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Re:Amazon Echo by gisely on Thursday November 06, 2014 @02:46PM (#8569285)
Doesn't mean the NSA or Chinese equivalent won't figure out how to hack Echo to plant a little piece of stealthware on it that records all conversations of suspects in "terrorism related" investigations. Such stealthware might get detected once or twice (though not often-- it won't be ubiquitous), but such detections will easily covered up by forcing Amazon to announce a rare and obscure firmware bug backstory. Actually, come to think of it, with proper contextual targeting, such stealthware wouldn't even need to send full conversations. Just wait for detection of "the meeting" or "the rally" and boom spend off all the info you need to effectively disrupt pro-democracy rallies in Hong Kong.
Re:Amazon Echo by bryanlarsen on Thursday November 06, 2014 @02:55PM (#8569369)
The NSA could also do the same thing to a phone.
Re:Amazon Echo by runeks on Thursday November 06, 2014 @03:32PM (#8569566)
Or a laptop, or an iPad, or anything with a microphone on, really.
Re:Amazon Echo by macavity23 on Friday November 07, 2014 @03:27PM (#8574501)
Phones, laptops & ipads don't have microphones designed specifically to pick up conversations from the other side of the room...