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iPhone: if I say 'Hey Siri', I see an onscreen animation indicating it's listening and ready for my next command. Alexa: if I say 'Alexa', I see the ring light

iPhone: if I say 'Hey Siri', I see an onscreen animation indicating it's listening and ready for my next command. Alexa: if I say 'Alexa', I see the ring lights animate indicating it's listening and ready for my next command. Putting Amazon/Apple's privacy and security implementations aside, how are these different? Aren't they both 'always listening'?

danShumway 6y ago
You can set your phone to require a physical action before it will start listening. On Android, I think it's a long press on the home button, or it was the last time I was looking at the controls. You can also disable both 'Hey Siri' and 'Hey Google' on your phone entirely. If you are using a voice assistant on your phone, and if you have it set up to always listen, then it's almost the same as a smart speaker (minor quibbles about the positioning and quality of the microphone aside). But those are two pretty big ifs. Usually this argument gets pulled out to shut down people who have concerns about smart speakers in general, saying that any effort to make smart speakers more private or avoid them is pointless because of course their phone is always listening to them. That's not necessarily true. If someone wants to get rid of their smart speaker, owning a phone doesn't immediately make them a hypocrite. They can keep their phone and still have better privacy.
- asdff 6y ago
  you are assuming the physical action before listening will always remain a faithful setting. If the NSA wanted Apple to play ball one day, that setting would be merely cosmetic.
  - danShumway 6y ago
    I'm not assuming anything, I just understand that the risk of the NSA forcing Apple to install malware on my phone is lower than the risk of my local police office following an already legal process to get data that I know Amazon is inadvertently collecting from people today. You're correlating risks that aren't related to each other; these are two different devices with different threat models. If the NSA wants to bug you, it will bug your house. That doesn't mean you should bug it for them.

danShumway 6y ago

You can set your phone to require a physical action before it will start listening. On Android, I think it's a long press on the home button, or it was the last time I was looking at the controls. You can also disable both 'Hey Siri' and 'Hey Google' on your phone entirely. If you are using a voice assistant on your phone, and if you have it set up to always listen, then it's almost the same as a smart speaker (minor quibbles about the positioning and quality of the microphone aside). But those are two pretty big ifs. Usually this argument gets pulled out to shut down people who have concerns about smart speakers in general, saying that any effort to make smart speakers more private or avoid them is pointless because of course their phone is always listening to them. That's not necessarily true. If someone wants to get rid of their smart speaker, owning a phone doesn't immediately make them a hypocrite. They can keep their phone and still have better privacy.

asdff 6y ago
you are assuming the physical action before listening will always remain a faithful setting. If the NSA wanted Apple to play ball one day, that setting would be merely cosmetic.
- danShumway 6y ago
  I'm not assuming anything, I just understand that the risk of the NSA forcing Apple to install malware on my phone is lower than the risk of my local police office following an already legal process to get data that I know Amazon is inadvertently collecting from people today. You're correlating risks that aren't related to each other; these are two different devices with different threat models. If the NSA wants to bug you, it will bug your house. That doesn't mean you should bug it for them.