My biggest frustration is going to a friends house which is blanketed with Echo/Google coverage and realizing that all my words could be used against me at a later time.
How does one approach this situation?
How does one approach this situation?
Which isn't to say it isn't frustrating, just that your frustration at your friend is misplaced - they're not exposing you to anything which you aren't already exposed. If your fear is that these tech companies are going to misuse casually-overheard conversations from these devices, they're just as likely to use it from all the phones you're near.
If your fear is that your friend is going to use this tech, however, maybe you need better friends. There's nothing stopping an unscrupulous friend from putting plain-old audio recorders through their house anyway.
I think it's very human to want privacy. Having confidence that someone isn't listening/watching to you can have a tremendous effect on how you act. It's just human and I'm not sure if you can change that by telling people that it's not feasible in today's world. I know I acted differently in private when I was just a kid - it's not something I learned, but was natural to me.
The tech would actually be fine if it was provably contained to the local network. As soon as it leaves the local network, I can't trust it - doesn't matter if Amazon/Google says they don't use it for X purpose.
Afaik it is not, actually. The devices are taught to recognize the wakeup words (like "ok google") completely offline, and only the stuff recorded afterwards gets uploaded to the cloud of contractors.
That's not likely to happen in the present day US, but there are plenty of less dramatic but definitely undesirable things that can happen when your home audio gets passed around to a bunch of random contractors.