

It's not. I think the poster may be confused about how the Echo works - it's not constantly streaming audio or transcripts back to Amazon, just when it's directed to do so via the "Alexa" trigger word.

You are absolutely not consenting to send full transcripts of your conversations to Amazon. If they are in possession of it, it's entirely illegal, and the third party doctrine doesn't apply.

Whether the device constantly streams data or sends it every once in awhile is irrelevant. In the agreement with Amazon you agree to give them them the data, including the voice data. Amazon even lets you manage/delete the data after the fact. They're not collecting it illegally. Whether it is full voice transcripts or not that you're agreeing to send to Amazon is not 100% clear, but that's also irrelevant because by using Alexa you've agreed to send that data. It really depends on Amazon's definition of "when you interact with Alexa." I'm pretty sure that's quite broad.

This isn't Apple fighting encryption backdoors. This is Amazon impeding justice.

"1.3 Voice Services. You control Alexa with your voice. Alexa streams audio to the cloud when you interact with Alexa. Alexa processes and retains your voice input and other information, such as your music playlists and your Alexa to-do and shopping lists, in the cloud to respond to your requests and improve our services."

https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=...

People have the rights they have agreed to. What does the EULA state? Privacy policy?

It doesn't say anything, basically. I checked.

Alexa Terms of Use: https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=...

Only Alexa privacy policy I can find links to generic Amazon privacy policy: https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=...

When will people finally understand that laws are above EULAs or ToS and other toilet paper?

I don't believe they are saying a EULA or ToS is "above the law" they're saying that there is a reasonable argument to say that the expectation of privacy was waived by the guilty party owning an Amazon Echo. If the ToS states these facts more clearly, then that argument would either have more or less weight. Without anything being said in the ToS or EULA, the argument could really go either way, depending on many things, like the judge's mood or interpretation.

You can't sign away your basic human rights, of which privacy is one[1].

1. http://www.un.org/en/universal-declaration-human-rights/ (Article 12)

But laptops, and smartphones have come with cameras and integrated microphones for a long time, the only difference to the Echo is that they don't claim to be always listening.

which means if a smartphone records you, you can play the "why was it listening?" card

with an echo, you can't claim "why was it listening!?" because you knew it was and that was the reason you bought it.

granted, I dont think Amazon is doing anything nefarious at this point (other than what they normally do, building an advertising repertoire about you). Also, most people seem to agree that it only transmits data to Amazon after being triggered. but thats not to say they couldnt start listening to everything in the future to "improve the product experience". And if you think they are just using the data to answer your immediate question and not to build a profile on you, youre in denial. A smartphone company has no reason to build a profile on you. An advertising/sales company does.

But our phones are always listening for "Hey Siri" or "OK Google".

Depending on the brand of phone and the software you have installed on it. And for the phone to keep listening when you explicitly disable that feature would be an issue. Whereas pulling the plug on the echo is the only way to disable listening.

Siri isn't the main selling point of buying an iphone. cellular communications (data, sms, or voice) are. Whereas Alexa is 100% the reason to buy an echo. You can't really make the claim you didn't know the echo was listening (since it was the reason you got it), but a person could reasonably make the claim they bought a phone without realizing it was more than just a phone.

Mobile phones (well, at least iPhones and Android phones) are "always listening" for their wake words in exactly the same way that the Echo is "always listening." They are doing local signal processing to detect a wake word (phrase) and, upon detection, they stream audio to cloud-based service that performs ASR and NLP on it in order to perform some service on behalf of the user.

Yep, I'm amazed at myself on how much privacy I've given up for convenience from 10 years ago. As long as you know the trade-offs...

I've started smart-devicing my home and a little wary about that, not from a privacy perspective, but from a hacking perspective. I can almost imagine a sci-fi/horror movie there somewhere.

I think the trade-offs are mostly in the future. Right now we just jumped out of the plane. Give it a few decades of free fall.

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