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> I was one of those who believed consumers would look at the always-on living room microphone with suspicion. But I think the lesson was pretty clear that peop

> I was one of those who believed consumers would look at the always-on living room microphone with suspicion. But I think the lesson was pretty clear that people will trade privacy for convenience. I don't think it's a matter of trading privacy for convenience, as long as you believe Amazon when they say they're not sending anything when you're not using the wake word. All evidence points towards this being the case, both my own anecdotal evidence, and the investigations people have done. Can it be exploited? I don't know. I'm not going to speculate. I don't see any additional trade off vs. having my cell phone on me at basically all times.

yomly 10y ago
Not an EE, but I wonder if it is possible to bake into the hardware an LED that activates when the camera is active. That would at least protect users from unintentional recording
- awill 10y ago
  This is quite straight forward, and I'm surprised no one has done it (to my knowledge). You simply wire the camera in such a way that powering it also powers the LED. If done properly, you couldn't hack this with software.
  - gbrown 10y ago
    It's the kind of feature that should honestly be required for most applications.
deleted 10y ago
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lima 10y ago
> But I think the lesson was pretty clear that people will trade privacy for convenience. Not everywhere. In Germany, Amazon Echo isn't nearly as popular.
- Semaphor 10y ago
  Germany has an, sometimes irrational, phobia of new technology that doesn't always have something to do with privacy concerns.
  - lima 10y ago
    In this case, the privacy concerns are obvious.
cookiecaper 10y ago
Yes. People don't see this as a device that's "always listening". They see it as a device that has a voice-activated "On" switch. Instead of pressing a button, you say a word. Of course, with a little bit of thought, you can connect the dots and figure out that it has to be listening all the time to know if the wake word is said, but most people aren't thinking that deeply about it. When they do realize this, Amazon has assured them that the "voice switch" actually does function as advertised and that audio is not streamed until the device is "on".

yomly 10y ago

Not an EE, but I wonder if it is possible to bake into the hardware an LED that activates when the camera is active. That would at least protect users from unintentional recording

awill 10y ago
This is quite straight forward, and I'm surprised no one has done it (to my knowledge). You simply wire the camera in such a way that powering it also powers the LED. If done properly, you couldn't hack this with software.
- gbrown 10y ago
  It's the kind of feature that should honestly be required for most applications.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

lima 10y ago

> But I think the lesson was pretty clear that people will trade privacy for convenience. Not everywhere. In Germany, Amazon Echo isn't nearly as popular.

Semaphor 10y ago
Germany has an, sometimes irrational, phobia of new technology that doesn't always have something to do with privacy concerns.
- lima 10y ago
  In this case, the privacy concerns are obvious.

cookiecaper 10y ago

Yes. People don't see this as a device that's "always listening". They see it as a device that has a voice-activated "On" switch. Instead of pressing a button, you say a word. Of course, with a little bit of thought, you can connect the dots and figure out that it has to be listening all the time to know if the wake word is said, but most people aren't thinking that deeply about it. When they do realize this, Amazon has assured them that the "voice switch" actually does function as advertised and that audio is not streamed until the device is "on".