Big Brother Is Here

h/t WRSA

Karl Deninger is (understandably) just a tad upset:

(Market Ticker) "The stupidity of Americans never ceases to amaze me.
Not only is Beelzebezos trumpeting the "blowout" buying of Alexa devices (going into homes) he is also made note of "far field" voice recognition for various other manufacturers.
Far-field eh?  You mean like being able to hear and process your voice across not just a room, but from a different room in your house or office?
Yeah, that would be "far field", and if you don't recognize the problem with that immediately and destroy any such device you find anywhere you happen to go where it isn't disclosed that it's present before you enter you're a real, first-class idiot.
That people would willingly bring these devices into their homes (and worse, offices!) is astounding to me.
I'll say this right now -- if you ever invite me into your place of residence or business, don't disclose you have one of these things before doing so (if you do disclose that I won't be coming over or inside!) and I find it I'm going to make lots of little pieces out of it -- immediately.
I suspect it would not be hard to figure out what frequencies this thing has some secondary oscillators operating at and thus make a reasonably-sensitive "Alexa detector" that can find these devices very rapidly so they can be targeted for an immediate and solid impact from my shoe."

Waitwaitwait…an internet-connected hidden microphone that you install in your life yourself that can receive and store your voice (and everyone else’s within range) digitally, voiceprint and content, and can recognize it from several rooms away, and putting them in millions of sites around the country, on a non-secure platform, doubtless with government trapdoors built-in…what could possibly go wrong with that?

“Alexa, go f**k yourself. And your NSA minders with you.”

The only use I can see for this thing is Cloward-Piven:
get one, put it in a vacant building off-site, and flood it with canned-voice chatter of pseudo-terror cells, wait to see who comes calling, and stream the video comedy that ensues.

Link to the list of trigger words the feds are actively monitoring for, purely for script-writing purposes:

Trigger words for NSA/surveillance agencies

And a reminder, Google Translate will read out anything you type into the block, in any language you choose. In its voice, not yours.

Have fun, boys and girls.The last time I had this much fun was getting my niece a second Furby, and putting it near the first one behind some pictures. My brother hated the first one.