My company responds to subpoenas with a wiki article on how client side encryption works
NH judge orders Amazon to give Echo recordings in murder case
51–60 of 185 posts
Re: NH judge orders Amazon to give Echo recordings in murder case
#52Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sending voice data constantly is easy to catch on the user's side, by simply monitoring the traffic. So once they got caught, it is going to cause them a huge fortune and completely meltdown in terms of customer trust. And on the technical side, this makes very little sense either, they only needs to have the Alexa keyword detected then went through the backend ASR service, otherwise the cost is going to be overwhelm…
Why would you need voice? Just translate to text and send that. It’d be a very very small payload.
The Alexa device itself is rather cheap and the running a relative huge model on 'edge' device is still fairly expensive and remains an open question. Again it falls into economic side of things, it makes sense to adapt a layered model in this case, to delay more expensive processing to the server side.
Re: NH judge orders Amazon to give Echo recordings in murder case
#53Earlier quoted context omitted.
Maybe they're hoping one of the parties involved yelled "Alexa!" as the crime was taking place. /s
Alexa, call the police! #### is here, and he's trying to hurt me! Seems like a pretty good use for a voice-activated service. "Alexa, lock the doors!" also sounds useful in this context.
not if you are trying to escape :X
Re: NH judge orders Amazon to give Echo recordings in murder case
#54I still don't understand why this is possible. I've frequently seen the claim that an Echo only records brief snippets, looking for the wake word. If that's so, there's next to nothing for Amazon to hand over.
It’s not possible. This is a classic example of the legal system confusing reality with science fiction. You can monitor Echo itself over your network and quickly realize that it’s not sending a constant stream of voice data. For the most part the device is off until it hears its name.
It could be possible that Alexa was accidentally triggered and recorded interesting snippets as a side effect.
Re: NH judge orders Amazon to give Echo recordings in murder case
#55Earlier quoted context omitted.
And the next question, what would you say to ensure it was recorded, identifiable, sent to the right person and had the right phrasing to ensure it could be used in court?
"Alexa, call the police"? Would that work?
Well now I want to try this with my Echo, but I'm too afraid it'll actually call the police and I won't know how to stop it haha
Re: NH judge orders Amazon to give Echo recordings in murder case
#56I still don't understand why this is possible. I've frequently seen the claim that an Echo only records brief snippets, looking for the wake word. If that's so, there's next to nothing for Amazon to hand over.
Just because there's "next to nothing" doesn't mean there's actually nothing. The speech recognition sometimes has false positives on the wake word. Also there's the tiny chance that the victim yelled out Alexa in an attempt to get evidence to the police.
Re: NH judge orders Amazon to give Echo recordings in murder case
#57Earlier quoted context omitted.
How do the particulars of this case have any relevance as to; 1) The implication of widespread proliferation of these types of recording devices 2) The accessibility/retention of the recordings for law enforcement 3) The long-standing legal framework around the third party doctrine and the NSA’s willingness to abuse third-party private data for data mining It smacks of “think of the children!” to talk about what a ba…
> How do the particulars of this case [etc] > It smacks of “think of the children!” Your original comment of "against the homeowner" reads to me as a similar appeal to emotion. > The accessibility/retention of the recordings for law enforcement The particulars here seem to be that they probably don't have recordings, and those recordings -- if they exist -- were only obtainable under court supervision. You muddled --…
No, I think the grandparent post was arguing about slowly eroding privacy. If they set a precedent, they could abuse it later.
Re: NH judge orders Amazon to give Echo recordings in murder case
#58I still don't understand why this is possible. I've frequently seen the claim that an Echo only records brief snippets, looking for the wake word. If that's so, there's next to nothing for Amazon to hand over.
Just because there's "next to nothing" doesn't mean there's actually nothing. The speech recognition sometimes has false positives on the wake word. Also there's the tiny chance that the victim yelled out Alexa in an attempt to get evidence to the police.
That information would likely be on the device itself, which the police have. However, this is about requests for information over on the Amazon servers - where it would be surprising to find they have anything of significance.
Re: NH judge orders Amazon to give Echo recordings in murder case
#59My company responds to subpoenas with a wiki article on how client side encryption works
What stops your users from getting subpoenaed via their ISPs?
Re: NH judge orders Amazon to give Echo recordings in murder case
#60I know that this article itself doesn’t have much content but I’m interested in what the police are actually requesting, and what they end up getting. Do they assume/suspect that Echo/Amazon continuously records and logs audio, akin to a security camera? Or do they have evidence that Echo was actually activated around the time of the murders, or afterwards by the suspect himself? I was also interested in this quote:…
> What is it that users don’t realize?
You answered yourself in an exemplary fashion, but I'll state it explicitly (and simply). People don't think about it. I'd like to imagine anyone who realises the implications of owning such a device would refuse to own one, although I know I'm mistaken.
I don't mean that people should know better (although ofc they should), but new technology is all too easily likened to any household appliance nowadays. Alexa is a utility, for better and worse.
It's my opinion that we should very much attempt to educate the non-professional about the realities of these spy-machines, in much the same way we don't teach people about dishwashers.
As for the article: I find it morbidly curious that I could tell Alexa who is murdering me. A benign 1984 for now I suppose.