Police seek Amazon Echo data in murder case

Post by jdiez17 » Tue, Dec 27, 2016, 6:20 PM UTC

supergeek133 wrote: post #73

politician wrote: post #69

The device doesn't start listening when you say the wake word, the device is always listening . It's only the UX that responds when the presence of the wake word is detected. This means that the device is continuously monitoring the environment for the presence of the wake word we know about ("Alexa"). Can the device monitor for other words that trigger other UX sequences? Of course it can! Can Amazon deliver an OTA…

You're making quite a few assumptions. 1) The device is storing any amount of locally recorded audio. So far evidence says no. 2) Amazon would OTA all echos to upload everything it hears. So far evidence says this hasn't happened. It also likely won't because IMO security people monitor these devices more than anything else on the planet. Some I believe for good reasons, the others just want to play gotcha. 3) If 1 a…

Post by funkyy » Tue, Dec 27, 2016, 6:25 PM UTC

darkstar999 wrote: post #34

cryptarch wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would cost about $30m a year if you tailor the system to flagging specific data for storage and don't naively store every moment (e.g. you scrap silent moments and use VBR encoding). Storing a year's worth of 96kbps audio costs 380GB. If you don't record silence and you assume the people around an Alexa are only speaking for at most 4 hours a day on average, that goes down to 76GB a year. So if you then assume 5m…

96kbps is pretty high for voice. You could get away with 48 or less.

Post by politician » Tue, Dec 27, 2016, 6:26 PM UTC

rz2k wrote: post #76

politician wrote: post #69

The device doesn't start listening when you say the wake word, the device is always listening . It's only the UX that responds when the presence of the wake word is detected. This means that the device is continuously monitoring the environment for the presence of the wake word we know about ("Alexa"). Can the device monitor for other words that trigger other UX sequences? Of course it can! Can Amazon deliver an OTA…

Should the police be able to enter any house with locks they can pick? I suppose that would educate people, too. edit: I misread the comment as, " without a warrant"! Ugh

Post by gordyf » Tue, Dec 27, 2016, 6:35 PM UTC

ajross wrote: post #77

gordyf wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No need for speculation: you can open the Alexa app and play back your own queries, audio and all. There's even a help section titled, "How do I delete Alexa voice recordings", which reads: "You can delete specific voice recordings associated with your account by going to History in Settings in the Alexa App, drilling down for a specific entry, and then tapping the delete button. Or, you can delete all voice recordin…

Once more though: that's just the audio flagged as a "query" by Amazon and stored as such. What about other stuff that gets uploaded prior to NLP & validation? It's a serious question, and one that I think Amazon (and anyone else streaming audio to the cloud, Siri and Google Voice Search are only slightly less constrained) needs to have an answer for.

Post by chipperyman573 » Tue, Dec 27, 2016, 6:43 PM UTC

gordyf wrote: post #88

ajross wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Once more though: that's just the audio flagged as a "query" by Amazon and stored as such. What about other stuff that gets uploaded prior to NLP & validation? It's a serious question, and one that I think Amazon (and anyone else streaming audio to the cloud, Siri and Google Voice Search are only slightly less constrained) needs to have an answer for.

I think you may be making a distinction where none exists. Can you give me an example of what "other stuff" you're referring to? (Disclosure: I worked at Amazon on a related product.)