Yea - no thanks on the echo or google home
http://www.consumerwatchdog.org/pri...oogle-amazon-digital-assistant-patents-reveal
Home Assistant Adopter Beware: Google, Amazon Digital Assistant Patents Reveal Plans for Mass Snooping
Among the key revelations from the patent applications:
- Digital assistants can be “awake” even when users think they aren’t listening. The digital assistants are supposed to react only when they “hear” a so-called “wakeword.” For Amazon Echo it’s “Alexa” and for Google Home it’s “OK, Google.” In fact, the devices listen all the time they are turned on – and Amazon has envisoned Alexa using that information to build profiles on anyone in the room to sell them goods. Amazon filed a patent application for an algorithm that lets the device identify statements of interest— such as “I love skiing,” — enabling the speaker to be surveilled based on their interests and targeted for related advertising.
- The devices can connect to other internet-enabled home systems to monitor your family members’ habits and infer what they’re up to, such as when your children are engaged in mischief. A Google patent application describes using a smart home system to monitor and control screen time, hygiene habits, meal and travel schedules, and other activity. The system even claims it can “infer mischief” based on audio and motion sensor readings from rooms where children are present. Silent children who move are inferred to be mischievous.
- The devices are envisioned as part of a surveillance web in the home to chart families’ patterns so that they can more easily be marketed to based on their interests. Google connects its Google Home to various “smart” devices such as thermostats and lighting made by another Alphabet Inc. division, Nest. When connected, “inferences” could be made about when occupants are home, sleeping, cooking, when they are in the den watching television, when they shower and when they flush the toilet, according to a Google patent.
- Another Google patent outlines ways it could collect information about family members’ interests and activities to infer likely purchases. For example, the application describes how sports camp could be marketed to a 15-year-old boy holding a basketball in the living room. It also describes how Google could infer an interest in the actor Will Smith by combining a users’ browser search history with an image on a user’s t-shirt obtained from a Nest camera in the home. It also describes how it could sell you a TV show by spying on a book on your bedside table. “The answers to these questions may help third-parties benefit consumers by providing them with interesting information, products and services as well as with providing them with targeted advertisements,” the patent application claims.
This is not some hypothetical crackpot theory - these are their actual plans put forth in patent applications.
Listen, they government has and can get info anytime they want to on us. Google has been using analytics for years so I'm not surprised they are going there. For some reason I'm not really fearing this right now, but I get that some may be and possibly for good reason. People can and do live off the grid for those reasons...more power to them...don't think I could at this point in time.
