I would never put a closed source hot mic in my house. You can trust big brother all you want, but I'm going to stay clear.
Yes, phones generally can do that, but it doesn't mean we shouldn't be concerned about what the Echo is doing.
You're seriously willing to carry smartphones, which have both microphones and cameras, and give no indication visible or otherwise, of when they are listening or recording or sending data, and run whatever dodgy code some asian device manufacturer wanted it to run, but you won't trust a device made by Amazon that people have run wireshark captures against and lights up with big blue LEDs whenever it is listening.
Reality called - it wants the tinfoil hat back.
Additionally, I'm pretty sure the Amazon Echo is just rebranded third party mic / soc boards put together by Amazon. It is still "asian device manufacturer" firmware.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=117171
But saying "Reality called - it wants the tinfoil hat back." seems like bad manners to me.
I don't disagree. If there was a legitimate alternative, I would use that, but there isn't. I do everything I can to make sure it runs as much FOSS as it can.
> Reality called - it wants the tinfoil hat back.
How can you claim that attitude? You just admitted we have 2 giant vectors for attack/compromise, then dismiss them without any reasoning?
uh... there's tons of people complaining about that all the time. I don't know about you, but that's a constant criticism of both companies that I see.