Digital Smarts - Echo Murder Case Raises Privacy Concerns
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Could your smart home testify against you? Prosecutors investigating a murder case in Arkansas have served Amazon with search warrants for data collected by one of its Echo devices. Police found an Amazon Echo – a home assistant that responds to voice commands – at the home of James Bates, who is charged with murdering his friend Victor Collins in November 2015. They seized the device as evidence but are now seeking any audio or text records it may have sent to Amazon’s servers around the time of the incident. The Echo streams audio to Amazon’s cloud, where the data is processed and stored when it hears its “wake word” – usually “Alexa”.
Amazon has been served with several warrants but refuses to provide all of the data requested. “Amazon will not release customer information without a valid and binding legal demand properly served on us,” the company said in a statement. “Amazon objects to overbroad or otherwise inappropriate demands as a matter of course.”