Alexa, how much is my privacy worth?

Amazon Echo is a hands-free speaker you control with your voice. Echo connects to the Alexa Voice Service to play music and provide information. (Amazon/TNS)

Amazon's personal digital assistant, Alexa, has been credited twice in recent weeks with helping to solve or avert crimes – including a Gloucester case that received international attention when the device is said to have recorded the voice of a young boy who broke into an apartment. 

As novel as these cases are, they raise unsettling questions about how much privacy we forfeit – willingly – to technology.