Amazon's Echo Spot Is a Sneaky Way To Get a Camera Into Your Bedroom (theverge.com)

Yesterday, Amazon announced six new hardware products at a surprise event in Seattle. The one that everyone is talking about though is called the Echo Spot -- a little alarm clock with a camera that will probably be pointing directly at your bed. "While all the focus is on what the Echo Spot looks like, it's important to remember that Amazon is using the Spot as a very clever way of making you comfortable with having a camera in your bedroom," reports The Verge. From the report: Amazon launched its Echo Look camera earlier this year to judge your outfits. It's designed to sit in your wardrobe and offer you style advice, and it was Amazon's first Echo device with a camera. Amazon quickly followed it up with the Echo Show, a touchscreen device that sits in your kitchen and lets you watch tutorials or recipes and participate in video calls. Amazon's Look device is still only available exclusively by invitation, and in hindsight it now looks like experimental hardware to gauge the reaction of a camera in the bedroom. A litmus test, if you will. Echo Spot feels like the real push to get cameras inside your smart home. It's more than just an alarm clock, but Amazon is definitely pushing this as a $130 device that will sit next to your bed. Promotional materials show it sitting on nightstands, providing a selection of clock faces and news / weather information. The privacy concerns are obvious: an always-listening (for a keyword) microphone in your bedroom, and a camera pointing at your bed.

Comments

Already have that

[Anonymous Coward]

Isn't it the same thing when people have their cell phones on and having it in their bedroom as an alarm clock? This is becoming way out of hand. More devices, always-on microphones and cameras.

Multiple devices = multi-camera angles!! Great.

Re:Who are these morons?

[Anonymous Coward]

The more you call them stupid the more this tsunami (of stupidity) will grow.

This is just where human beings are going now in their state of confusion. Thinking the apple fell on Steve Jobs's head. Get use to it as the internet starts to resemble more of a tumor than a way to actually convey information.

edging ever closer

[n3r0.m4dski11z]

"If things continue this way, there will be two societies - or at least I hope there will be two - the one you're helping create, and an alternative to it. You and your ilk will live, willingly, joyfully, under constant surveillance, watching each other always, commenting on each other, voting and liking and disliking each other, smiling and frowning, and otherwise doing nothing much else."

--- Dave Eggers, The Circle