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Comment by tribune | Hacker News Reader

I own an Echo and this is part of the reason it now sits unplugged. To be honest, it doesn't provide enough value for me to consider potentially compromising the privacy of my home.

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Without trying being rude, surely this was obvious before you purchased it?

Also, your phone is probably already listening to you - and maybe your cable box.

Hell, most speakers can conceivably be used to record audio.

Bruce Schneier wrote a great essay on this topic: https://www.schneier.com/essays/archives/2008/01/the_psychol...

In short, we "feel" security more than we reason about it and once a risk has been personified we lend a lot more weight to it.

That is a really interesting link.

If people are getting murdered in your home and the cops catch wind of it, your privacy will be compromised whether or not you have an Echo.

Mentioned this in another comment, but they can only reveal voice data IF the victim said "Alexa" when the crime was taking place. If the victim didn't say "Alexa" that day, then there's nothing to reveal.

Or thought it heard Alexa. There were many many times when my devices recognized Hey Siri and Okay Google during regular conversation when no such thing was said. I've disabled that capability on all my devices as well.

What if someone else said "Alexa"? What if someone on TV or the radio said "Alexa"?

At least in our office it happens quite commonly that Alexa will trigger on phrases that aren't the word "Alexa" and are even unrelated to it.

This definitely has the potential to be the "killer's name written in blood" of the 21st century.

Is there some technical evidence that this is the case? Or is there a chance that these can be configured remotely to record everything with the right permissions without the owner knowing?

The main thing I'm taking away from this is that, if I ever find myself getting murdered, I'll just keep shouting "Alexa" as a last ditch attempt at getting justice from beyond the grave. Can't hurt.

I was thinking about this -- I'm too afraid to try it, but if I said, "Alexa call 911", does that functionality exist?

Is there a skill I can install that would let me say something like, "Alexa start recording audio to the cloud"?

"Alexa call 911" doesn't work (at least currently) and it looks like it's against Amazon's rules to try and create a skill that calls emergency services: https://developer.amazon.com/public/solutions/alexa/alexa-sk...

The person consented. Amazon did not hand it over before then.

Your phone can record, video too.

Letting fear of privacy boogyman control your life is a sad waste of living.

And "lets ignore these problems because they exist elsewhere" is a sad attempt to justify one's lack of concern for a legitimate attack vector.

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