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Comment by techsupporter | Hacker News Reader

This is how my better half and I feel about these things. Not only is the idea of having a likely-always-on microphone in our most private space unsettling, the trade-off isn't even worth it for us. But, frankly, neither of us can think of something that would be so Earth-moving as to warrant sticking some perpetual ears all over the place.

I don't care if I go to a friend's house and he or she has an Alexa or Home or what-have-you. Their house, their privacy, their rules. But we're keeping them out of ours.

(Yes, both of us have disabled Siri and the utility of a mobile phone existing and being indoors with us is higher than the seemingly unlikely trade-off of Apple listening all of the time. "Unlikely" because that's not their business model, so far as I can tell, while All Data Collection Everywhere Always does seem to be the case for Google and Amazon.)

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But they aren't 'always listening' - except for their wake words (yes, I know it's technically possible they really do, and smuggle the data out along with legit requests, but it seems unlikely). So for example the article's author can rest easy if he listens to Barbra Streisand (on vinyl!), Alexa won't be any wiser. Google and Amazon have somewhat different imperatives, Amazon would like to figure how to sell us more things (happily placing orders via the Echo is off by default) while Google would like to figure out how to sell us to more advertisers... (so far blocking keeps that mostly at bay)

I think this is the case during the "ramp up" period where we acquire microphones and video cameras, place them everywhere, and wire them up to a few selected corporations. Phase two is where they decide to make use of them now that they are in place and ubiquitous. For example, they might try to be extra "helpful" and make one of the wake words a very common word.

> it's technically possible they really do

That's not the problem; it doesn't matter if your particular device is listening at any particular time. Using an always-on microphone normalizes the expectation that audio in the home might be sent to a 3rd party's remote server. This is important because Kyllo v United States created[1] a bright line test for when a technology is a "search".

Normalizing audio eavesdropping technology in previously private areas will eventually mean use of that technology is not a search, and thus the police/etc can use their own device with similar technology without a warrant to see "details of a private home that would previously have been unknowable without physical intrusion"[2].

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15853560

[2] http://caselaw.findlaw.com/us-supreme-court/533/27.html

Even if manufacturers behave nicely, there is still the possibility that the devices are eventually somehow compromised by bad actors and used nefariously.

For example, the CIA developed and deployed a program to use the built-in microphone on Samsung "smart" TVs to spy on targets, even when it looks like it's off: https://www.theverge.com/2017/3/7/14841556/wikileaks-cia-hac...

I would hazard a guess that compromising your phone or laptop to record everything all the time would be easier than an echo.

But they aren't 'always listening'

It's already happened (accidentally, in this case): http://money.cnn.com/2017/10/11/technology/google-home-mini-...

And it will continue to happen, because "prevent this from happening at all cost" isn't a development mandate for the device, and won't be, because they would prefer to capture everything. Google famously captured wifi network and street view data after they were specifically instructed not to by the court -- why would they fail to avail themselves of information that's right there in this case?

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