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I think battery life and 4G network bandwidth are constraints for now. If it would record and stream data while in standby, battery wouldn't last for more than

I think battery life and 4G network bandwidth are constraints for now. If it would record and stream data while in standby, battery wouldn't last for more than a few hours and would visibly consume your allocated bandwidth. What they do is to introduce a dedicated processor that listens for these keywords and that is supposed to wake the phone up on detection. The danger of course is having that processor activate the phone on keywords other than "OK Google". And it doesn't even have to be on purpose. As I said, my wife's phone detection is totally broken for some reason.

EGreg 10y ago
It doesn't need to stream all the time, just record. The traffic is encrypted end-to-end anyway, you can only do an analysis on the size relative to how much time it's been idle.
semi-extrinsic 10y ago
This. 30* 24* 3600* 22000/(8e9) = 7.8 gigabytes per month for 24/7 surveillance at the bare minimum (AFAIK) of 22 kbps mono audio.
- TheSpiceIsLife 10y ago
  2.83GB. Voice sounds fine at 8kbps. Reduce it even further if all you need is to understand what's being said.
  - semi-extrinsic 10y ago
    Still, that would light up your data usage like a christmas tree.
    - Dylan16807 10y ago
      Do you connect to wifi at least once a month?
      - semi-extrinsic 10y ago
        You can also show per-app data usage over wifi on Android (it's a single click away on stock Android). If Google Now was transferring 2.8 GB of data each month, someone would have noticed. Also, the high battery usage argument.
        khedoros 10y ago
        If they were streaming spy data like that, I suspect that they wouldn't report the data usage. IMO, battery life is the strongest indicator that they aren't.
    - satysin 10y ago
      Who says it would use up your data usage? Of course this would require the network operator to allow it but it isn't anywhere near impossible to do without the user knowing.
- EGreg 10y ago
  That assumes people are speaking all the time -- the onboard processor can in fact translate most of the speech into text you know.
- nitrogen 10y ago
  You only need to transmit if you detect frequencies in the range of human speech, and only in batches that can be masked with other data transfers.

EGreg 10y ago

It doesn't need to stream all the time, just record. The traffic is encrypted end-to-end anyway, you can only do an analysis on the size relative to how much time it's been idle.

semi-extrinsic 10y ago

This. 30* 24* 3600* 22000/(8e9) = 7.8 gigabytes per month for 24/7 surveillance at the bare minimum (AFAIK) of 22 kbps mono audio.

TheSpiceIsLife 10y ago
2.83GB. Voice sounds fine at 8kbps. Reduce it even further if all you need is to understand what's being said.
- semi-extrinsic 10y ago
  Still, that would light up your data usage like a christmas tree.
  - Dylan16807 10y ago
    Do you connect to wifi at least once a month?
    - semi-extrinsic 10y ago
      You can also show per-app data usage over wifi on Android (it's a single click away on stock Android). If Google Now was transferring 2.8 GB of data each month, someone would have noticed. Also, the high battery usage argument.
      - khedoros 10y ago
        If they were streaming spy data like that, I suspect that they wouldn't report the data usage. IMO, battery life is the strongest indicator that they aren't.
  - satysin 10y ago
    Who says it would use up your data usage? Of course this would require the network operator to allow it but it isn't anywhere near impossible to do without the user knowing.
EGreg 10y ago
That assumes people are speaking all the time -- the onboard processor can in fact translate most of the speech into text you know.
nitrogen 10y ago
You only need to transmit if you detect frequencies in the range of human speech, and only in batches that can be masked with other data transfers.