Amazon refuses to let police access US murder suspect’s Echo recordings

Hell just think of everyone going 5-10mph over the speed limit on any given road.

In some states you need to notify all parties (or get their consent) before you record their voice.

EULA does not cover it, your visitors did not signed it. Only way is to put label: "This area is monitored by CCTV"...

Also recording phone calls could be illegal. Amazon should put disclaimer before every conversation :-)

me: "Alexa"

al: "This conversation might be recorded for monitoring and training purposes"

me: "Call Dad"

I disagree as there is a pretty broad spectrum of activities that you might not want broadcasted publicly.

Sexual acts, politial opinions, social opinions, partners, etc, all of these are commonly used to discriminate by all groups. Not wanting to have absolutely everything you do recorded doesn't mean that you're doing something that is harmful or wrong to society; there are a multitude of common situations in which you wouldn't want privately shared information attached to you directly. Examples can be given, but excluded for brevity.

Also given that Amazon has shown that it isn't keeping more than what it needs to catch the summon word "Alexa", it shows that it is very easily and technically feasible to balance "always on services" with privacy. Apple does this with iMessage and it's mobile line. Windows, macOS, and many Linux distributions ship with a disk encryption option. This is something we have a pretty easy and readily available technical solution to that allows people to retain their private lives while having "always on" tech.

When Eric Schmidt wrote that quote, it was defending an ill-fated and misguided attempt to force real names for a reason that wasn't really made clear. It was a very weak justification for the real name policy Google was trying to push across their accounts, a policy they eventually gave up on. I get that there are scenarios in which an always on, always tracked, forever recorded, real name data collection policy can solve; but it introduces far more threatening problems than it solves; I've heard talks given by former detectives and police officers on how mindless data collection is an abuser's dream, and how so many abusers were able to find their victims even after relocation because of things like store loyalty cards being leaked, service integration revealing connections, and so on.

Replace "murder" with "homosexual relations in a country where it is punishable by death" and tell me you still stand by your argument. Are you okay with government using cloud-based computing hobbies to find and kill homosexuals in their country? If not - why? If it is illegal they shouldn't be doing it, right?

Tools used for "good" can also be used for "evil" and something so many people fail to account for is how a "good" tool can be misappropriated. This is why there are so many restrictions on how the police can operate. For example, restrictions or bans on entrapment, wiretapping, "bugging" a home, requiring a suspect to provide incriminating evidence against themselves, etc. We recognize that some bad people will get away because of these restrictions. A seemingly smaller portion of us seem to recognize why we let those bad people get away rather than erode our freedoms even more.

People who defend their freedoms have an unfortunate burden of defending the freedoms of the worst people imaginable.

Everyone has a right to prevention of unreasonable search and seizure.

It's still up in the air whether going to a third-party to whom you've voluntarily given a bunch of information about yourself and asking that third-party to render that information is "unreasonable." It's pretty simple to make a case that it isn't. To wit: there's plenty of legal precedent for compelling a witness to testify against someone; are we to believe that your Amazon logs or your water meter history should share the same privileged status as your attorney, psychotherapist, or priest? "Alexa, forgive me, for I have sinned..."