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posted by on Saturday March 11 2017, @05:22PM   Printer-friendly
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


Original Submission

Related Stories

Police Seek Amazon Echo Data in Murder Case 21 comments

Several SoylentNews readers have submitted this story:

Amazon Echo is a voice-activated and cloud-connected speaker device that actively listens to a room using several microphones and communicates with Amazon servers to perform various queries and tasks.

Warrant Filed for Amazon Echo Records in Arkansas Murder Case

Arkansas police filed what is believed to be the first request to retrieve information from an Amazon Echo device in a homicide investigation.

[...] Authorities charged Bates, 31, with murder earlier this year, but police in the Ozark city are now looking to find evidence on his Echo, according to The Information [paywalled].

[...] Amazon twice refused to hand over information requested by police, according to The Information, but gave them Bates' account information and purchase history.

The company said in a statement on Tuesday that it "will not release customer information without a valid and binding legal demand properly served on us."

[Continues...]

Amazon Continues to Resist Requests for "Alexa" Audio Evidence in Arkansas Murder Case 5 comments

Amazon is balking at a search warrant seeking cloud-stored data from its Alexa Voice Service. Arkansas authorities want to examine the recorded voice and transcription data as part of a murder investigation. Among other things, the Seattle company claims that the recorded data from an Amazon Echo near a murder scene is protected by the First Amendment, as are the responses from the voice assistant itself.

Amazon said that the Bentonville Police Department is essentially going on a fishing expedition with a warrant that could chill speech and even the market for Echo devices and competing products. In a motion to quash the subpoena, the company said that because of the constitutional concerns at issue, the authorities need to demonstrate a "compelling need" for the information and must exhaust other avenues to acquire that data.

[...] According to the warrant, Bentonville authorities are seeking "audio recordings, transcribed records, or other text records related to communications and transactions" between the Echo device and Amazon's servers during the 48-hour period covering November 21-22, 2015. Amazon said the authorities should, at a minimum, establish "a heightened showing of relevance and need for any recordings" before a judge allows the search.

[...] The warrant at issue concerns the 2015 death of former Georgia police officer Victor Collins. He was found dead in a hot tub at the Bentonville home of Bates, who claimed the death was an accidental drowning. Arkansas police believe Bates died after a struggle. They suspect that the Amazon Echo they found streaming music near the hot tub may help solve the case.

Source: ArsTechnica. Also at BBC and TechCrunch.

Previously: Police Seek Amazon Echo Data in Murder Case


Original Submission

Charges Dropped in Case of Murder Suspect Who Owned an Amazon Echo 8 comments

The case against James Bates, an Arkansas man and Amazon Echo owner charged with first-degree murder, has been dropped by prosecutors:

Arkansas prosecutors have dropped their case against James Bates, whom they had charged with first-degree murder partly with the help of evidence collected by an Amazon Echo smart speaker. On Wednesday, a circuit court judge granted their request to have the charges of murder and tampering with evidence dismissed.

The prosecutors declared nolle prosequi, stating that the evidence could support more than one reasonable explanation.

The move marks a curious end to a still more curious case, which had revolved around the role played by a personal assistant device that's supposed to begin recording as soon as someone says its wake word — "Alexa," in this case — in its presence.

Previously: Police Seek Amazon Echo Data in Murder Case
Amazon Continues to Resist Requests for "Alexa" Audio Evidence in Arkansas Murder Case
Can Amazon Echo Help Solve a Murder? Police Will Soon Find Out.

Related: Law Enforcement Has Been Using OnStar, SiriusXM, to Eavesdrop, Track Car Locations


Original Submission

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  • (Score: 4, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 11 2017, @06:11PM (8 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 11 2017, @06:11PM (#477806)

    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)

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 11 2017, @06:17PM (#477809)

      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

        by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 11 2017, @06:58PM (#477822)

        ...wait, did you order a mail-order bride?

    • (Score: 4, Insightful) by NotSanguine on Saturday March 11 2017, @07:07PM (5 children)

      by NotSanguine (285) <NotSanguineNO@SPAMSoylentNews.Org> on Saturday March 11 2017, @07:07PM (#477824) Homepage Journal

      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)

        by mhajicek (51) on Saturday March 11 2017, @10:59PM (#477870)

        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: 4, Interesting) by hemocyanin on Saturday March 11 2017, @11:32PM

        by hemocyanin (186) on Saturday March 11 2017, @11:32PM (#477881) Journal

        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)

        by Common Joe (33) <{common.joe.0101} {at} {gmail.com}> on Sunday March 12 2017, @06:58AM (#477964) Journal

        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?"

        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
  • (Score: 4, Insightful) by JoeMerchant on Saturday March 11 2017, @06:33PM (1 child)

    by JoeMerchant (3937) on Saturday March 11 2017, @06:33PM (#477814)

    If "the innocent have nothing to hide" they will release their audio recordings.

    Unfortunately, an audio recording is an incomplete picture of a situation, things you hear through a microphone may lead you to think one thing or another that may, or may not be true. There are plenty of murder cases where the accused is innocent, but the limited available evidence is enough to convince a jury otherwise. If there is an expectation that audio/video recordings will always be shown in evidence, then the lack of them will be additional bias to the jury to "form their own opinions," just like taking the 5th.

    --
    🌻🌻 [google.com]
    • (Score: 2, Funny) by Ethanol-fueled on Saturday March 11 2017, @07:52PM

      by Ethanol-fueled (2792) on Saturday March 11 2017, @07:52PM (#477842) Homepage

      " Unfortunately, an audio recording is an incomplete picture of a situation "

      Indeed. When I was seeing Pinche Lupita we were at my place one time and I started slapping her ass, causing her to squeal with delight -- which prompted my neighbor to call the cops on us because she thought I was beating her. Now that was somewhat embarassing to explain to police.

  • (Score: 2) by richtopia on Saturday March 11 2017, @08:30PM

    by richtopia (3160) on Saturday March 11 2017, @08:30PM (#477853) Homepage Journal

    Jasper is an open source project in the same space as the Echo, using a Raspberry Pi. I haven't used Jasper or an Echo (or Siri, or Cortana, or whatever Google calls their voice assistant) so I cannot comment on the functionality.

    https://jasperproject.github.io/ [github.io]

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 11 2017, @08:46PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 11 2017, @08:46PM (#477854)

    Next lesson: Don't murder someone in their house if they own one of these devices.
    XKCD [xkcd.com]

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