[turk-]

How does he know Chrome is transmitting ALL conversations that it hears? His arguments aren't valid:

"(Ok, so how does it know to start listening just before I’m about to say ‘Ok, Google?’)"

This could easily be achieved offline.

The same argument could be made for Siri, a wiretapping device which you carry with you all the time. In fact wiretapping your phone would be much more effective then wiretapping a computer browser application.

Before making such accusations he should present some solid data, like network traffic from an idle chrome application during conversations (with and without saying "Okay Google"). If an idle chrome application was always transmitting data to google, he would have a solid argument.

[fstutzman]

Agreed - there is a lot of speculation here.

In the U.S., implementation of a wiretapping scheme like this would be a significant civil and criminal violation. Google is already under a FTC consent degree for privacy violations, which would make it doubly egregious. So I'll give Google the benefit of the doubt - and assume there are privacy-protective mechanisms designed in to the system.

In the age of ambient technology, where anything can be recorded, the onus is now on developers to create systems that internally suppress mass privacy violation. The "Privacy by Design" approach (disclosure, I have an evangelist of PbD) can provide solid guidance as to how to build privacy-protective mechanisms (e.g. data minimization, data scrubbing) into ambient technologies.

[dreamfactory2]

listening doesn't necessarily mean recording and recording doesn't necessarily mean sending