All you have to do is not tell any of the customers that it continually listens, by the time the ones who didn't know find out, it's already in their homes, they've already got the app installed, and they've said "I dreamt about something and then saw an ad for it the next day" more than once.

Ring doorbells now give their footage to Flock, which can give/sell it to anyone. No warrant necessary. Not exactly what you're asking about, but along the same lines.

Ring, also owned by Amazon, shares their video surveillance with Flock, which contracts with local LE agencies who share it with the feds.

0 warrants required, and ICE is actively using the data against people.

Shhhh, the pitchforks are out, who needs evidence. In all reality, if you were to be wiretapped, an Alexa wouldn't be the best option. Most people already have an internet connected microphone they carry around with them everywhere. And it has multiple cameras too, which are regularly brought into the bathroom with them.

If the data is there a fascist government will absolutely use it. Of course in a democracy that won't happen ... unless you vote for fascists, ooopsie.

An autistic teenage hacker banned from having a computer used a fire stick in a hotel room to hack Rockstar games. I think any given 14 year old war driver can hack these devices and listen to your conversations. If the government will work their butts off to install a tap on a landline, how can they not use an Alexa.

At the very least, there's a teenager in your neighborhood listening to every damn thing you say. If you have cameras in your home, they're watching you.

They got caught sending info to their data banks they said they would not, and listening all the time even when they said they would not.

All of these smart devices do. If it is connected to the internet, presume it is spying and will sneak the information back.

The feds in the us buy data broker info, all of it, the cia buys and steals foreigners' too, and distribute it to agencies all the way down to notes, not attributed to source, in the local police's lien, law enforcement information network. Their dossiers on everyone. No warrants or judges, blessed by the supreme court for some time this is not new.

An end run around privacy laws and the bill of rights. Just like 5 eyes end runs spy agencies not being allowed to spy on their countries. They let their ally do it, lead it on paper at least, then share it with them.

All a result of being ruled by lawyers working for plutocrats.

They've been conditioned to not care or even desire it. Smartphones had Siri and Google Assistant as a selling point, which led to ever more intrusive tech that was marketed as a convenience. Facebook took it a step further and had you label people in pictures uploaded to them and you sign away your privacy in their terms and conditions. Advanced marketing techniques were irresistible to social media companies and so consumer profiles of everyone they could get became a thing.

Jokes about seeing ads that smartphones can overhear made the intrusive spying all the more accepted as just a part of life. Android marks your calendar and reminds you of appointments made using your Gmail account when you never asked it to. Ring doorbell cameras quietly sell their video feeds to the highest bidder, often to law enforcement as a convenient means to circumvent the 4th amendment. And now the latest trend is to have your car do everything your phone already does but take it a step further by monitoring your driving habits so insurance companies can justify raising your premiums.

The average person isn't tech savvy enough to understand they're being sold as a product even after paying for their own surveillance gear. They just want modern conveniences without thinking the price they pay beyond the original sale.

Really it’s a mixture of both. Brave New World to keep the masses sedated, 1984 for the people who start to question the system.

Yeah because they know you like pancakes and can serve you ads to start that train of thought so when you are served the pancake ad you feel like it 'got you' instead of the real fact that you were manipulated into thinking about pancakes so the pancake ad has more possibility of getting engagement from you. This is why you should have ad block on everything you interact with.

Please explain?! Is GrapheneOS a honeypot in your opinion?

Hey validation machine, can you tell me I am right?

I think you will find that most “computer guys” on Lemmy do not use google or LLMs unless forced to for work.

1984 seems based on Orwell's experiences working for the British government at the time, so in a very real sense the west has been that way for a while