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[–] Sosacms 0 points 6 points (+6|-0) ago 

Doesn't it have to always be listening in order to hear it's name?

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[–] theoldones 0 points 3 points (+3|-0) ago 

supposedly, when it's "off" its holding only short recordings to periodically check for the trigger phase

let's be honest though they already always listen

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[–] karmatic 3 points -3 points (+0|-3) ago 

The device does, they don't. It's not like you can't analyze the traffic going across your network, so they can't really keep it secret if they do listen in aggregate.

Any spying is going to be done on individual houses, under court order, not to everyone everywhere.

For one thing, if they get caught, people go to prison. Many states are two party states - everyone recorded must know. If someone has a guest over, even arguing that the homeowner "consented" won't stop them getting prosecuted for wiretap laws.

When you give a command, explicitly talking to the device, with the device lighting up and responding, it's easy enough to argue that everyone there is notified about the recording. Without giving a command, anyone visiting the house would have no reasonable expectation to know they were being recorded.

It would only take one prosecutor, and one State, to land someone in prison, or to get Amazon subpoenaed and heavily fined.

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[–] prairie 1 point 1 point (+2|-1) ago 

Exactly, they're literally just increasing the memory buffer size so that once it hears the key word, it can go back to what was said before it. Nothing to see here; move along.