Actually this is interesting. Some US states require two party consent for recording. Doesn't that make a phone in your pocket illegal in those states, unless you say "I have a phone in my pocket, and it's recording."

Let's travel to such a state and find out for ourselves. We'll flip a coin on who gets to be the defendant.

> I have voice-activated assistant on my droid turned off, meanwhile Siri is active on all iDevices

This is not true, voice-activated Siri is a setting as well and turned off on my iPhone.

Also, 'Hey Siri' is supposedly processed locally on the phone using the Neural Engine part of Apples custom ARM chip so it should only upload voice data after you have said 'Hey Siri' or held down the home button to activate it. You can test this if you put the phone in airplane mode or go somewhere with no reception and say 'hey siri', it still recognises that you want to ask it something but just presents a message saying 'internet not available'

This is true on Pixel as well. It would be too slow otherwise.

The various states would love to have as much data as they can on every citizen. Therefore, we're all state targets.

Language is useless if we don't set boundaries.

In this case, as you already know despite wanting to twist its meaning, "State target" refers to someone whom the state is specifically, actively expending resources in order to target. Target being the key word. Being part of a giant nation-wide dragnet doesn't make you a target.