>I have had reservations about the Echo line because of the whole "always listening" thing

I've spoken with other people about feeling this way. I think that the difference here is actually 100% psychological, and that always-listening devices like the Echo are exactly as trustworthy as the company that makes them.

I am currently standing next to at least 4 different devices with microphones and internet connections that are on or in "sleep" mode. Just because they aren't "listening" to me in a way that is obvious (e.g., they respond to a command) doesn't mean that they're not recording every sound I make. There are in fact trojans designed to do exactly that.

Either you trust the manufacturer of these devices or you don't. The fact that there's a secondary processor on the Echo that does low-power constant voice recognition for the word "Alexa" (and similarly for some phones which can be activated with "OK Google") doesn't make it suddenly more likely to be storing all of your audio, all the time.

The only salient difference is just that it makes it obvious that it was in fact listening, whereas any internet-connected device around you could be listening to you right now and simply never let on.

I'm keeping my Echo plugged in. :)

Even if you trust the company, you also have to trust that they have no logs that can be subpoenaed and that they cannot be compelled or hacked to wiretap you.

Sure, but that misses the point: if your phone were doing that it would be functionally equivalent. You wouldn't be able to tell any more than you would with Alexa

I'm pretty sure Alexa isn't recording or transmitting what's said at all times, there's just a local process looking for the queue to start recording a sample to upload. That queue being the word "Alexa".

I believe you're right, but it still feels icky to have something always listening for that special phrase, to me. Maybe if I wrote and maintained the code myself that always listened, I'd feel more comfortable with it.

Oh, I think the proper word was cue, not queue, by the way.

It would scare you to know that OnStar can be remotely activated without the driver knowing, wouldn't it?

Or any cell phone.

This has always seemed pretty marginal to me. You might be able to turn the microphone on, but when my battery dies an hour later I'll be suspicious.

Lithium ion batteries don't get old and lose capacity. That's just the NSA backing off the sleep interval.

>Maybe if I wrote and maintained the code myself that always listened, I'd feel more comfortable with it.

Maybe? Maybe you'd be comfortable? There's a world where you wrote the code yourself and still don't trust that it's not sending data back?

You could try adding in some simple motion, like raising your hand, before the system would start listening for hot words. Maybe connect a cheap infrared sensor to GPIO and block its view so it only detects motion at or above certain height.

"queue" -> "cue"?

Looking at what Amazon's posted, it looks like what they've released doesn't even give you the "always listening" option.

You have to click on the "start listening" button and then the "stop listening" button.

Now all you need is a remote microphone in the shape of a star trek communicator for your shirt pocket. Tap, "Alexa, three to beam aboard." :-)

Just needs a vocera badge integration and a connection to Coding Insight from Talix to allow for NLP voice access to patient records...

I believe the terms and conditions for the Alexa SDK state you can't activate the Alexa Voice Service via voice, your user has to purposefully interact with something like a button to use it.

EDIT: I'm wondering if this is a legal thing, i.e. they don't want any tom, dick or harry creating "always listening" devices associated with their brand, or they just want to differentiate their Echo product and not have competitors

Confirmed.

This is not always listening app. You've to click "start listening".

Yes, agreed - this is perfectly fine with me. If I wanted the "always listening" feature I'd grab an "official" Alexa device :)

Its worth remembering that these services are dependent on the network 'carrying their packets'. If you're worried about them 'phoning home' just make sure your home network is configured to record such events to the best of your ability, and setup some simple alerts or blocking.

Agreed, I think this can be generalized to say that this should be the case with all these cloud services. The hardware should be open source, so you can at least control that part. At least you have that much control over the cloud APIs.