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Amazon to hand over Echo audio from alleged murder after defendant consents

bbc.com

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Re: Amazon to hand over Echo audio from alleged murder after defendant consents

#71

Post by YCode »

danielsamuels wrote: post #17
tribune wrote: post #16

I own an Echo and this is part of the reason it now sits unplugged. To be honest, it doesn't provide enough value for me to consider potentially compromising the privacy of my home.

Without trying being rude, surely this was obvious before you purchased it?

Bruce Schneier wrote a great essay on this topic: https://www.schneier.com/essays/archives/2008/01/the_psychol...

In short, we "feel" security more than we reason about it and once a risk has been personified we lend a lot more weight to it.

Re: Amazon to hand over Echo audio from alleged murder after defendant consents

#72

Post by LordKano »

wyldfire wrote: post #47

This is a non-issue. The audio Amazon receives is from only-just-barely-before the wakeword up to and through the command or timeout expiration. Yes, it's possible that the defendants cat meowed right before the murder and it sounded like "Alexa". But it seems incredibly unlikely. Prosecutors are just trying to cover every base but the likelihood that this will yield anything is very low.

There are too many checkers players in a chess world.

They're attempting to establish the precedent today. Tomorrow(figurative, not literal), when such devices send everything to the cloud to be processed "To reduce false positives", there will be much more data to mine.

I won't have one of these devices in my house. I won't have an xbone in my house for the same reason. Today, they're not much of a threat to privacy but long term, the risk is too great for my comfort. They can't be trusted.

Re: Amazon to hand over Echo audio from alleged murder after defendant consents

#73

Post by vollmond »

andrepd wrote: post #59
verelo wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Makes me think in future cases when someone says in court "I do not recall", we are going to see Google Home / Echo data being called into play. As someone with 3 google home devices in the house, I feel like my feara I've been suppressing are all coming true.

Then why did you buy 3 Google home devices?

I have these same fears, yet there are 4 android devices, an ipad, and an echo dot in my home.

High utility and low chance of me being in the specific situation where internal home recordings are requested.

High downside if I do end up there, but low risk of ending up there (hopefully).

Re: Amazon to hand over Echo audio from alleged murder after defendant consents

#74

Post by danielvf »

andrepd wrote: post #62
wyldfire wrote: post #47

This is a non-issue. The audio Amazon receives is from only-just-barely-before the wakeword up to and through the command or timeout expiration. Yes, it's possible that the defendants cat meowed right before the murder and it sounded like "Alexa". But it seems incredibly unlikely. Prosecutors are just trying to cover every base but the likelihood that this will yield anything is very low.

> The audio Amazon receives is from only-just-barely-before the wakeword up to and through the command or timeout expiration. I wonder, how on earth do you know that, that you are able to dismiss it with such confidence as a non-issue. That's the problem with proprietary systems (proprietary always-on microphones at that). I would be surprised if they weren't actually listening and analysing and storing data from the…

You can just watch the network traffic from the device to see when it is streaming audio.

Now this obviously doesn't rule out the device saving stuff locally, but plenty of people have verified that it does generally only send lots of data to the server when you have just asked it to wake up.

Re: Amazon to hand over Echo audio from alleged murder after defendant consents

#75

Post by vollmond »

andrepd wrote: post #62
wyldfire wrote: post #47

This is a non-issue. The audio Amazon receives is from only-just-barely-before the wakeword up to and through the command or timeout expiration. Yes, it's possible that the defendants cat meowed right before the murder and it sounded like "Alexa". But it seems incredibly unlikely. Prosecutors are just trying to cover every base but the likelihood that this will yield anything is very low.

> The audio Amazon receives is from only-just-barely-before the wakeword up to and through the command or timeout expiration. I wonder, how on earth do you know that, that you are able to dismiss it with such confidence as a non-issue. That's the problem with proprietary systems (proprietary always-on microphones at that). I would be surprised if they weren't actually listening and analysing and storing data from the…

FWIW, I've seen a couple threads on Reddit where people did network sniffing -- the echo only had network traffic after the wakeword. So, in a hearsay/amateur manner, it seems to not be doing that.

As someone else mentioned, they could of course record constantly, then compress and transmit in batches, and that would probably go unnoticed.

Re: Amazon to hand over Echo audio from alleged murder after defendant consents

#76

Post by tonylemesmer »

shshhdhs wrote: post #18
koolba wrote: post #3

This should be a lesson to people who don't understand the distinction between "can't" and "won't". If you're running things yourself and control the encryption keys required to access your data, then your service provider can't be compelled to release your data as it's not possible[1][2]. If you're delegating all of that to your service provider and they have access to the raw data, then you are putting all your tru…

They can only reveal voice data IF the victim said "Alexa" when the crime was taking place. If the victim didn't say "Alexa" that day, then there's nothing to reveal. Your example about encryption doesn't make sense in the context of the Echo.

I happen to have met the hardware engineers who developed the chipset and microphone array PCB inside the Echo and they told me there is no recording unless the trigger word is detected.

I saw no evidence to prove or disprove this and there's nothing to say that the device couldn't be altered after installation.

[edited: grammar]

Re: Amazon to hand over Echo audio from alleged murder after defendant consents

#77

Post by shostack »

dade_ wrote: post #21

At this point I assume they have a warrant, so I don't understand what the problem is. People should assume their devices can and will be used against them. A much more tricky conversation is when a friend of mine discovered that fragments of his a session with his psychologist recorded by his Android Wear watch.

Can you share more details? How did they discover it?

Re: Amazon to hand over Echo audio from alleged murder after defendant consents

#78

Post by pure_ambition »

wyldfire wrote: post #47

This is a non-issue. The audio Amazon receives is from only-just-barely-before the wakeword up to and through the command or timeout expiration. Yes, it's possible that the defendants cat meowed right before the murder and it sounded like "Alexa". But it seems incredibly unlikely. Prosecutors are just trying to cover every base but the likelihood that this will yield anything is very low.

We will have to see. I was curious about this myself, but amazon does not say categorically when it streams data to the cloud.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=...

Note that it says "this is when Alexa streams your voice to the cloud", but it does not say categorically that this is the ONLY time Alexa streams your voice to the cloud. I found that a lot of news articles said Alexa only records your voice when you make a request, but Amazon itself offers a more limited promise.

Re: Amazon to hand over Echo audio from alleged murder after defendant consents

#79

Post by 794CD01 »

shshhdhs wrote: post #20
tribune wrote: post #16

I own an Echo and this is part of the reason it now sits unplugged. To be honest, it doesn't provide enough value for me to consider potentially compromising the privacy of my home.

Mentioned this in another comment, but they can only reveal voice data IF the victim said "Alexa" when the crime was taking place. If the victim didn't say "Alexa" that day, then there's nothing to reveal.

This definitely has the potential to be the "killer's name written in blood" of the 21st century.

Re: Amazon to hand over Echo audio from alleged murder after defendant consents

#80

Post by saycheese »

seanhunter wrote: post #69
saycheese wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you delete the data, prior to getting the notice to produce the data and it wasn't deleted in anticipation of such a notice, sure the court could hold you in contempt, but legally you've done nothing wrong. You cannot easily make a third random third-party delete your data.

There are quite a few situations where you have an obligation to not delete data so "legally you've done nothing wrong" is probably overly broad.

Right, though my assumption is the relate statements are in the context of the comment I replied to, that being an individual using only systems owned by them. As such, beyond my prior comment in this thread, I'm not aware of any law related to an individual that would bar them from deleting data at will assuming to legal request to do so was expected or in place.

Opening up to any situation beyond that would be dependent on the context of that situation.

If I am missing something, please explain explicitly what you are referencing.

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