How is it different from having a mobile phone on the table?
Of course they both have microphones hooked to data centers, but the Alexas/Echos are almost worthless without the microphone enabled. Many people I know have turned off listening for trigger words on their phone.
That being said, I have a HomePod that I have to manually press the touch button on top for it to listen. I use it for music, an occasional family conference call and occasional for generic assistant stuff like weather.
I tried a Google Home but couldn't get it configured in that mode -- listen on physical touch only (that was 3-4 years ago). And doubly couldn't get it setup without deep integration into a google account. The HomePod complains occasionally that it can't answer because it hasn't been personalized to an account, but is otherwise totally fine operating without access to my every inner thought (web/location history, etc.).
I'm just as concerned about every modern car essentially being a microphone hooked to a datacenter on wheels. And new TVs. And a few refrigerators and kids toys. And light switches. At least phones (well iPhones -- haven't used the last few Android versions) are easy to setup without listening enabled. And on iPhones it's opt-in during the setup process (the Siri checkbox is default on, but you are prompted to decide with no other confusing decisions on the screen at the same time).
Yes.
What's the difference? You trust it not to listen without the button press, I trust it to not listen without the wake word. To think that the distinction is meaningful is wishful thinking.
The only way to be sure these devices aren't listening to you is to not have one at all. Or, as the person in this article did, take it apart and de-cap the chips to make sure.
In the case of smart phones, I think it's a mistake to assume that switching some of these functions off in the settings will actually have the desired effect: preventing the phone from recording audio without making the owner aware of this recording.
I can't really get away without having a cell phone. The slope has been slippery on this one; when I purchased my first smart phone this wasn't a big concern (but maybe it should have been). It's been several years and it's a bigger sacrifice, in my opinion, to give up a smart phone. Even if I wanted to, my employer might buy one for me, for instance.
I do think the expectation today is that everyone have a smart phone.
Back on topic, it's not a phones intended purpose to snitch on you, they usually do not listen into the room, without extremely malicious manipulation, and more so you simply can not realistically avoid having a phone in your reach, today. If I were talking business I would probably leave the phone outside too, for that matter, and I don't trust cheap communication hardware, either.
In real life drawing analogies by principle doesn't make for a good argument, most of the time, as life is adaptation and compromise, not a path through a logical circuit.
Do you honestly not see an obvious difference between a phone and an Amazon wired device intended to record and remotely analyze what's happening in the room?
I sure don't, from a security viewpoint. They are both cloud-connected microphones. Google is just as likely as Amazon to listen in surreptitiously. And my phone is 1000x more vulnerable to someone _other than_ Google listening in due to installable apps.
Do you honestly not see that there's no fundamental difference between the two? A CPU, ram, storage, wireless modems, microphones and a battery all running under software we don't control.
As far as intent, it's not possible to be sure about intent, you have to judge based on the information we have which is the features and capabilities of the device.