> after the defendant consented
Why did the defendant's lawyer allow this? I don't understand how this could possibly help the defense.
Amazon to hand over Echo audio from alleged murder after defendant consents
81–90 of 196 posts
Re: Amazon to hand over Echo audio from alleged murder after defendant consents
#82I 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.
Is there some technical evidence that this is the case? Or is there a chance that these can be configured remotely to record everything with the right permissions without the owner knowing?
Re: Amazon to hand over Echo audio from alleged murder after defendant consents
#83Seriously, screw google home and Amazon echo. If I wanted a wiretap, I'd go to FISA court.
Odds are you already carry one around with you every where you go.
Re: Amazon to hand over Echo audio from alleged murder after defendant consents
#84Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm not certain there exists nothing to reveal. Is there a technical limitation of the system that prevents or avoids recording of "non-'Alexa'" audio? Or do I just trust Amazon when they say their alway-on device only records when triggered with the magic word? As I think about it, I'd ask the same regarding the voice-controllable phone in my pocket. FWIW, I don't trust the devices, because their operations are out…
From looking at the internals, there's technically nothing that prevents uploading all audio constantly to AWS. Practically, it would be unwieldy to have 10,000,000 devices sending audio to 10,000,000 audio decoding and processes 24 hours a day nonstop. You'd also see a huge bandwidth hit at your ISP, which would certainly kill future adoptions if the word got out.
Doesn't seem any more unwieldy than Skype or Spotify?
Re: Amazon to hand over Echo audio from alleged murder after defendant consents
#85Earlier quoted context omitted.
You might put yourself in a worse position if the court compels you to produce the data, but now you can't. You better be very certain that you are able to prove that you deleted the data prior to any notice, or you might find yourself in for a long jail stay. This is what a lot of people overlook - when the court compels you to produce evidence, or ill gotten gains, saying ,"I can't" - isn't a legal defense.
It depends. If you delete all data after a year pursuant to a well established practice, the court should not be able to hold you in contempt. But if your explanation smacks of destruction of evidence, then you've got a problem. Remember, it's not about what you did, in fact (the judge and the prosecutor can't know that). It's about what the circumstantial suggests you did.
Just to be clear, my assumption was the jurisdiction was US federal law, the entity deleting the data was an individual, the data was their data, and the systems deleting the data were owned by them; this based on the context as I understood it provided by the comment I replied to of this thread.
As such, would you please explain why you provide a timeframe for keeping the data prior to deleting it?
Re: Amazon to hand over Echo audio from alleged murder after defendant consents
#86Earlier quoted context omitted.
For all you know, it could be recording all the time, and since it's a closed device, you can't prove otherwise.
Yes and for all you know that table you bought could include a large battery, LTE receiver, and a microphone and could be recording your every sound as well. There's a limit to how much paranoia is warranted, and in this case I'm firmly in the "it's not" column. Yes, it could be recording your every sound for months on end and uploading it to evil amazon, but not only would they be in some hot water legally in some a…
The comparison between a bugged table and a device whose primary purpose is to always be listening to you is a bit of a stretch, don't you think?
Amazon provides cloud storage and processing to the web. Given their history of relatively ruthless (if strategically smart) business moves, I don't think it is unreasonable to consider that they could store this data for use down the line or do so at government request. This is all software based permissions that seem to be one invisible server side tweak away from becoming an always recording (not just listening for a wake word) device.
I got an Amazon Tap because it required a button push to record. They just enabled the option for always listening just like the echo. In theory I control it, but clearly I do not in practice.
Re: Amazon to hand over Echo audio from alleged murder after defendant consents
#87I thought Amazon claimed this was impossible and they didn't have this audio?
Re: Amazon to hand over Echo audio from alleged murder after defendant consents
#88How is echo audio data substantially different than something like a tape recorder that was live in the man's home? What about a cell phone that was on a call at the time of the alleged murder? I definitely understand wanting to ensure reasonable privacy for users, but to me it feels an awful lot of a stretch to say that the echo is off-limits in this case.
> How is echo audio data substantially different than something like a tape recorder that was live in the man's home?
This is an interesting question that leads to (surprising?) ruling in certain jurisdictions. Take Germany for an example: The German law on telecommunication and privacy in telecommunication explicitly forbids the manufacturing, distribution and possesion of disguised recording deviced with transmission capability. Take note that it does not outlaw concealed/disguised recording deviced entirely, but is specific on the transmission capability. This law has been put into place in reaction to the massive invasions of privacy under the Nazi regime and until the iron curtain fell in the GDR by the Stasi (the agency depicted in the movie "The Life of Others").
A few weeks ago there was that case of the German Bundesnetzagentur (German equivalent to the FCC) banning a "smart doll" for that very reason. Now consider that certain variants of Amazon Echo could be mistaken for mundane wireless speakers, especially to people who are not familiar with the concept of connected devices. However the wireless transmission capability of the Echo clearly puts them into the reach of the aforementioned law, and some people actually argue, that because of that, they are in fact illegal in Germany. Now what about actual Bluetooth speakers with a microphone built-in to support speakerphone? Technically illegal, too, because one could put them in aunty's home, connected by wire to their CD player or such, yet use the bluetooth function to eavesdrop from outside the home.
On the one hand it's great to have this law in place. But on the other hand it's clearly ripe for being updated to match current technological developments.
Re: Amazon to hand over Echo audio from alleged murder after defendant consents
#89How is echo audio data substantially different than something like a tape recorder that was live in the man's home? What about a cell phone that was on a call at the time of the alleged murder? I definitely understand wanting to ensure reasonable privacy for users, but to me it feels an awful lot of a stretch to say that the echo is off-limits in this case.
Comparing it to a tape recorder is interesting. If we consider this device to be the same as a tape recorder for the purpose of admission of evidence: (1) In some states, by having this device and turning it on you have now indeed consented for the conversation to be recorded - which would alarm most users (2) In other states, it is illegal for the device to be functioning without consent of all who are conversing, a…
Thanks for the insight.
In regards to comparing new technologies against previous ones to understand their legal definitions, it feels like the burden is on technologists to navigate us through the ethical minefield. I'm not very aware of what place ethicists have in many tech corporations, but it feels like most of us just build straight ahead and figure out the implications afterward. Not that we should halt progress on everything until we know if it's "good", but maybe a tech ethicist could be a kind of QA role during product development.
Re: Amazon to hand over Echo audio from alleged murder after defendant consents
#90Earlier 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.
Under which circumstances is an individual required to retain data that they created?