[cptskippy]

I'm pretty sure Alexa isn't recording or transmitting what's said at all times, there's just a local process looking for the queue to start recording a sample to upload. That queue being the word "Alexa".

[FungalRaincloud]

I believe you're right, but it still feels icky to have something always listening for that special phrase, to me. Maybe if I wrote and maintained the code myself that always listened, I'd feel more comfortable with it.

Oh, I think the proper word was cue, not queue, by the way.

[AckSyn]

It would scare you to know that OnStar can be remotely activated without the driver knowing, wouldn't it?

[fsckin]

Or any cell phone.

[XorNot]

This has always seemed pretty marginal to me. You might be able to turn the microphone on, but when my battery dies an hour later I'll be suspicious.

[jayd16]

Lithium ion batteries don't get old and lose capacity. That's just the NSA backing off the sleep interval.

[jayd16]

>Maybe if I wrote and maintained the code myself that always listened, I'd feel more comfortable with it.

Maybe? Maybe you'd be comfortable? There's a world where you wrote the code yourself and still don't trust that it's not sending data back?

[baocin]

You could try adding in some simple motion, like raising your hand, before the system would start listening for hot words. Maybe connect a cheap infrared sensor to GPIO and block its view so it only detects motion at or above certain height.

[cel1ne]

"queue" -> "cue"?