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Phones last several hours when actively doing real-time voice communication. The power draw for passive surveillance would be way lower. Many phones support con
by mikeash 8y ago
Phones last several hours when actively doing real-time voice communication. The power draw for passive surveillance would be way lower. Many phones support constant background listening with wake-word activation just like the Echo, with minuscule impact on battery life.
If your phone has a spying feature, are you sure it can be turned off? How do you know?
- JoeAltmaier 8y agoBecause you asked it to. If it didn't that'd be actionable, right? Whereas an Echo is explicitly useless unless its always listening. So the 'feature' would have to be illegal/surreptitious and exposing it would be big news
- mikeash 8y agoWell, what exactly are you defending against? Echo, like phones, uses low-power, always-on algorithms to listen for a specific phrase. Only when it hears that phrase does it actually start recording and sending your audio back home. Are you worried about that low-power, always-on part listening to you? If so, then avoiding the Echo while carrying a phone with the feature switched off is sensible. But I don’t see why this would be worth worrying about, since the data stays local and isn’t saved. If you’re worried about the device secretly recording you and sending that data to someone else, then the two are equivalent in their threats.