the weather or play your favorite song
with a simple voice request. Now police
want its help so lving a murder, said Amy
Wang in The Washington Post. Authorities
in Bentonville, Ark., recently served
a warrant to Amazon demanding data
from an Echo speaker owned by a man
accused of killing his friend after a night
of drinking at his home. Because the Echo
is constantly “listening” for the “wake
word” that activates the speaker (usually,
“Alexa,” the name of Amazon’s artificially
intelligent personal assistant), police believe
the device may have captured audio related to the alleged
crime. Police have long seized computers, smartphones, and other
electronics to aid in investigations, but the case raises fresh questions
about digital privacy. “Namely, is there a difference in the
reasonable expectation of privacy one should have when dealing
with a device that is ‘always on’ in one’s own home?”
What the police are hoping to find is a “bit of a stretch,” technologically
speaking, said Noah Kulwin in Vice.com. Smart speakers
like Amazon Echo and Google Home only record short snippets
of audio at a time while listening for their wake word. If no
wake word is detected, information is automatically deleted, and
that data is not sent to the cloud. When Amazon does record
what’s being said, it’s only long enough to capture whatever the
user is asking. Odds are, the Echo didn’t
pick up anything useful—at least not
anything that could be used in court.
Even so, Amazon is refusing to turn
over the device’s data to authorities, in
the name of customer privacy, said Jake
Swearingen in NYMag.com. But this
won’t be the last time police make this
kind of request. Smart devices like Echo
work by understanding who is in your
home, and in which room—information
that could be pertinent in a criminal case.
“It’s not outlandish to imagine a court
compelling a company to turn over smart-home data that might
be a key piece of evidence in a future trial.”
Ironically, another smart device could actually crack this case,
said Alina Selyukh in NPR.org. Investigators have built part
of their case on data from a smart water meter, alleging that
“an increase in water use in the middle of the night suggests a
possible cleanup around the crime scene.” “All of this should
offer an important reminder that it’s not always wise to blindly
commit to smart devices,” said Jacob Brogan in Slate.com. Our
devices now collect huge amounts of information about us in
the name of convenience. You may not be planning criminal
acts, but that doesn’t change the fact that your data “can be put
to surprising ends.”