I wouldn't be willing to put an open wiretap in my home, even if it did something amazing, like extend my lifespan. The quality of my life is not significantly improved with these devices, and all of their practical uses can be duplicated with the minimal effort of tapping a screen a couple of times.
I've never understood this argument. Why is the portable wiretap in your pocket inherently safer?
- The phone is not designed to listen around the room explicitly, more near field, so it can't hear everything.
- An iPhone seems to have pretty decent privacy settings (only the app can listen while app is open, etc)
- I personally have a phone I can reflash with mostly open source software (only baseband/fivers proprietary), so I am reasonably sure that my phone is not spying on me.
The Echo has pretty decent privacy settings (only listens when you say the "wake word", etc).
But any wider use of audio processing to listen for keywords besides the wake word apply equally well to a cell phone. So again, the cell phone is at least as big a concern as an Echo, if not bigger since many people are rarely outside of arms-reach of their phone.
Who says it is? Its astounding to me that people willingly carry around portable (wi-fi enabled!) wiretaps.
If I turn off voice assistant on my phone, ethically speaking, it shouldn't be recording my voice. Companies/governments doing so is an actual wire tap, and they should have a warrant.
Putting these devices in your home is giving Amazon/Google/Apple permission to record your every conversation.
How can a device that is only activated by listening not always be listening? If I turn off Siri on my phone the microphone is supposed to go off.
Edit: I know about the wake word. It was a statement on the quote that a device that only works on voice wouldn't be "listening".
That said: right now, common sense would dictate that your phone's battery really can't handle recording full audio at all times, but once that's no longer the case, it does seem problematic that we don't yet have the audio equivalent of putting a piece of tape over your laptop webcam.
https://www.cnet.com/news/fbi-taps-cell-phone-mic-as-eavesdr...
I don't know how easy it is with today's smartphones, but it was definitely a thing in the dumbphone era.
Similar issues with your laptop or these smart speaker devices.
I have an Echo and use it daily for music, weather, timers, home automation (ie controlling lights and fans), etc...
I also drive a car almost every day and that has a relatively high probability of killing me. Compared to that, having an Echo in my house seems somewhat harmless.
That entirely depends on your definition of "harm". Those of us who see intrinsic value in privacy would be grievously harmed.
Even if we accept that sharing anything private is harm, I'm guessing most purchasers of the Echo understand that the device uses the internet to answer queries. How are those foolish people being harmed?
Why should I be less concerned about a mobile device that waits for me to say "Ok Google" or "Siri" than a stationary device that waits for me to say "Alexa"?
The problem is not understanding the tradeoffs or even not understanding that there's a choice at all.