&gt; The monitoring for keywords is done in the hardware or firmware. Nothing ever gets sent to Amazon until &quot;Alexa&quot; or &quot;Echo&quot; is recognized.<p>I think that what you <i>mean</i> is that the monitoring is done in the hardware or firmware using closed-source code that can and will be regularly updated remotely and hopefully securely. And that Amazon told us that it would wait until it thought it heard &quot;Alexa&quot; or &quot;Echo&quot; or anything that sounds sort of like it, or whatever they decide to change the software on your particular device to listen for in the future.