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My company responds to subpoenas with a wiki article on how client side encryption works
My company would respond to a similar subpoena by explaining that we make archery bows from wood. That also doesn't add anything to the HN discussion.
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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.
On the other hand, it's widely documented that Amazon stores recordings on their servers every time the watch word activates. And Amazon provides users an easy interface to listen to those recordings.
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On the other hand, if the government comes to Amazon with a valid sealed court order, are you willing to bet they'll stand up rather than start streaming audio recordings home? Amazon winning DoD cloud business is actually the smartest thing the US government could do to align interests.
> a valid sealed court order If the government show up with a valid court order, generally they can do what the hell they want? That's how justice works in a democracy?
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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.
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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.
Huh? I haven't heard of the device itself storing any significant amount of data. And if it does, it would likely be somewhat difficult for the police to figure out how to get it. On the other hand, it's widely documented that Amazon stores recordings on their servers every time the watch word activates. And Amazon provides users an easy interface to listen to those recordings.
Right. And it doesn't look like that happened. This is some sort of fishing expedition based on the premise that Amazon gets more than just wake-word activated data.
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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 --…
This isn't really a shocker. They have been known since 2006[0] that the police(+TLA's) can use your cellphone as a eavesdropping tool. The biggest problem I fear is that this will become socially acceptable in US as it has with the authoritarian gov't in China. [0]: https://www.cnet.com/news/fbi-taps-cell-phone-mic-as-eavesdr...
Why it may be not socially acceptable yet, it is already socially accepted :). Between smartphone, car computer, video cameras everywhere, license plates readers, credit card records, etc. government has pretty much all the details of my life (in some fusion center by Palantir). Adding smart home, drones and whatever else just incrementally improves the quality of that collection while not changing the already establ…
Actually, after the Snowden revelations, there was a big political uproar and they almost got enough votes to completely defund the NSA[0]. Unfortunately our constitutional lawyer in charge(obama) was able to defeat the bill.
While they are collecting everything on everyone pretty much(xkeyscore, prism, turbine etc), there's a good chance that things will change when people are aware of it. As we have the right to choose who leads us.
[0]: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2013/07...
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What stops your users from getting subpoenaed via their ISPs?
Presumably, their users have the right to not incriminate themselves.
It only protects against being required to give incriminating statements of a testimonial nature.
As an extremely contrived example, if you've spontaneously written a confession to a crime and the cops learn of this, they can subpoena you and order you to hand it over. But they can't just require you to write out a confession or speak one in court.
(Cops do get people to confess, of course, but there is some element of persuasion and choice involved in that decision.)
As a much more common example, with the right level of evidence to motivate this request they can require your fingerprints as part of a criminal investigation. This is true even if they do not arrest you and even if the fingerprints will incriminate you. But they can't require you to answer incriminating questions.
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Huh? I haven't heard of the device itself storing any significant amount of data. And if it does, it would likely be somewhat difficult for the police to figure out how to get it. On the other hand, it's widely documented that Amazon stores recordings on their servers every time the watch word activates. And Amazon provides users an easy interface to listen to those recordings.
> On the other hand, it's widely documented that Amazon stores recordings on their servers every time the watch word activates. Right. And it doesn't look like that happened. This is some sort of fishing expedition based on the premise that Amazon gets more than just wake-word activated data.
What indication of that is there? My original comments were listing scenarios in which the wake word might have activated.
>based on the premise that Amazon gets more than just wake-word activated data.
I don't see that at all. It seems to me the police are saying "there's a chance the wake word activated, let's check, and if so, get those recordings".