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Originally Posted by jyl
Any (legitimate, researched) concerns about privacy?
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You have to assume that any data that is gathered about you--the temperature in your house, what time of day you talk to the device, what questions you have asked, conversations that took place in the room with the device--is stored. That information may used to target advertisements at you. It's amazing what they can reasonably derive based on seemingly unrelated information. It's pretty well documented that they can discern your political leanings. They may also figure out that your teenage daughter is pregnant and start marketing baby products to her. (There is a real case where Target did this a few years ago with purchase history at the store.) But this can range from amusing, to creepy, to downright intrusive.
The really worrying part is that Amazon, or Google, or whoever can be presented with a "national security letter" demanding the company hand over all information about you. No warrant, just a quasi-legal demand. They don't even have to name you. They can say: "Give me all of the names, home addresses, and recorded conversations of people who listen to Dave Brubek between midnight and 4:00 AM. The fun thing is a gag order accompanies these demands, so you won't be told that your data has been handed over.
I must have missed the part in the Constitution that authorized secret courts to blanket-authorize law enforcement agencies to print their own general warrants.