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Police seek Amazon Echo data in murder case

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Re: Police seek Amazon Echo data in murder case

#121

Post by tantalor »

notlisted wrote: post #48

Alexa listens only to the words after the wake word. What's more it doesn't capture more than 10-12s past the wake word. If you have a device you can check this yourself (Alexa, One Mississippi, Two Mississippi…). It's actually hard to get it to capture this much. Take a breath or pause to long and capture stops sooner. The request of the police is nutty and indicative of not understanding the technology. Unless the…

> Unless the murdered woman yelled out...

The victim is named Victor Collins; probably not a woman.

Re: Police seek Amazon Echo data in murder case

#122

Post by madeofpalk »

Flammy wrote: post #28
FrancoDiaz wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wait a minute, we'd already know if Alexa was recording everything by the network traffic that obviously has already been sniffed. We can assume that Amazon is storing every "Alex,..." query that you've ever done. So what is there to know?

We know they are streaming it to do all the NLP in the cloud. This is obvious from the computational costs alone of doing NLP. The important question here is "What happens to the audio data streamed to the cloud, a few seconds AFTER the query has been identified (or not identified) and the results sent back to the Alexa device?" The nieve assumption is "all audio data is deleted after processing". The reality is that…

> Facebook's mobile app infamously does this

Ummm source? I know there has been a bunch of paranoid conspiracy theories about this that are mostly backed by confirmation bias, but I don't believe anyone has actually came out with any proof.

Facebook as denied they are doing this, so I guess you're saying they're lying? http://www.theverge.com/2016/6/3/11854860/facebook-smartphon...

Re: Police seek Amazon Echo data in murder case

#123

Post by chrishacken »

trevyn wrote: post #103
chrishacken wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Based on the costs of disks alone, their cost per PB is actually around $35k. They likely get a volume discount, so we can lower that estimate even more and say $25-30k. Bandwidth is essentially free even though they charge ridiculous amounts of money for it on their services. You can get a 10Gbps link for as low as $2,000 if you buy it on-net and in bulk, Amazon probably gets it even cheaper. So ~3PB/month for $1,00…

Pointer? My understanding was that economy 10Gbps transit would be closer to $4-5k/month.

http://www.he.net/

"Get BGP+IPv6+IPv4 for $0.25/Mbps!"

I thought it was HE, but it must have been someone else that had a 10Gig deal for $2,000. Either way, that's for a single 10Gig link. If you're buying 100Gb - 1Tbps like Amazon is, you're probably getting an even better deal.

We just signed a contract with Level 3 for slightly more than the price you mentioned, but they had to build into us; which costs them ~$120k out of pocket, thus the higher price.

Re: Police seek Amazon Echo data in murder case

#124

Post by TheSpiceIsLife »

icebraining wrote: post #114
TheSpiceIsLife wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think the expensive part is accurate. Voice sounds okay using the G.729 VOIP codec at 8kbps. Capturing and storing that amount of data, for every Echo user, 24 hrs a day would be trivial for company the size of Amazon. As others have pointed out, network monitoring has shown the Echo only transmits after it's heard the wake-word, so it would appear Amazon doesn't capture everything.

Hypothetically, if I was tasked with recording everything, I'd just add an internal buffer and then ship chunks of that data along with the regular queries.

Indeed, yes, that'd be the way to do it. You could claim the post-wake-word data is recorded at a higher bit rate than it actually is, thereby accounting for the larger than necessary data-transfer.

I won't be surprised if we find out this is happening. They'll probably call it a "bug", fix it in an OTA, but then accidentally regress 6 months later.

Re: Police seek Amazon Echo data in murder case

#125

Post by bisby »

netsharc wrote: post #37
CodeWriter23 wrote: post #7

From the privacy perspective, IMO, once you put a device in your home that you know is always listening, and is forwarding an unknown amount of audio from your home to a third party, at that point, you have surrendered your right to privacy. Edit: not just my opinion, it's a matter of law. (thanks @mnm1) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third-party_doctrine

But laptops, and smartphones have come with cameras and integrated microphones for a long time, the only difference to the Echo is that they don't claim to be always listening.

which means if a smartphone records you, you can play the "why was it listening?" card

with an echo, you can't claim "why was it listening!?" because you knew it was and that was the reason you bought it.

granted, I dont think Amazon is doing anything nefarious at this point (other than what they normally do, building an advertising repertoire about you). Also, most people seem to agree that it only transmits data to Amazon after being triggered. but thats not to say they couldnt start listening to everything in the future to "improve the product experience". And if you think they are just using the data to answer your immediate question and not to build a profile on you, youre in denial. A smartphone company has no reason to build a profile on you. An advertising/sales company does.

Re: Police seek Amazon Echo data in murder case

#126

Post by notlisted »

wtetzner wrote: post #100
notlisted wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It stops listening. No action required. You can check in the Alexa app what is recorded (I just did). You can also check what is sent out to Amazon (which is what I did when I got the first one, using wireshark). The hardware is listening all the time, for the wake word. Nothing is sent until a wakeword is received.

But you don't know what audio data the local device itself is storing as an implementation detail.

True, it does have an 8GB flash drive, according to iFixit (4GB in the Echo Dot). For now, I'm giving it the benefit of the doubt. My cell phone is a much more useful target for the government (location, video/audio, browser history).

Re: Police seek Amazon Echo data in murder case

#127

Post by CaptSpify »

ewindisch wrote: post #54
sharemywin wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

but, are they storing every voice recording? How would you know?

you know because they let you access and replay the recordings from their app.

But we don't know that's every recording that they have. They very well could have a "allow_user_to_see_recording" toggle.

Re: Police seek Amazon Echo data in murder case

#128

Post by icebraining »

chrishacken wrote: post #60
notlisted wrote: post #48

Alexa listens only to the words after the wake word. What's more it doesn't capture more than 10-12s past the wake word. If you have a device you can check this yourself (Alexa, One Mississippi, Two Mississippi…). It's actually hard to get it to capture this much. Take a breath or pause to long and capture stops sooner. The request of the police is nutty and indicative of not understanding the technology. Unless the…

Sure, maybe they don't understand the technology, but why not just hand it over so they can determine for themselves that there's no data pertaining to the investigation. They're essentially obstructing justice. They're trying to act like the good guy, but they're really just being assholes. Of course there's the possibility that they have something to hide and are actually collecting more data than we all think they…

How are they obstructing justice by simply asking for a warrant? Should they simply divulge private recordings to any random cops that ask for it? Is that how you wish companies treat your data?

Re: Police seek Amazon Echo data in murder case

#129

Post by mahyarm »

zanny wrote: post #120
alistproducer2 wrote: post #107

I would never put a closed source hot mic in my house. You can trust big brother all you want, but I'm going to stay clear.

Every smart phone ever can do this. You have no way to verify the mic isn't in use, you have no way to verify cellular data transmission is not taking place, and you have no way to know the modem is not doing a remote execution injection to change whatever aftermarket free software OS you have running on the device is doing.

Or if the cell phone provider is telling your baseband to execute some random code, or modifying the baseband itself!

Re: Police seek Amazon Echo data in murder case

#130

Post by dingaling »

notlisted wrote: post #48

Alexa listens only to the words after the wake word. What's more it doesn't capture more than 10-12s past the wake word. If you have a device you can check this yourself (Alexa, One Mississippi, Two Mississippi…). It's actually hard to get it to capture this much. Take a breath or pause to long and capture stops sooner. The request of the police is nutty and indicative of not understanding the technology. Unless the…

> Alexa listens only to the words after the wake word.

It only records after hearing the wake-word. It listens all the time.

> After the first one I checked what was captured, what was stored, what was streamed.

How did you MitM the SSL?

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