What is Amazon Alexa?

Echo is the creepy new product developed by Amazon.com, which is powered by the "Artificial Intelligence" voice recognition software, Alexa, also developed by Amazon.com.

Apple preceded Amazon with its own version of this technology, called Siri. There are doubtless people reading this right now, who love to use Siri to send text messages or to dial phone numbers, etc. on their iPhones.

Alexa-enabled devices may be very useful for people challenged by extreme physical impediments but I don't want one of these things anywhere near my house, unless there may come a point in my life, where I may require it.

I call it "creepy", because, in light of the revelations of Edward Snowden and WikiLeaks' Vault 7 and how all of the data collected by Alexa gets stored and hosted on Amazon.com's cloud servers, along with $600M-worth of the CIA's data, this just appears to me like another invasive technology that monitors your behavior and your voiceprint to the nth degree.

No, thanks.