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Amazon echo at the middle of murder investigation in Arkansas
Posted on 12/28/16 at 1:24 pm
Posted on 12/28/16 at 1:24 pm
LINK
seems people are unsure if Amazon is always listening or only listens when you say 'Alexa'
if it and other devices are always listening, it could be a game changer in solving crimes
quote:
Internet-connected devices may start helping in criminal cases. As first reported in The Information, police in Bentonville, Arkansas have issued a warrant to Amazon, asking the company to hand over data from an Echo device to help prosecute a suspected murderer.
James Andrew Bates, the suspect in the case, was charged with first-degree murder in November of 2015 after authorities found victim Victor Collins strangled and drowned in Mr. Bates’ hot tub.
quote:
Bates has several internet-connected devices in his home, including a Nest thermostat and a Honeywell alarm system, but the key witness in the case may be his Amazon Echo, which, as per The Information, police records say could have controlled the streaming music, which was being wirelessly transmitted throughout the night using Echo’s assistant Alexa.
However, it’s unclear how much data police could extract from the device or how useful that data would be in the case. Alexa is always listening through a system of seven built-in microphones but waits for you to say the “wake word” to send it commands, like asking for the weather or which music to play, according to the company. The device also streams your audio to the cloud, including a fraction of a second of audio before the wake word.
Amazon has so far declined to hand over information in the case, according to court records, and the company says it will not be releasing customer information “without a valid and binding legal demand properly served on us. Amazon objects to overbroad or otherwise inappropriate demands as a matter of course.”
quote:
But the broader takeaway in this instance is just how much these IoT devices could be used for or against us, legally. This appears to be a first-of-its-kind case and we are sure to see many more of these types of inquiries in the future.
seems people are unsure if Amazon is always listening or only listens when you say 'Alexa'
if it and other devices are always listening, it could be a game changer in solving crimes
4
Posted on 12/28/16 at 1:33 pm to hawgfaninc
They are always listening, but I'm pretty sure they are not recording or even reporting to their servers unless you say a "wake word."
Posted on 12/28/16 at 1:34 pm to hawgfaninc
There's no way those things and the Google home speaker aren't always listening. Tin foil hat [on] off.
Posted on 12/28/16 at 1:34 pm to hawgfaninc
quote:
seems people are unsure if Amazon is always listening or only listens when you say 'Alexa'
I would have to believe if Amazon receives anything other than what happens after "Alexa", then it would have already been reported and Amazon would have a black eye.
ETA: After thinking over this further, this is one way to leave a bread crumb trail if something bad is happening. "Alexa, I'm about to be hacked to death by John Doe".
This post was edited on 12/28/16 at 1:40 pm
Posted on 12/28/16 at 1:43 pm to CoolHand
I used to be paranoid about this stuff but I got to the point of "who the frick do I think I am?". Honestly, even if all 200 plus million Americans had one, do you think anyone wants to listen to the ramblings of the normal everyday household?
I barely want to listen to my wife and kids half the time anyways. Who thinks someone outside my family wants to listen to us chit chat all evening? This just in, no-fricking-body.
In fact. I'll even spin this in a positive light. If you and your family are about to get murdered, I'd yell "Alexa, record." or "Alexa, my shithead neighbor is trying to break in!". Hell, I'm sure they'll add "Alexa, call 911" as a Skill in the very near future.
I barely want to listen to my wife and kids half the time anyways. Who thinks someone outside my family wants to listen to us chit chat all evening? This just in, no-fricking-body.
In fact. I'll even spin this in a positive light. If you and your family are about to get murdered, I'd yell "Alexa, record." or "Alexa, my shithead neighbor is trying to break in!". Hell, I'm sure they'll add "Alexa, call 911" as a Skill in the very near future.
Posted on 12/28/16 at 1:48 pm to DoubleDown
quote:
Hell, I'm sure they'll add "Alexa, call 911" as a Skill in the very near future.
You can do this with IFTTT
Posted on 12/28/16 at 1:51 pm to DoubleDown
quote:
Alexa, record." or "Alexa, my shithead neighbor is trying to break in!". Hell, I'm sure they'll add "Alexa, call 911" as a Skill in the very near future.
Sorry I can't help you with that but I'm learning - google home
Posted on 12/28/16 at 2:04 pm to DoubleDown
quote:The future is here...
Hell, I'm sure they'll add "Alexa, call 911" as a Skill in the very near future.
Posted on 12/28/16 at 2:11 pm to DoubleDown
quote:Yeah, nobody wants to listen to the everyday ramblings
I used to be paranoid about this stuff but I got to the point of "who the frick do I think I am?". Honestly, even if all 200 plus million Americans had one, do you think anyone wants to listen to the ramblings of the normal everyday household?
I barely want to listen to my wife and kids half the time anyways. Who thinks someone outside my family wants to listen to us chit chat all evening? This just in, no-fricking-body.
BUT
Here are some of the problems with widespread surveillance in the hands of government:
They don't have to listen to all of your ramblings. They can just use software to listen for key words (bomb, terrorist, kill, etc) and implicate you in any number of events that may happen. What if they decide to go Minority Report? And it's too easy to convince people that this is a good thing. Proactive policing sounds good, doesn't it?
You might think that nothing you say can be used against you, but things like jokes can be taken out of context and interpreted to mean almost anything. So when something happens and they scan the nearest million or so Echos for recent recordings, I'm certain they can find hundreds, if not thousands, of suspicious phrases that warrant further investigation. It's good to be thorough, right? How many lives might this ruin?
Or what if your kid has an accident and gets bruised up, so they check your recordings for any "outbursts" you may have had? Lots of people vent without getting violent, but just audio means people can imagine you doing anything. So they take your kid.
Think none of that can happen? I think a lot of government and law enforcement is too eager to put away "bad guys".
It's good to be paranoid.
Posted on 12/28/16 at 2:14 pm to junkfunky
There is an app that will call your friends for help--I've fallen and can't get up!
Posted on 12/28/16 at 3:01 pm to tilco
quote:
There's no way those things and the Google home speaker aren't always listening. Tin foil hat [on] off.
As the post previous to you indicated, they are always listening but not always recording. They do however record your questions to the "cloud" once it recognizes the "wake word". As I understand it, you do have the ability to go in and delete the questions through your online account.
Posted on 12/28/16 at 3:15 pm to jwall3
I'm sure the technology is there to listen in - but I can't imagine how much data would have to be sifted through to get to it.
Side note - has anybody seen the documentary "Zero Days"? It's on Showtime right now and is really interesting. It's mainly about US/Britain/Isreal creating the Stuxnet virus to hamper nuclear capability in Iran by destroying equipment through the virus causing mechanical failures.
At one point they have an informer talk about their capabilities in Afghanistan and how they could tap into "all" communications in the country - even said they could get to phones that were turned off.
Pretty scary if true - gonna have to go completely off grid to get away from the government.
Side note - has anybody seen the documentary "Zero Days"? It's on Showtime right now and is really interesting. It's mainly about US/Britain/Isreal creating the Stuxnet virus to hamper nuclear capability in Iran by destroying equipment through the virus causing mechanical failures.
At one point they have an informer talk about their capabilities in Afghanistan and how they could tap into "all" communications in the country - even said they could get to phones that were turned off.
Pretty scary if true - gonna have to go completely off grid to get away from the government.
Posted on 12/28/16 at 3:27 pm to FuzzyBearE
This is why I don't own or use any form of electronics.
Posted on 12/28/16 at 4:01 pm to flyAU
quote:
This is why I don't own or use any form of electronics.
Posted on 12/28/16 at 4:02 pm to flyAU
I made the mistake of reading the post about telling Alexa that the neighbor is trying to murder me and Alexa woke up. She did nothing; however, I think this may now be saved somewhere on my account
Posted on 12/28/16 at 4:04 pm to flyAU
quote:
his is why I don't own or use any form of electronics
So you decided to not buy the TV
Posted on 12/28/16 at 9:49 pm to Korkstand
quote:
Here are some of the problems with widespread surveillance in the hands of government:
They don't have to listen to all of your ramblings. They can just use software to listen for key words (bomb, terrorist, kill, etc) and implicate you in any number of events that may happen. What if they decide to go Minority Report? And it's too easy to convince people that this is a good thing. Proactive policing sounds good, doesn't it?
They can also listen for "Obama/Trump/Bush/Clinton sucks". That's going to be tens of millions of people, but they can passively build a database of people to harass for political reasons.
Posted on 12/29/16 at 1:17 am to hawgfaninc
You are welcome. When it comes to technology and legal issues this is your end all be all source right here:
Associate's Mind
Associate's Mind
Posted on 12/29/16 at 7:56 am to WONTONGO
quote:
They are always listening, but I'm pretty sure they are not recording or even reporting to their servers unless you say a "wake word."
Is it even possible to permanently keep a recording of every echo device in the county 24/7. Imagine how huge those files would be.
Posted on 12/29/16 at 10:10 am to Breesus
quote:Oh yeah, easily. They wouldn't really be that huge.
Is it even possible to permanently keep a recording of every echo device in the county 24/7. Imagine how huge those files would be.
An average quality mp3 uses about 1MB per minute, so 24/7 recording at that quality would be about 1.5gigs per day per Echo. Amazon has probably the largest computing infrastructure of any company in the world, and they can probably store this amount of data pretty easily. It might flood their bandwidth, though.
But it wouldn't require anywhere near that amount of data to record every Echo. We can cut it in 1/3rd right off the bat because the quality doesn't need to be nearly that good for voice recordings, so we're down to 500megs per day. Next, the average person is probably only home and awake for about 6 hours per day, so we are down to 125megs per day. And it's not like we talk non-stop, and it's not too difficult to filter out other sounds like the TV and music, so of those 6 hours the Echo might record at most 1 hour. I'm thinking at most it would take 20megs per day per Echo to record everything we say.
So even if we're talking about 100 million Echos, that's 2 petabytes per day. That is nothing to Amazon. I figure that's about 200 gbps, which sounds like a lot, but Amazon has about a thousand times that much bandwidth.
I think Amazon could record everything we say at home, and it wouldn't be a blip on their radar.
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