The thing is everyone has a cellphone, even many kids. Invite half a dozen people over and you’ll get half a dozen cellphones.

I have a couple of Amazon Echos, plus iOS devices that occasionally activate Siri for no reason.

I love them. My feeling is that I’m willing to live with it for now. Hopefully, a decade from now, voice technology is perfected and more is done on device.

Once it becomes a solved problem, there will be better open source devices and more competition. On device will be a checkbox feature.

Not every company makes you the product.

yeah, but since that has been a workable angle we'd had an explosion of companies that do make you the product.

I wouldn't assume the inverse over time related to a reduction in effort from better devices and competition; i'd assume further growth.

I agree, smart phones provide the same surveillance capabilities of 'smart' speakers and more.

But supposedly phones aren't always on and listening to all your audio like the 'smart' speakers.

This might just be a divide in society, some people accept surveillance as not an issue and are fine with it.

Would you place a similar 'smart' speaker device in your home if the government suddenly required it?

I just feel a surveillance state is detrimental to freedom and democracy, the freedom we have in the states is not common.

If you look back in history and even around the world today it's pretty rare. I just want to make sure we aren't setting ourselves up to weaken it or even lose it.

New phones are.

Also, AFAIK, Alexa et al. are only sending traffic home after the wake word is heard. I believe this has been confirmed via wireshark.

But it's a setting. I own an iPhone have turned off "Hey Siri". If it would still listen all the time that would be a security issue and breach of trust.

It seems 'smart' speakers wake more easily than Siri.

We hadn't been hearing news stories about FANG employees listening to/reviewing conversations intimate moments until the 'smart' speakers were deployed.

I expect this could have been going on with Siri as well though.

I'm open to using a 'smart' speaker in the future, there might not be any reason for concern.

Currently it just seems like a bad idea to add recording devices you don't control around your home.

That just shows that the media didn't think those stories would sell.

Not new Android phones. Since Android 8, google no longer listens while the phone is locked. If you want to use the google assistant, you have to give your fingerprint or password first.

It's more accurate to say "after the wake word is heard or after a false positive for the wake word is heard".

Even in the presence of hardware interlocks (active when the wake word has not been detected), the accuracy of wake word detection is a really important question, as is the question of whether an adversary can modify the wake word detection code remotely.

For example, just this year my always-on, always-near-me iPhone was subject to an attack where anyone could call me on FaceTime and gain access to my microphone. This attack vector does not exist on my Google Home.

So, why are smart speakers much better at invading privacy?

Streaming audio is not seen as suspicious.

Also they aren not phones and not using wifi, not LTE/4G uplinks, making it more easy to stream audio without hitting bandwidth caps or using too much battery.

It's way much easier to notice if a phone streams audio often and unnecessarily.

For a phone the assistant is an optional side-feature and disabling it takes almost nothing away from the utility of the smartphone. You're still left with a smartphone.

I'm willing to make some sacrifice so that I can get GPS/maps anywhere I go, ability to make emergency phone calls, etc.

Smart speakers really don't have the same value add.