I was at a dinner party recently with close friends where the conversation turned to some entirely theoretical, screenplay-writing-type speculations about presidential assassinations—speculations that would be pretty dicey should certain outside parties who did not know us and where we were coming from be listening in. Realizing this as we spoke, the group thought of our host’s Amazon Echo, sitting on a side table with its little light on. The group’s conversation became self-conscious as we began joking about the Echo listening in. Joking or not, in short order our host walked over and unplugged it.
It is exactly this kind of self-consciousness and chilling effects that surveillance—or even the most remote threat of surveillance—casts over otherwise freewheeling private conversations, and is the reason people need ironclad assurance that their devices will not—cannot—betray them.
