I must be one of those old farts who prefers privacy over convenience.
I do not want what amounts to an always-on black-box surveillance device in my home and I simply do not understand why other people think it is okay. I honestly don't.
If the expected utility of the device exceeds the likely set of problems that come with it, people might choose to buy one.
Clearly you've done this calculation but come up with a different answer. Assuming there is some utility there, it must be the surveillance aspect that is the problem. If you got an Echo, what harm do you think you would likely experience?
I can see almost no situation in which the benefits of having a plugged in camera or mic I do not know isn't always on outweigh the costs, even if the cost is "just" mental complacence with surveillance.
If I need peace of mind away from home, I can simply plug in a webcam or connect the otherwise-airgapped security system to the network while I'm away. If I want a hands-free mic, I can buy one with a power switch and connect it to whatever setup I need it for.
If amazon releases hardware that makes it verifiably possible to have such setups, more power to them I suppose. But as likely they won't, as they prefer "all-in-one" solutions that give them "last-mile level" control over how their devices get used, I will probably never buy such devices from them.
I got an echo from a company for attending a presentation.
I used it a bit, but turned it of permanently after one day I logged in to my router and saw that Echo was generating noticeable amount of traffic even though no one was at home.
I think the only way I could try always on device again is if company like Amazon would provide API and I would create the always-on device.
In short I want to be in control what is being sent and what isn't.
I get the sentiment, but I'm asking why. There's clearly some utility to the device, right? It has some value to some people. What negative outcomes would you expect will happen due to them having that device in their homes? What percentage of Echo owners do you think will end up with regrets about installing the device?
Seeing how 2(?) billion people are using Facebook, it's obvious that most people either don't care or don't understand the implications behind giving away their privacy.
The Echo is a neatly packaged surveillance device that's disguised as a.. What are these things called? Voice assistants?
As with pretty much every IoT device, these things can be broken into by malicious actors and then they get to listen in too.
Next thing on the list is that Amazon can do whatever it wants with those recordings and I highly doubt they're only listening in after you mention certain keywords. More likely that's just the trigger to flip the "answer back" switch.
And last but not least we should not forget about the surveillance agencies, who will get unrestricted access to this one way or another.
In the grand way of things, this is just another method people are letting themselves being monitored. Just another small step towards total authoritarian control by mega-corporations and dictators.
We have to step up and stop this from happening while we still can, or else there won't be any privacy left for anyone of us and the next generation will just grow up with it "being normal".
And before you ask, no, I don't have a smart phone. I have a very dumb phone that I can only use to call someone with or get called myself and more often than not I don't carry it around with me.
As with laws, it is difficult to predict the outcome of misuse or outright abuse of powerful technologies.
The cost here is whatever you can imagine happening if every utterance and the implied judgement of your character escaped into the wild should a keen hacker, nefarious internal actor, or simply a product manager raised by wolves goes ahead "liberates" your data feed. Amazon want to compensate us with, what? ... looks like voice commands and a marginal reduction in search effort, particularly when searching for things they want you to buy from them.
If you assume a villain/nefarious actor is in play, then people have been doing this with mobile phones/tablets/computers/smart TVs for a long time - why do we make such a big distinction between those devices and this one. They're the same thing.
Personally, I have a sticker on all cameras (front-facing phone camera, monitor, laptop). I can't do anything against having hot mics everywhere, but I'll be damned if I have internet connected cameras pointed at me, I don't trust IoT security one bit.
No, and unless I have to some type of on-call job in the future, I never will. POTS works fine for telephony, and my computer is much faster, has better features, is far easier to read, and isn't de facto controlled by Apple|Google.
While portable devices can be a useful tool, far too many people are addicted to the dopamine hit they get by hitting "refresh", and/or distracted by shiny tech baubles.
Good on you. I've gone back and forth between having a smart device and not, and while I've been on the move for a while and thus benefitted from having one, will likely go back to pre-smartphone hardware once settled.
Other than net browsing (which I find woefully underpowered on mobile even today) and listening to music, I rarely if ever use this thing's auxillary functions. Most of the "defaults" are just clutter reminiscent of the pre-smartphone vendor days (complete with the "but look, you can make them less visible, just move them around!"). Can relate on the distraction bit as well, as that used to be a bigger problem for me.
Yes, but only one from a vendor with a well-demonstrated commitment to privacy and with no 'always listening' features enabled. Believe it or not this is not some sort of extremist stance!
A lot of people who say this still bring in the smart TV. Or the comcast remote with a Mic. Or an IP camera. Or a cellphone. What's so different about this?
Are you sure those are the same people? If so it might be ignorance. Also it is a bit harder to buy non smart TV, but you don't have connect it to the network.
I do not want what amounts to an always-on black-box surveillance device in my home and I simply do not understand why other people think it is okay. I honestly don't.
Down with this sort of thing!