Any popular internet connected always-on voice recognition device is going to be taken advantage of by future overly-ambitious intelligence gathering initiative

Any popular internet connected always-on voice recognition device is going to be taken advantage of by future overly-ambitious intelligence gathering initiatives, period. It really doesn't matter substantively whether they upload the data to be processed in the cloud or not - typical home networks (see: Belkin routers) are not exactly fort knox. If you haven't seen Laura Poitras' profile of William Binney recently, watch it again: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/23/opinion/the-national-security-agencys-domestic-spying-program.html http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/23/opinion/the-national-secur... When this came out (pre Snowden), many techies pooh-poohed the suggestion that phones could be turned into remote microphones. In hindsight everything he says has either been verified or is quite plausible. So why make it easier for a future big brother by building (let alone buying) internet devices with voice recognition? While they may be cool at a technology level, given the current political path we're building the infrastructure for a future dystopian society.