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Comment by atmosx | Hacker News Reader

I do have control over my laptop, the NSA or Amazon would have to actively hack me in order go get to that mic and luckily I'm not worth it anyways.

In order for someone (the NSA?) to track a phone and do whatever they need to do, they need to have a warrant and what-not.

That's like deliberately sending all your living-room conversations (yours and your family's) online for analysis for God-knows-what purpose.

You trust Amazon that's good for you then. I don't trust anybody with admittedly uncontrolled access to all table conversations my family will have in the future.

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There are two basic ways for the NSA to snoop on you using this device.

1. Listen to the internet traffic

2. Install malware to listen to everything

For #1, the Echo only sends conversations preceded by it's keyword. But since the alternatives to the commands you're telling Echo involve the internet anyways, what's the difference? IOW, asking echo for the weather sends the same basic information to the NSA that pulling up the weather app on your phone does.

If the NSA is going to do #2, they're going to do it to the phone in your pocket rather then targeting a niche device like the Echo.

3. Modify the hardware at the manufacturer to make it easier to snoop on without the user being aware.[1]

[1] http://www.infoworld.com/article/2608141/internet-privacy/sn...

Doing 2 on a smartphone feels like it would be something which would start draining battery really quick which would be a giveaway.

With this it's running on mains, it could upload in the middle of the night when it would probably be undetected

Plus, why do one or the other? Sure you want to get someone's phone but why not another device too?

Modern smartphones are always listening for "siri" or "ok google", and are regularly sending keep-alive packets, so I doubt that the battery drain for spying would be significantly noticeable, if done properly.

> why do one or the other?

Because resources are limited, even at government agencies. Effort spent hacking a device that will probably sell in the tens of thousands when they could be targeting devices that sell in the hundreds of millions just seems silly.

I agree that hacking the Echo might be pointless because it won't sell many is reasonable but that's a somewhat different argument.

Still, personally if I had concerns about privacy and secrecy I'd be looking to limit the number of devices in my own home which had an always active microphone.

Intel vPro chips have a VNC server built right into the chip, you can VNC in without the need for there to even be an OS installed. It would be very easy to hide a backdoor in one the hundreds of chips stashed in your laptop.

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