US cops seek Amazon Echo data for murder inquiry Amazon has resisted a warrant to release information to US police seeking data from its Echo device, in order to gather evidence on a murder investigation. The device is owned by James Andrew Bates from Arkansas, who is accused of strangling his friend Victor Collins, who was found dead in a bath at the suspect’s home in …
More interesting would have been Amazon saying there was simply nothing to produce. Telling that they are using legal weasel words instead, clearly aimed at placating customer concerns about privacy and keeping Echo sales strong.
A microphone in every room, listening 24x7, all connected to a service you don't control. What could possibly go wrong?
A microphone in every room, listening 24x7, all connected to a service you don't control. What could possibly go wrong?
You mean like the typical cell phone, which is switched on, has an active microphone, and is within voice distance of the typical user?
"OK, Google..." or "Hey, Siri..." is normal, but "Alexa ..." is strange? Anything that has a microphone on it and a network connection is a possible spy in your home. The Echo made news simply because this is the fist time that the cops think that it may contain relevant information. I would love for Amazon to say, "here you go, no problem," with a big fat blank sheet of paper, because the device really doesn't have anything on it. Like everything that's spoken in the range of its microphone.
But wait till you see their new streaming video system. Something like this
In theory echo should delete everything it hears between commands (it's not a command) and at most log when and what command was requested.
In practice??
And best of all you pay for your own surveillance.
"More interesting would have been Amazon saying there was simply nothing to produce. Telling that they are using legal weasel words instead"
That doesn't really raise any red flags for me. I'd probably be more concerned if they did simply say there's nothing to provide - that would mean they at least got as far as looking. In a company the size of Amazon, there should be no reason for the legal guys to have access to Alexa data, and whether or not the data exists shouldn't have any bearing on their response. So at this time, it looks to me like they're doing the right thing.
The fun part will be if they get dragged through the courts, ordered to release the data anyway, and *then* turn round and say "Sorry...nothing there"
Nope, not as creepy as that. But IF everything in your home is being recorded, there are laws in the US that prohibit that sort of thing without permission of the recorded parties. That could throw a wrench in the works if a court rules those recordings -if they exist - as inadmissable.
Both parties must know led to an interesting legal case a couple of decades ago. A manager had hidden a tape recorder before confronting an employee about stealing something, The employee murdered him. So was the tape inadmissible in court because it was illegally obtained? I never heard the resolution to that one.
It sounds like a similar issue here if the crime occurred in a "both parties must know" state.
1. Not all areas allow only 1 party knowing recordings are being made. In the state of Illinois in the United States of America, the law requires both parties be informed recordings are being made.
2. That said, probably there is a statement in the EULA to the effect that the device is always on and listening (not that it takes a lot of brains to realize that if it turns "on" and "off" with a voice command). By agreeing to the EULA the users, from a legal standpoint, may be giving full rights to the device listening at all times and to the remote party being allowed to use any and all data received in any manner they choose including selling it to others, recording, data mining, and possibly even use in criminal investigations.
3. For myself, I have only 3 things that can track any of my activity and I know when they are on and when they are off. My microphone for my computer (I plug it in when I am using it, and unplug when not using it), my GPS in my car, my GPS for my motorcycle. My GPS can stay home if I want no one to be able to track. I do not use a cell phone. My car predates all the fancy electronic stuff like On-Star and a EPU.
4. While I do not trust of the government to keep its nose where it belongs, I have absolutely no trust of big business. I consider them liars, manipulators, and greedy far beyond Midas or Avarice. Most of my distrust of government is because government employees and elected officials can be swayed by the bribes of big business. No, I choose to keep my personal business out of their hands.
So all your lovely data goes to perhaps the most agressive retailer on the planet.
And people pay money to get this spy in their homes?
Bonkers, totally bonkers.
Much like the guy on the Radio today who said that tracking you inside a store using your phone was just to get footfall figures. People believe that?
Send in the men in the white coats. You need to be put somewhere nice and quiet.
"My guess is it is always recording too."
That might be your guess but my understanding is that you would be wrong.
The device listens for a wake word and then streams audio to an Amazon server for voice recognition etc.
You can log in at any time and see a record of the requests that Amazon have received from your device, afaik it only stores the text output of the voice recognition (I am not sure if this is the case as it would make sense to store at least some of the audio for testing/improving the system - appropriately anonymised ideally)
One of the other pieces of evidence that they have put forward (according to *i think* the guardian) was the guys smart water meter that showed he used a significant amount of water at around 3am... They are suggesting that this was to wash blood from the patio (no mention of strangulation in that article)...
Amazon are completely right to resist this, I can see it turning into another massive waste of time and money... At the end of this best case is they are hoping for a few false positive activations in the minutes leading up to the death having caught something incriminating...
"Amazon, play my 'strangling Jeff' play list"
Both the recorded sound clip and the translated text are stored, that way when Amazon doesn't translate something you added to your shopping or to-do list properly you can play it back to hear what you actually said.
However, it does NOT stream real-time recording to the cloud - as I verified myself using wireshark after I purchased my first echo. It has a limited processor that is hardcoded to listen for "amazon" or "alexa" (user configurable) and then it records from that point to the first quiet period and THEN sends up that small clip in a burst up for processing.
I'm sure that if a PROPERLY EXECUTED search warrant is issued Amazon will be willing to comply and deliver up the data - as they have already delivered the account information requested. However, as evidenced by the filing the police are clueless as to what the Echo does. They already have the perp's Amazon account information so they could log in and play back the clips themselves. They really don't need anything else from Amazon other than to hold the data pending future prosecution. The current search warrant asks for information that either doesn't exist or they already have.
Until that properly executed search warrant is issued Amazon has a fiduciary responsibility to reject it and hold them to account. Not only does it protect Amazon and their customers, it protects the police against themselves even if they don't realize it.
I think you're right. However, staking my privacy on the size of the buffer is not "secure by design." I wouldn't have one.
Of far more concern is the <INSERT COP SHOW NAME HERE> idea that if the police tell you its serious, its ok to break protocol. Protocol is specifically designed to ensure that that everyone does the right thing when emotions or other influences might be clouding the issue. If its serious, I'd suggest the police should stop acting like cowboys and do their job properly, so that Amazon and I are protected from the fallout from helping them. Why do the police keep doing this? Surely they know they are going to be rebuffed. Its so stupid and happens so often it seems more like a war of attrition, hoping that some day Amazon will break.
I doubt they are looking for voice data on whether Jeff ordered rope, quick-lime and concrete, though it is reasonable for the police to ask for data which may help them, even if its unlikely.
More likely, they aren't after Jeff's voice at all: "Amazon, Jeff stabbed me. Buy 2000 grand piano's on his credit card and have them delivered. Also, two cakes; one saying, 'I know what you did' and the other saying 'I'll be back.'"
It will be interesting to know what happens to the voice recordings in the long run.
the guys smart water meter that showed he used a significant amount of water at around 3am... They are suggesting that this was to wash blood from the patio
Tsk. Why didn't he just sloosh some water from the hot tub? Didn't even have to get out. I dunno. Youth today, no idea...
"Why do the police keep doing this?"
Because it's only news when they are refused; "Okay officer, come in and grab a coffee while we pull that up for you" probably happens thousands of times a day.
As a side note if the police need a warrant for the information and get the data without one, then it would be illegally obtained and inadmissible in court.
"It is always listening..... My guess is it is always recording too....." From a security viewpoint, I'm more worried that the device could be hacked (or the connection to the Amazon servers diverted) to send what it hears to an eavesdropper. It doesn't matter what volume of recordings it stores locally if it can stream it out to a listener over your WiFi router's connection, you'd be effectively paying to install a bugging device in your home.
Also interesting, the guy had a nexus6p with device encryption, and they couldn't get into it..
Of course, the apple spin machine is not at work on this one, so that is just a footnote in the article, not a 2 month media circus aimed at telling the world their phones are uncrackable, and every terrorist and drug dealer should own one....
There really isn't any reason for Amazon to not honor the subpoena.
They are arguing that the subpoena is overly broad.
It is not.
They are limiting their request to this single unit and anything that it may have recorded.
The courts will eventually side with the police on this one.
The interesting thing is that the police are not sure of how Echo works and what information was recorded and sent back to Amazon.
If the echo unit sends everything back to Amazon regardless of key word... Amazon would be in a lot of trouble in a couple of states.
So time would tell.
Well, it's not binding to Amazon's intetests to not jave a gag prder on the police so they don't reveal it records way more than it should.
The police should comically request the data from the NSA, after all that's the purpose of this device for the NSA, that is it's 1 piece of the larger puzzle to spy on everyone everywhere illegally without ethics.
That depends upon the warrant. It sounds like Amazon is challenging the validity of the warrant, which might mean it was hastily-applied-for, or just a blatant fishing expedition on a suspect. Not at all an uncommon thing to happen. If that is the case, chances are it'll be resolved in a couple of days once the police submit a new warrant with more precise wording.
From the article...
"It is believed that these records are retained by Amazon.com and that they are evidence related to the case under investigation.”
The final clause of the Fourth Amendment...
"and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."
Keeps the authorities from guessing at what incriminating evidence you might have.
Sounds like the investigatory powers that be have probable cause to serve a warrant on Google. A murder allegedly took place and a possible recording device was present. Since the device was the property of the victim, it seems appropriate for Google to submit what it has. If it was the property of the alleged perpetrator, it would get more complicated. The Alexa is like the surveillance cameras the the police go after when canvassing the crime scenes.
Google? Nah, this is Amazon and their recording
But otherwise the OP made a good point. The privacy fundamentalists seem to ignore that a murder has taken place, and it is possible (even if unlikely) that the Alexa device may have recorded critical information.
In the scenario where somebody was murdered, and the cops wanted data off the victim's phone to investigate the case, would these same people be standing up complaining that it breached the victim's privacy (and potentially that of the murderer)?
What the article doesn't mention is that the police believe they have incriminating evidence from the house's (presumably smart) water meter. It showed 140 gallons being used at about the time of the alleged crime. The suggestion is that the alleged murderer hosed down the area to remove blood stains.
The water was needed to wash away the blood etc from the dissection of the dead body.
The severed parts were put into plastic sacks for which there is a receipt from a local store as evidence.
These sacks were loaded into the back of the accused's car and disposed of.
The Police have CCTV of the car at a filling station that shows that the back of the vehicle was clearly sitting lower on the suspension than the front.
We retrieved those plastic bags and found the accused's DNA and finger prints on the bags.
I rest my case for the prosecution M'Lord.
"The Police have CCTV of the car at a filling station that shows that the back of the vehicle was clearly sitting lower on the suspension than the front."
Really? With the weight of one human?
Filling station CCTVs aren't usually very high definition.
Can you cite a source for the 140 gallons of water and why it was needed after a bloodless murder?
People nearly always empty their bowels when strangled (this is the bit which books and movies usually get wrong when describing hanging).
You have to refill that hottub ya know after the victim has shat it in. It is the right volume for a mid-size one ~ 500l. So while the police was correct to link the water meter records to the crime, their lab was rather clueless on the exact reason.
Here we are today. Some homes have Echo or a similar always-listening device. The cops realize that these Big Brother Telescreens are an awesome way to monitor us in our previously-warrant-protected homes. How long until we're REQUIRED to have them?
They will get pushed on us like "smart meters", so the home can more efficiently use electricity, save money, save the environment etc. Or to listen for possible child abuse or someone watching kiddie porn online... think of the children, yanno.
Technology is always abused, and frequently turned against its owners. Not what we were promised.
> Not what we were promised.
With all due respect, nobody promised you anything. Unless you count what marketing tells you as a "promise", in which case I've got a bridge to sell you.
Technology is a tool, it can enslave, or it can liberate, which way it goes very much depends on who has control of the tool.
This is why centralisation is so dangerous. A distributed system would be much harder for any one entity to control (current example: Bitcoin), whereas a cloud based solution like this (where one company has control) the power is concentrated, and can be abused.
If this Amazon Echo thingy had local processing, and local storage, and was only connected to the local network, that would a very liberating tool because it (and the data) is under your control, as a sovereign entity.
However that isn't how it is designed (obviously, more money to be made if everything is under the companies control), so here we are.
Now some may argue that if it helps solve a murder, it is a great future and we should have more of it, however I don't think having everything and everyone recorded, monitored and tracked "just in case" a crime is committed is a good idea. If that is what someone wants, they can go live in a prison.
@ogi
if echo had local storage and enough processing grunt to do speech recognition it would cost considerably more.
If it only had access to your local network it would be next to useless.. Well other than a voice controlled remote..
Me "Alexa, what's the weather like tomorrow?"
Echo : "Your guess is as good as mine"
Me : "Alexa, order me some more printer ink and paper"
Echo : "I'm sorry Dave I can't do that"
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If the warrant is "over broad," Amazon can appeal that in court. You can't just decide "oh, no, I don't want to play" when you get a warrant. If there is something wrong with the warrant (which I'm not able to judge), then I hope Amazon pursues that avenue and wins.
On the other hand, If Amazon wants to refuse because they don't want everyone knowing that they're eavesdropping and recording everything said in an Alexa-equipped house, then I wouldn't mind seeing Jeff Bezos in jail on contempt charges. It rarely happens, but there are precedents for that sort of thing for corporations that think they're above the law.
It would be nice to know just how much those voice-activated gadgets "listen" to regular conversations. I want to know if they are sending data out of the household, and if so, just who is collecting that data and why. I suspect most El Reg readers are savvy enough to not want a voice-activated device in their house without knowing that much about it.
Turn it off at or unplug it from the wall. Job done.
If you can't find a switch on it and you live in one of those houses that don't have switches on the wall sockets (never actually seen one myself but maybe they exist in 110v places?) or the wall switch is hard to reach, get your self a multi-box with individual switches, or put a line switch in it's power cord, or...
If you're really worried, just don't have one in the house.
Nothing in the Register article, or in the c/net article to which it links, suggests Amazon has done more than refuse to honor the warrant. They might have done, but neither article mentions more than simply refusal to comply and general public statements with no legal justification pertinent to the particular case.
I've considered building something along the lines of an echo for my house. Mine would have a Raspberry Pi at it's heart - like every other IoT device in my home because I don't trust internet connected devices built with non-existent security considerations and programmed by God-only-knows-who - and use a fully local speech recognition engine. I see no reason to stream commands to a server controlled by someone else when even the cheapest processors have plenty of power to handle the level of speech recognition needed for what these things do.
Basically I'm sort of assuming that the Echo - along with Siri, Cortana, and everything that responds to the phrase "OK Google" - is eavesdropping and collecting data to sell to advertisers.
If the warrant is "over broad," Amazon can appeal that in court. You can't just decide "oh, no, I don't want to play" when you get a warrant. If there is something wrong with the warrant (which I'm not able to judge), then I hope Amazon pursues that avenue and wins.
Cops appear at your door, hand you some papers and tell you they have a warrant to search for and seize any equipment in the house and to arrest you on charges relating to the material you expect to find.
Would you let them continue, despite the fact the the warrant is clearly for house # 64 and you live at # 164? Or would you protest and suggest they visit the correct address?
Either way, the police have a duty to follow the law. Most civilised countries (a club UK looks set to leave if May has her way!) have laws relating to what is and is not a legal warrant. If a warrant is not legal, there is no reason to follow it, and every reason to deny it.
Over 50% of people are below average! Internet webcams, video door bells, IoT and devices such as Echo are great ways of spying on yourself. Since the Echo is always listening for a key word, it shouldn't be very hard to have it listen for key phrases or catalog what languages are being spoken within its range of hearing. If I make an online search, I have to take a deliberate action, typing, to make the search. That might make me a bit more circumspect about what I search for. So many people respond with "I don't have anything to hide so I don't care." Wellllll, that's great until something happens or you say too many key words in a short period of time that triggers something. Cory Doctorow has a great talk on Privacy vs. Secrecy.
Any device that records something that you do be it audio, video, utility usage, will be used against you in a court of law.
I wouldn't be surprised if an Echo placed in a bedroom detects every time a couple (or more) has sex. Fall under the average and you will start getting more ads for various pills and aids.
"I wouldn't be surprised if an Echo placed in a bedroom detects every time a couple (or more) has sex."
An article somewhere recently was about a guy's house that he had wired with all sorts of detectors and monitors. The idea was to see where he could save energy and water. One detector was for CO2. A surprise result was that it indicated a rise when people were having fun in a bedroom.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-38261690
I don't own one but I know someone that does.
I know that once you say Alexa it listens and records what you say in the app so you can review said requests and perform a search (bing) should it not know what to do.
I'm guessing they got the information off the app which was "Alexa, James Bates is currently strangling me what should I do?", so no need for a warrant or to force Amazon to disclose whether it does or does not record all the time.
I know all this because of the wet fart questions I posed which Alexa could not answer therefore I will not be purchasing one of these devices. My advice to people is be careful what you ask these things as it can be rather embarrassing when the owner reviews the requests.
If anyone's interested I found a page on the internet about changing underwear and the correct amounts of fibre in diet. It would appear I was eating too many sugar puffs and have since rectified this which as a side positive has improved the smell of my wee.
Where X = {Alexa, OK Google, Cortana, Siri} etc. (until device dies, power pulled/portable device battery goes flat)
How long before those two commands are added to the device (or forced to by Governments). I claim my 'obvious' Patent here.
I claim my 'obvious' Patent here.
Tough. I am a patent lawyer for Apple. Even though we have only invented this in the last couple of seconds (and not at all after discovering that you did it first), I hearby notify you that we are suing you for $US1,000,00,000,000,000.87 for infringement of our patent.
Apparently the guy had a smart water meter, and the police are claiming an unusually high amount of water he used the night of the murder was due to the cleanup. He claims its clock was off, and it had recorded filling up his hot tub the night before.
More reasons to avoid "smart" anything unless you and YOU ALONE are in charge of it. Yeah, you can say "if you don't do anything wrong, you have nothing to fear", but that's a pretty short sighted view that Germans of the 1930s and many others would take issue with.
For those of you with no friends, then not buying one is an option. But say you visit a friend who has one...
Friend: You're a bit quiet tonight, are you ok?
You: Well, you see, you have that new surveillance device, ALEXA, who is recording everything I say.
ALEXA: Thank you for your query. Everything you say is being recorded by, but not limited to, the following parties: Amazon, Google, Microsoft, The NSA, The Food Standards Agency, The Department of Health, The Ministy of Fisheries, your local council, your spouse, that nosey cow over the road who works for the Department of Work and Pensions. Would you like the full list of 824 entries?
You: ?!?!
Just so I'm clear. If I'm going to plan a murder at my home I'll need a water storage tank to buffer water use and have it fill slow enough so that it looks like a small leak. I'll further need a battery sufficient to buffer any power use when washing evidence away and the use of power tools to mince the body. It would be wise to have a renewable energy source like solar or wind to also help hide actual use. I'll further need a recording to play to sir-alex-ok google to indicate that nothing out of the ordinary happened during said murder and then burn that recording.
Or, I could buy a $25 gat in da hood and pop a cap in 'is ass when he's walkin' b'twixt his pic'up and the front dorr, ya kno'. Den toss the gat in the Mis-sipp. Oh yeah, wear gloves and optionally spill a bag of meth near the body to complete the picture.
Yeah, I know, it will probably only be a few years before this argument is used by a defense lawyer somewhere.
Why would there be anything to extract from the device? It should be keeping the audio buffer in RAM. If it were in flash, it would run through the erase cycles too quickly. So when the cops unplugged it, it should have blanked. If they left it plugged in, it should have overwritten that part of the circular buffer after a few minutes.
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Erm....from the sounds of it the warrant in question is 'valid and binding legal' and not "overly broad'. I'm all for protecting privacy, but it seems to me that this is one particular instance where the authorities are doing it right and really should be handed the data they're asking for.
Samsung TV's, Echo, all sorts of other devices...
My first cell phone (I was a late adopted due to the phobia of being seen as yuppie larvae) was a Sony Ericson T209. Like these devices it had voice recognition (actually the best I've seen in any cell phone I've owned, though spending more than $100 on one is not something I'd do!). And like these devices it also had a "wake up" word so it knew that whatever it heard next was intended for it, not just general conversation.
But unlike these devices, this puny ancient piece of kit did all it's own VR processing. Sure it was limited to a few commands, maybe 20-30 (not counting people's names), but on that tiny device it had the power to do it's own VR processing.
Computers have grown massively in RAM and processing power since then, while even a device like an Echo has the same space as what, a dozen of those old phones?
So what gives with the "send data back to our server for processing"? Surely that cannot be for innocent purposes?
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