Yeah but they're not. It would be obvious from the packet traffic if your phone was constantly streaming everything you said to Google or Apple's servers. It would also be a violation of privacy policy and potentially state law. I think there would be huge backlash if either Google or Apple did this.

It doesn't need to constantly stream in order to record everything and send it back in periodic batches. Would it also be possible to determine that from the packet traffic? (not intending to be confrontational here)

The Alexa devices don't have the hardware within to do that. People have torn them down and looked. People have also constructed their own devices (rpi with a mic) to mimic the same functionality and it's consuming the same sort of bandwidth.

Now, of course, nothing will ever placate the conspiracy nitwits.

Thanks for the answer.

I don't see how there's a conspiracy here. Questioning the intentions and actions of an actor that could very likely be hostile to the user is reasonable and has precident.

“Ladies in cans” have a power source that allows them to continuously listen and send back audio.

And so does you phone.. how often do you have your phone on you and it's NOT on?

No, it really doesn’t. Phones run on batteries and continuously listening to and streaming audio would cause them to quickly die.

Maybe they actually do? For example, the 2017 version of the Nokia 3310, according to Nokia, can have calls of ~22h. And that's for a small 1300mAh battery. So it's technically possible to stream audio for a very long time. Maybe smartphones are doing the same in a very low-powered stand by mode?