When did we as a society give up our privacy for such a small amount of convenience? Or has it been gradually chipped away until we have reached this point?
I feel sorry for my children and the future in which they are going to live in. I also feel a sense of shame for participating in a society that has normalised these things.
Sorry kids. We got greedy. We boiled the planet and normalised blanket spying for profits.
Read it on a Mozilla blog a few years ago and I think they quoted it too from somewhere else.
But I feel like it sums the whole thing up nicely.
For many, it does not feel like somebody is watching us. Just that data about us is dumped in a huge archive too vast for anyone to dig around in. This (Wrong) sentiment makes many assume that the currency is probably cheap.
But because Alexa isn't eavesdropping on us and believing this is the tech equivalent of antivaxxers: "If you don't believe it, you're part of the conspiracy"
https://www.theverge.com/2013/12/29/5253226/nsa-cia-fbi-lapt...
They could also compel Amazon to install an update that makes your Alexa record everything.
That's what they want you to think.
/s
That doesn’t make vaccines bad though.
Also, do you recall the fix? They remotely changed the activation phrase that triggered the laugh.
Do you recall the Google home devices with a minor physical flaw that caused the pucks to record and transmit everything?
Do you recall how these recordings are given to third parties to evaluate to improve the quality of the service?
I guess what I’m trying to say is that we don’t know when or if these devices are recording us. Yes, the same is true with our phones as well (though this bracelet from the article would work on them too). It might not be out of malice, but its safe to say that we as the customers have no real idea of how much they hear.
I don't see that as a big deal as the data is likely always sent to a remote server for parsing and processing.
Also, the firmware on these devices is remotely updatable. Even when you can't today, you may be able to tomorrow.
I'd be far more worried about the invasion of privacy caused by it listening to everyone's shopping lists.