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from the Miss-Scarlet-in-the-conservatory-with-the-lead-pipe dept.
A 2015 Arkansas murder case that had raised privacy questions surrounding "always-on" electronic home devices took a step forward last week after Amazon agreed to release recordings from the murder defendant's Amazon Echo as possible evidence.
The Seattle-based e-commerce company had refused to comply with police warrants requesting the data in December and sought to quash a search warrant in February, court records showed. Although the company would not comment on this specific case, an Amazon spokeswoman told The Washington Post in December that it objected to "overbroad or otherwise inappropriate demands as a matter of course."
That changed after the defendant, James Andrew Bates, agreed Friday to allow Amazon to release data from his Echo device to prosecutors. The company turned over the recordings later that day, according to court records.
"Because Mr. Bates is innocent of all charges in this matter, he has agreed to the release of any recordings on his Amazon Echo device to the prosecution," attorneys Kathleen Zellner and Douglas Johnson said in a statement to The Washington Post.
-- submitted from IRC
Previously: Police Seek Amazon Echo Data in Murder Case and Amazon Continues to Resist Requests for "Alexa" Audio Evidence in Arkansas Murder Case
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 11 2017, @06:11PM (8 children)
The question is "Can devices with always on microphones and cameras be used against you or is your own home a sanctuary?" It won't be long before somebody hacks these devices and tries to extort money or else your private kinks and info will be released. Maybe the real question is "Who is stupid enough to get these devices in the first place?"
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 11 2017, @06:17PM (1 child)
Maybe the real question is "Who is stupid enough to get these devices in the first place?"
I just asked Siri that question and she told me to ask my Amazon Echo. So I asked my Echo and it said my answer would arrive on Tuesday, with free shipping!
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 11 2017, @06:58PM
...wait, did you order a mail-order bride?
(Score: 4, Insightful) by NotSanguine on Saturday March 11 2017, @07:07PM (5 children)
The question is "Can devices with always on microphones and cameras be used against you or is your own home a sanctuary?"
That's definitely the wrong question. Such devices can and will be used against you. Full stop.
The question is "Are you stupid enough to choose to allow surveillance devices into your private space?"
For devices like Amazon Echo, anything that stores the contents of your private conversations on someone else's servers should never be allowed in your private space. If you do so, then you're asking to be spied upon, and Amazon, among others will give you just what you're asking for.
A voice activated device that does not connect to the Internet (i.e., all storage is local, with strong encryption) might be okay. Then again, given that ISPs will soon be allowed to track and commercially exploit your internet activities, maybe not so much.
Unless, and until, such functionality can be securely stored and controlled by the user, you might as well just buy a bunch of stuff from here [spytecinc.com] and publicly post information on how to access it, just to make sure no one feels left out.
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
(Score: 3, Interesting) by mhajicek on Saturday March 11 2017, @10:59PM (1 child)
Indeed. From what I've read, if you ask an echo who it works for, it will truthfully say it works for Amazon. It does not work for you, even though you paid for it and "own" it.
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 2) by NotSanguine on Tuesday March 14 2017, @10:24AM
Indeed. From what I've read, if you ask an echo who it works for, it will truthfully say it works for Amazon. It does not work for you, even though you paid for it and "own" it.
Don't get saucy with me, Bernaise! [youtube.com]
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
(Score: 4, Interesting) by hemocyanin on Saturday March 11 2017, @11:32PM
Exactly correct, and it all goes back to the Third Party Doctrine which is the Government's method of evading the 4th Amendment. If you share your data with a third party, you have no - as in ZERO - reasonable expectation of privacy under the current interpretation of the 4th.
All of it based on some tiny little case from the 70s: How a Purse Snatching Led to the Legal Justification for NSA Domestic Spying [wired.com]. It is worth remembering this example when the authorities exceed their power to make certain some bad dude goes to jail, because abuse of power never stops with the bad dudes. It's just how they make the first exercise palatable.
(Score: 2) by Common Joe on Sunday March 12 2017, @06:58AM (1 child)
I fear for my future and the future of our kids. I'm pretty sure these device will come into our homes no matter how much we try to rally against them. It's like the Internet or cars or radios or television. If you want to live in tomorrow's world and not be a pauper-fringe-nut-job, these things will be in tomorrow's devices and they will be in your home. Yes, today, we can choose not to buy them and still control them. But 20 years from now? Well, 20 years ago, no one thought governments would have control of the Internet. Hell, 5 years ago, many believed that.
Bleh. I'm in a pessimistic mood. Or is it a realistic mood? It's hard to tell the difference these days.
(Score: 2) by NotSanguine on Sunday March 12 2017, @10:26PM
Here's a little unsolicited advice:
1. Make sure you can capture network traffic where it enters and leaves your house
2. Capture such traffic
3. Analyze said traffic with a tool like Wireshark [wireshark.org]
4. Identify the devices that are communicating with the Internet and:
5a. Block any traffic that may compromise your privacy
5b. Whitelist any traffic that you wish to allow
6. Where necessary, modify the network configurations of IoT devices so that they do not have access to the Internet.
Those steps, plus (assuming you have the equipment and know-how) a proxy server [wikipedia.org] (preferably an inline or transparent proxy server [tldp.org]) such as squid [squid-cache.org] to log (and where appropriate, selectively block) URLs that correspond to known surveillance mechanisms.
It's not a panacea, but it would be a good start.
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr