I can stare at one of a building’s security cameras from across the street like a creepy ghost child, and then the entire camera system stares at the people inside and sets them on fire, one by one. It’s like something out of a horror movie

      • Some people don’t.

        I actually don’t know how pervasive these things (smart home assistants) are. Sure, they’re popular, but “popular” and “ubiquitous” are not the same.

        For example, my family (counting parents, siblings, first cousins, and their spouses) runs from lower middle-class to upper-class. In that set of 8 households, there are 16 adults and 6 children (under 11); only one household has an Alexa. The rest have no surveillance home devices, (excluding smart phones, which all have). As for smart phones, 3 of those households have people in them who at least occasionally use Siri, and one uses Google (Hey, Google). The rest, as far as I know, don’t have voice activation configured or enabled on their phones. So, 3/8 households have some invasive surveillance listening devices - fewer than half.

        If we ignore the possibility that Big Brother is using all the smart devices surreptitiously to surveil the owners, then in my tiny sample, it’s not “most” people buy and use these; it’s well less than half, and if we only count the people actively using voice control, it’s more like 1/4.

        Now, nearly every person, including the children, use a smart phone or tablet nearly every day, and most adults, several times every hour. And none of these (AFAIK) are jail-broken and running Tails-like OSes. So, it depends on how you want to define the parameters.

        • in any given random sample where an average person could own both or either: An Alexa/Google home is better for privacy, in general, than a mobile phone.

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