Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

theguardian.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 190 posts

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

#21

Post by Filligree »

Hondor wrote: post #13
superkuh wrote: post #10

More importantly, the headline should read: "Police use high time resolution data from modern water meter against man charged with murder." Basically this Abstruse Goose comic, http://abstrusegoose.com/553 , about the dangers of utility data logging have come true. The greater the time resolution of such things the more can be inferred. Such high resolution is completely uneeded and complex in order to just charge fo…

Isn't it a good thing to record data that helps solve a murder? The police are still getting it with a warrant and presumably from physical access to the device, so it's not the same worry as bulk monitoring.

In the case of a murder, it's a good thing. The risk is always the chance of abuse, and although in the case of water stats it's hard to imagine how you'd abuse it, having more information always means a higher chance.

Ideally we'd want to get the benefits without the abuse, but that requires a solid bureaucracy and strong rules.

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

#22

Post by zubspace »

FroshKiller wrote: post #17
zubspace wrote: post #11

How can they refuse to provide the recordings in case of a warrant? It makes no sense. They even acknowledge that the device is not always-on and therefore probably not useful. Because of bad publicity? If the police stands in front of my house with a warrant to search my belongings, can I refuse that? Does it make sense if I have nothing to hide? The recordings of the water meter is more interesting and the possible…

A warrant is not the same as a subpoena. But look, "the innocent have nothing to hide" is an insidious and wrong idea. If people and corporations don't assert their rights against the will of the state, they erode the foundation of our shared liberties.

I'm not a lawyer, so excuse me if I'm asking trivial things:

To obtain a search warrant or arrest warrant, the law enforcement officer must demonstrate probable cause that a search or seizure is justified. An authority, usually a magistrate, will consider the totality of circumstances and determine whether to issue the warrant. [1]

I agree to your statement, if there is no search warrant. But in this case an authority already decided that the search is justified. What use are search warrants then if they can all be refused?

I understand, that even a magistrate or whatever can make errors. But if this happens a lot, the consequence will be, that search warrants are issued without second thought and the person/company affected by the search should always deny it first.

I'm all for privacy and defending individual rights, but cases like this make a farce out of court orders and the whole jurisdictional process.

[1] https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/fourth_amendment

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

#23

Post by laichzeit0 »

gravypod wrote: post #20
smileysteve wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If the police stands in front of my house with a warrant to search my belongings, can I refuse that? Yes, if your legal team denies it as overly broad. They can also file an injunction. This is why you call a lawyer as soon as the police arrive w/ a warrant or ask you questions. > Does it make sense if I have nothing to hide? Yes. Because you value your privacy of hobbies and speech. > I have nothing to hide. The a…

Do you have a citation for the 3 times a day figure? I'm not disagreeing because I belive it's true. I'd just like to see some real data.

You left out the part where you also want an actual "peer reviewed study". Must be new to HN.

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

#24

Post by WalterBright »

Filligree wrote: post #21
Hondor wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't it a good thing to record data that helps solve a murder? The police are still getting it with a warrant and presumably from physical access to the device, so it's not the same worry as bulk monitoring.

In the case of a murder, it's a good thing. The risk is always the chance of abuse, and although in the case of water stats it's hard to imagine how you'd abuse it, having more information always means a higher chance. Ideally we'd want to get the benefits without the abuse, but that requires a solid bureaucracy and strong rules.

You can tell when someone's home or not from utility usage.

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

#25

Post by zubspace »

forgetsusername wrote: post #19
FroshKiller wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A warrant is not the same as a subpoena. But look, "the innocent have nothing to hide" is an insidious and wrong idea. If people and corporations don't assert their rights against the will of the state, they erode the foundation of our shared liberties.

> But look, "the innocent have nothing to hide" is an insidious and wrong idea Very much agree, because there's a difference between being "innocent" and actually innocent. Only the former matters, it's subjective (jury/judge) and unknown to everyone but you, ex ante. Sometimes the police are more invested in finding a criminal rather than the criminal.

Usually a warrant will only last a short time and the issuer must name a specific thing they are looking for. In this case it's clear that they only need to provide the data for a specific person.

I also believe that Amazon could provide that data alone. So what makes them refuse?

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

#26

Post by Quarrelsome »

Hondor wrote: post #13
superkuh wrote: post #10

More importantly, the headline should read: "Police use high time resolution data from modern water meter against man charged with murder." Basically this Abstruse Goose comic, http://abstrusegoose.com/553 , about the dangers of utility data logging have come true. The greater the time resolution of such things the more can be inferred. Such high resolution is completely uneeded and complex in order to just charge fo…

Isn't it a good thing to record data that helps solve a murder? The police are still getting it with a warrant and presumably from physical access to the device, so it's not the same worry as bulk monitoring.

its a fine line. There is a great fear of false positives from such inference. Let us imagine for a second that there is a legitimate reason for that water use that he doesn't wish to disclose because it would incriminate him for something else?

Hypothetically speaking if you were doing some grey-hat, "illegal" probing/hack at the time of a murder the police question you about; admitting to your actual activity could result in more time behind bars than a murder. If this activity was somehow vaguely recorded and correlated with an activity of the murderer then you have a serious problem.

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

#27

Post by fennecfoxen »

smileysteve wrote: post #16
zubspace wrote: post #11

How can they refuse to provide the recordings in case of a warrant? It makes no sense. They even acknowledge that the device is not always-on and therefore probably not useful. Because of bad publicity? If the police stands in front of my house with a warrant to search my belongings, can I refuse that? Does it make sense if I have nothing to hide? The recordings of the water meter is more interesting and the possible…

> If the police stands in front of my house with a warrant to search my belongings, can I refuse that? Yes, if your legal team denies it as overly broad. They can also file an injunction. This is why you call a lawyer as soon as the police arrive w/ a warrant or ask you questions. > Does it make sense if I have nothing to hide? Yes. Because you value your privacy of hobbies and speech. > I have nothing to hide. The a…

> This is why you call a lawyer as soon as the police arrive w/ a warrant or ask you questions.

Pragmatic question regarding this type of advice. It's easy to say "call a lawyer", sure, but like many Americans under age 35, I do not presently have a lawyer in a meaningful sense of the term. (I had one once, for a very specific matter regarding a visa for another country - it was four-figure expensive - that relationship is now over.)

Suppose the police show up at my door in half an hour. What do I actually do? Or, suppose that they're not showing up in half an hour but I'd like to be generally prepared. What steps can I take to do so while keeping the up-front pre-police-raid 'expensive' in the low to middle three figure sums, or thereabouts?

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

#28

Post by jerf »

gravypod wrote: post #20
smileysteve wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If the police stands in front of my house with a warrant to search my belongings, can I refuse that? Yes, if your legal team denies it as overly broad. They can also file an injunction. This is why you call a lawyer as soon as the police arrive w/ a warrant or ask you questions. > Does it make sense if I have nothing to hide? Yes. Because you value your privacy of hobbies and speech. > I have nothing to hide. The a…

Do you have a citation for the 3 times a day figure? I'm not disagreeing because I belive it's true. I'd just like to see some real data.

Three crimes a day is probably a reference to this book: https://www.amazon.com/Three-Felonies-Day-Target-Innocent/dp...

(I know it's better to provide references to web pages and not books, but I don't have a web page that recreates that book on hand. Suggestions welcome.)

As I understand it, it's an estimate, not an actual figure. In order to perform such a survey, we'd have to sample people, record their entire daily activity, and determine how many crimes were committed. Determining how many crimes were committed would require an army of lawyers and private investigators... and that's the real point. As a normal citizen without an army of lawyers, you should have no confidence whatsoever that you are not committing crimes. If measured by "what could be used to convict you if the government wanted you out of the way" I'd guess 3 per day is a grotesque underestimate, at least one order of magnitude and I wouldn't bet much against 2.

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

#29

Post by Sir_Substance »

Hondor wrote: post #13
superkuh wrote: post #10

More importantly, the headline should read: "Police use high time resolution data from modern water meter against man charged with murder." Basically this Abstruse Goose comic, http://abstrusegoose.com/553 , about the dangers of utility data logging have come true. The greater the time resolution of such things the more can be inferred. Such high resolution is completely uneeded and complex in order to just charge fo…

Isn't it a good thing to record data that helps solve a murder? The police are still getting it with a warrant and presumably from physical access to the device, so it's not the same worry as bulk monitoring.

>Isn't it a good thing to record data that helps solve a murder?

Recording everyones data everywhere just in case it might be relevant to an extremely rare event like a murder is very dangerous. The use of NSA recording capabilities by employees to digitally stalk victims of their affection (LOVEINT) is a clear example of how badly this kind of collection can go wrong.

Post reply on HN