Reducing the attack surface is already a good defense, even if you have a smartphone:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defense_in_depth_%28computing%...

I don't know about you, but I have no desire to become a digital pariah and avoid useful technologies just because they may, at some nebulous point in the future, be used against me in some nebulous way.

If and when that happens, we can fight it then. I'm a believer in picking my battles, and see no reason whatsoever to pick this one.

If all of your friends jumped off of a digital bridge... You know the rest.

It WILL be used if it isn't smothered in its crib.

It's the nature of both government and technology.

Today, it's about convenience and whiz-bang "Look at what we can do" demonstrations but if allowed to continue, it will become a tool of the surveillance state. It's too powerful a tool to be ignored.

When CALEA was up for debate, those of us who feared that it would lead to widespread surveillance were ridiculed. It turns out, we were right. We're right about this too.

Of course, you have the freedom to make this choice. However

> just because they may, at some nebulous point in the future, be used against me in some nebulous way. If and when that happens, we can fight it then.

sounds very much like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_they_came_...

You mean the slippery slope fallacy, codified into a story?

...and proved to work in real life.

"If an argument uses valid reasoning, it would not be identified as the slippery slope fallacy,[2] and the term "slippery slope" may be used without an implying faulty argument."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slippery_slope#Non-fallacious_...

Given that there's no proof that Amazon is doing anything untoward with the Echo right now, arguments along the lines of "but they might in the future!" are an instance of the fallacious version.

If for no other reason, the behavior would be blatantly obvious to the kind of people that run Wireshark for funsies, the alarm would go up, and Amazon's reputation goes into the toilet.

Would you also say it about the NSA before the Snowden leaks? Given our current knowledge about the state of surveillance, we have enough reasons to believe in the worse.

Upd: > the behavior would be blatantly obvious to the kind of people that run Wireshark for funsies

Echo probably does not send the recordings all the time, it would be too simple to detect. However, it could simply send random parts of the recordings or send the data by a trigger from Amazon/random hackers. We can only say for sure that we have no possibility to check what it really does, since it is proprietary. I prefer not to trust for-profit companies (when it's possible). I only trust the source code.

Echo probably does not send the recordings other than the ones it's expected and advertised to send. No proof of any kind exists to even begin to suggest it does something other than that.

The device itself has been rooted via a set of contacts compatible with what you'd use with a Raspberry Pi: https://www.reddit.com/r/netsec/comments/4inesj/rooting_the_...

>other than the ones it's expected and advertised to send

and the ones that it mistakenly accepted as triggers, at least.

>No proof of any kind exists to even begin to suggest it does something other than that.

No proof exists to suggest anything about Echo. It is a question of trust. This is why I mentioned trust in my previous response.

Anyway, thanks for an interesting link.