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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

#161

Post by notlisted »

usloth_wandows wrote: post #133
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.

That's exactly what Amazon would like there users to think. How do you think he wake work is detected? It MUST be listening to some sort of ambient audio, wether that is recorded or kept in anyway, only Amazon would know.

The wake word is detected by the hardware. There's a reason why there are just 3 (Alexa, Amazon, Echo).

PS I'd love to call mine 'Computer' or 'Hal'.

Re: Police seek Amazon Echo data in murder case

#162

Post by rhizome »

supergeek133 wrote: post #98
jdiez17 wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(I think) the argument your parent is making is that Amazon could easily send a software update to a specific Echo to make it record everything it hears.

If at the request of the government, yeah that's a problem unless there is some kind of warrant, right? I'm all for people being suspicious, but the intent of this was to say "the cops are hoping it might catch something" as in it was accidentally triggered.

If at the request of the government, yeah that's a problem unless there is some kind of warrant, right?

Nope: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third-party_doctrine

Re: Police seek Amazon Echo data in murder case

#163

Post by notlisted »

dingaling wrote: post #130
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?

Looked at connections/durations (ie not content).

Re: Police seek Amazon Echo data in murder case

#164

Post by rhizome »

gertef wrote: post #141
politician wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand your rebuttal. Are you disputing that LE does not have the ability to request a wire tap from a judge with a warrant? Wouldn't you want the police be able to intervene when they hear or observe shouting or fighting through an open door or window? Are you suggesting that a network-attached microphone is not equivalent to an open window? ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third-party_doctrine )

It's certainly not equivalent. "Third-party doctrine" is extremely bad law that ignores the notion of private relationship. The law even recognizes some notions of private conversations (with your lawyer, and with your doctor), but ignores others (with your cloud provider) because the law is older than the cloud and the government loves making power grabs. Justice Sonia Sotomayor is right to challenge it. I fear that…

Third-party doctrine is not actual law, and challenges only exist as 4th Amendment cases on specific uses (i.e. not the doctrine as a whole). While Sotomayor is right to raise the issue, sadly her words don't constitute action on the topic.

Re: Police seek Amazon Echo data in murder case

#165

Post by CaptSpify »

illumin8 wrote: post #147
CaptSpify wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So just because my phone is potentially not secure means I should just open up my home to all other sorts of intrusion/attacks? Yes, phones generally can do that, but it doesn't mean we shouldn't be concerned about what the Echo is doing.

No, it means that you're sitting in your house without a roof, and saying "I would never forget to close my windows during a rainstorm." Never mind the rain is pouring through your roof. You're seriously willing to carry smartphones, which have both microphones and cameras, and give no indication visible or otherwise, of when they are listening or recording or sending data, and run whatever dodgy code some asian devi…

> No, it means that you're sitting in your house without a roof, and saying "I would never forget to close my windows during a rainstorm." Never mind the rain is pouring through your roof.

I don't disagree. If there was a legitimate alternative, I would use that, but there isn't. I do everything I can to make sure it runs as much FOSS as it can.

> Reality called - it wants the tinfoil hat back.

How can you claim that attitude? You just admitted we have 2 giant vectors for attack/compromise, then dismiss them without any reasoning?

Re: Police seek Amazon Echo data in murder case

#166

Post by rhizome »

coding123 wrote: post #112
literallycancer wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When will people finally understand that laws are above EULAs or ToS and other toilet paper?

I don't believe they are saying a EULA or ToS is "above the law" they're saying that there is a reasonable argument to say that the expectation of privacy was waived by the guilty party owning an Amazon Echo. If the ToS states these facts more clearly, then that argument would either have more or less weight. Without anything being said in the ToS or EULA, the argument could really go either way, depending on many th…

You can't sign away your basic human rights, of which privacy is one[1].

1. http://www.un.org/en/universal-declaration-human-rights/ (Article 12)

Re: Police seek Amazon Echo data in murder case

#167

Post by visarga »

eclipxe wrote: post #152
zeta0134 wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think there's a stronger mental disconnect here in a lot of consumers. Detecting the wake word is easy to do locally; doing natural language processing on the resulting audio recording is what must be offloaded to Amazon, as it's too computationally heavy to perform that process locally. Because the wake word is able to be processed offline, there is no need for the Echo device to record and transmit audio all the…

Exactly. There is no cost model that accounts for the device constantly streaming realtime audio data to Amazon. Just doesn't make sense.

But it could still record background audio and transmit it later to Amazon, when an Alexa query is triggered. How do we know that it doesn't do that? Has anyone opened up the data stream to check what audio it contains?

Re: Police seek Amazon Echo data in murder case

#169

Post by CaptSpify »

eclipxe wrote: post #154
TheSpiceIsLife wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

This is not happening. Period. Amazon takes customer trust very very very very seriously.

But you can't prove it's not happening. I'm personally skeptical that it is happening, but you saying "No for real guys, it isn't happening! I double-pinky swear" isn't actually proof of any kind either way.

Re: Police seek Amazon Echo data in murder case

#170

Post by visarga »

jdiez17 wrote: post #82
supergeek133 wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

(I think) the argument your parent is making is that Amazon could easily send a software update to a specific Echo to make it record everything it hears.

Or send audio surveillance data only when it has a legitimate excuse to communicate with Amazon, like, when you're streaming music or making a query.
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