Amazon Argues That Alexa Is Protected By the First Amendment in a Murder Trial (qz.com) 117
Amazon is sticking to its guns in the fight to protect customer data. The ecommerce giant has filed a motion to quash the search warrant for recordings from an Amazon Echo in the trial of James Andrew Bates, accused of murdering friend Victor Collins in Bentonville, Arkansas in November 2015. And it's arguing that the responses of Alexa, the voice of the Echo, has First Amendment rights as part of that motion. From a report on Quartz: The company's lawyers claim that Alexa's recordings and responses are subject to free speech protections under the US constitution's bill of rights, and that prosecutors need to provide more evidence that this audio is essential to the case. "It is well established that the First Amendment protects not only an individual's right to speak, but also his or her 'right to receive information and ideas,'" Amazon lawyers wrote in a court filing. "At the heart of that First Amendment protection is the right to browse and purchase expressive materials anonymously, without fear of government discovery." Amazon also referenced a 2014 case involving Chinese search giant Baidu, where a court ruled that results returned by a search engine are protected by the First Amendment.
Why is Amazon/Alexa even saving recordings? (Score:4, Insightful)
My concern is that they aren't just saying that they don't have anything to hand over because nothing exists. Since they're not saying this, I'll assume that they do have something that could be handed over. Alexa? No thanks, I'll pass.
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For diagnostics you can listen to all the recordings they have (or at very least the recent ones) using the alexa app.
Or online http://alexa.amazon.com/spa/in... [amazon.com]
Only records when someone says its wake word or it hears something it thinks sounds similar to its wake word.
Re:Why is Amazon/Alexa even saving recordings? (Score:4, Funny)
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Since it uses wifi it should be fairly easy to prove such behavior if true.
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That's easily defeated using a timing attack (except measuring bandwidth instead of time). Unless they add random data to prevent that. Seems like a lot of trouble to accomplish something which would just get them in trouble.
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All it would take is a transparent portal that allows the customer to see a transparent switch leading to the wires of the mic that customers can clearly see connecting and disconnecting.
The only switch which I can think of that you can visually see the connection on would be a frankenstein switch. Do you expect them to put an expensive frankenstein switch into the unit just to appease some paranoid individuals who would just then state that it wasn't really hooked to the mic, or that there is another mic buried inside that isn't disconnected? People who are concerned about this type of issue will never be appeased, no matter how much work the company puts into making it privacy friendly.
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Lol, you're on a roll...are you always like this and I've been sorely missing out on comedic gold around here??
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I haven't seen any cost estimates yet for building a wall along the borders of Hawaii to keep out immigrants. And terrorists. And think of the children. It might be cheaper to build a moat instead.
Re:Why is Amazon/Alexa even saving recordings? (Score:5, Interesting)
You'd think someone in product development would have been smart enough to say "hey, we should only store post-processed voiceprint data not raw speech so we don't have to deal with legal bullshit."
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They might have. But they got overridden by a PHB who thought they should record everything possible.
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Not considering privacy implications for a moment, storing the recordings instead of voiceprints would allow future refinements if the voice-printing algorithm is updated.
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You should only need a small subset for training, preferably one made up partially of users who provide more feedback than a normal customer.
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From a debugging perspective, it's probably much easier to unit test and fine-tune the algorithms based on the raw speech as then at least the human developer can listen to the audio and compare it to the produced output.
And, of course, in my experience, once such debug capabilities are turned on, there's no impetus later in the cycle to turn them off. I'm just as guilty in that regard as anyone else I know, sometimes probably worse as I end up turning on even more debug information later in the cycle than
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Devs directly examining customer audio would be a bad idea -- lots of legal liabilities there. Beta tester data is another matter.
Re:Why is Amazon/Alexa even saving recordings? (Score:5, Informative)
My concern is that they aren't just saying that they don't have anything to hand over because nothing exists. Since they're not saying this, I'll assume that they do have something that could be handed over. Alexa? No thanks, I'll pass.
From TFA:
The heart of Amazon’s claim is that Alexa devices could provide insights into a person’s entire life, and having two days worth of audio would be an unreasonable invasion of that privacy. Knowing that law enforcement has the ability to request data from these devices and peruse them at will would have a chilling effect on people using the services—which clearly would be bad news for Amazon’s business.
Re:Why is Amazon/Alexa even saving recordings? (Score:5, Insightful)
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I Siriously doubt that's true.
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The heart of Amazon’s claim is that Alexa devices could provide insights into a person’s entire life, and having two days worth of audio would be an unreasonable invasion of that privacy. Knowing that law enforcement has the ability to request data from these devices and peruse them at will would have a chilling effect on people using the services—which clearly would be bad news for Amazon’s business.
Yes, it's bad for business, but it's also just not fundamentally right, correct?
I know that doesn't seem to matter to anyone anymore, but we have things like wiretap warrants for a reason. It keeps the US from turning into the countries that we complain about.
Otherwise it is literally like 1984. And we decided this was a bad idea in 1967.
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to sell to advertisers. ;)
If the government peeps were smart they'd offer to buy the recorded content, to further improve their marketing..
Isn't it the victim's Echo they want info from? (Score:5, Informative)
If so, shouldn't the decision about whether or not to release that info be up to the victim's family - whoever now has ownership over his estate? You would think that if the recordings would help in prosecuting the murderer that they would want to release them. I could see Amazon's argument if they were being compelled to release something belonging to the accused, but that doesn't appear to be the case here.
Re:Isn't it the victim's Echo they want info from? (Score:5, Insightful)
Amazon likely doesn't want to reveal what it's recording (everything) and how long it holds onto it (forever).
Re: Isn't it the victim's Echo they want info from (Score:1)
Re:Isn't it the victim's Echo they want info from? (Score:5, Informative)
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I'll kill you like I killed Electronic Arts for their Spore bullshit.
So not at all, then. EA is doing fine.
Re:Isn't it the victim's Echo they want info from? (Score:4, Interesting)
Amazon likely doesn't want to reveal what it's recording (everything) and how long it holds onto it (forever).
This, pretty much. People might have second thoughts about buying one if they realized Amazon records *everything*, forever.
I'm far from a legal expert but doesn't the gov't already have the power to subpoena library records to see if a defendant checked out books on poison or bombs?
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Thanks to Section 215 of the Patriot Act, the government didn't even need to have a lawful request with judicial review. They could just ask for it and demand the library not tell anyone. That section has expired, but most states still allow records to be requested with a court order or lawful request.
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Amazon likely doesn't want to reveal what it's recording (everything) and how long it holds onto it (forever).
Bingo. I barely trust Apple (I make sure the hands-free Siri is turned off at all times), but Amazon? They're too busy competing with everyone to let ethics slow them down.
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Amazon likely doesn't want to reveal what it's recording (everything)
patently false. It uses your network. You can monitor it. It only sends what you say after the wake word, when the top ring is lit.
and how long it holds onto it (forever).
probably true.
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You can monitor it, but is it encrypted? Voice at the quality the Echo records can be compressed down a lot. The Echo has enough processing power to filter data (as in, throw out boring data / near silence) and compress the good stuff. It can send the payload out whenever it wants.
As far as I know, no one has done useful testing. You'd have to run an Echo for some large window of time (30 days?) in an environment with lots of talking without the hotword (Alexa or whatever) and compare to an environment
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I'm not necessarily buying into the premise, but as an engineering problem it's interesting...
To hide the fact that you were recording all the time you could send a payload of the same size periodically. Say X minutes of recording will be a maximum of Y bytes. Every X minutes you send Y bytes (filtered and compressed as you said), even if you don't have Y bytes to send. If you were monitoring the network you would see no change between when it's supposed to be recording and when it's not.
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If it's lying about that to its customers and expecting to get away with it, then it can just lie to the court as well.
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They should only release them if the audio works against the murderer.
If not, the family shouldn't release it. That way the courts can imagine whatever they want in the recordings.
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Should Amazon be trying to determine something that is to be determined at trial?
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If you have the amazon account login you can listen to all the recordings you like http://alexa.amazon.com/spa/in... [amazon.com]
Belongs to the suspect (Score:2)
You're probably thinking of the San Bernardio iPhone case. Most people think the phone belonged to the shooter. It didn't. It belonged to the San Bernardino County government. They assigned it to the shooter for work use. Apple refused to help the legal owner of the phone unlock it.
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If that is correct, then the article linked to in the summary was in error. To quote:
"Amazon is contesting a search warrant from police in Arkansas, who are seeking 48 hours worth of recordings and responses made by an Amazon Echo that belonged to a murder victim."
https://qz.com/917790/amazon-c... [qz.com] (second paragraph)
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It's easy for us to armchair speculate. That's why I hope I never have to be on a jury that makes such decisions. But I would if I were called and selected.
Once upon a time, not that long ago actually, I had faith in the justice system, and law enforcement. No more.
First amendment ? WTH ? (Score:5, Informative)
Re: First amendment ? WTH ? (Score:2)
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If that's true, I think it would be great if they challenged search results being used against you all the way to the supreme court. Though by now, I'd think some precedent must already exist with library book checkout history.
I read all sorts of things that would be "incriminating" by curiosity. I'd hate to read the wrong thing on the wrong day and suddenly be a suspect in a crime.
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Re:First amendment ? WTH ? (Score:5, Interesting)
The summary does a poor job of explaining Amazon's point (which isn't to say it's a good point anyway). Amazon doesn't seem to be saying that Alexa has rights, so much as it's saying that you or I or anyone else who owns an Echo has rights, and that those rights would be trampled if this warrant was served.
Their line of argumentation seems to be the following:
1) People have a First Amendment right to say and express anything they want in the privacy of their home (which is true)
2) If people aren't secure in their privacy, we've stripped them of their right to express themselves freely (also true)
3) If the police could hear anything anyone has said, it would have a "chilling effect" because people wouldn't be secure in their privacy (yup)
4) The police are asking for days' worth of audio without any direct evidence it has anything to do with the crime (true, I guess)
5) Thus, if they granted the police access to those recordings, they would be compromising the rights of Alexa users everywhere (wait...what?)
The problem with their logic is, of course, that the police aren't forcing anyone to buy an Alexa device. If I choose to purchase a device that, by design, records everything I say, then I've voluntarily sacrificed my right to privacy in exchange for the benefits afforded by the device. It's not the police's fault that I've done so, and they're entirely within their rights to seek a warrant for the information that I've served up on a platter.
This isn't blanket police surveillance, like Amazon appears to be asserting. This is a blanket devaluation of and disregard for the importance of privacy. Amazon is trying to protect us from the consequences of our poor choices, not because they're interested in protecting our interests, but rather because their business depends on having no consequences for using their products. If people actually understood just how creepy Alexa and similar products are, they'd stop inviting them into their homes. Amazon is worried that a case like this will shine light on Alexa's privacy-destroying behavior.
Sacrificing one's privacy should never be treated lightly.
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o.0 That's not a problem with their logic - that's something utterly irrelevant that you've pulled out of thin air.
That's an assertion on your part, not a fact.
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If I choose to purchase a device that, by design, records everything I say, then I've voluntarily sacrificed my right to privacy in exchange for the benefits afforded by the device.
That's an assertion on your part, not a fact.
Mea culpa, I overstated things, so you're quite right in calling me out. What I intended to convey was that when you permit a third-party to record anything you say in your home, you've compromised the protections provided by your right to privacy, which should be a factual statement we can agree on. You still have the right, of course, but it's impossible to exercise it to its full extent while permitting an intrusion of any sort.
The police certainly are within their rights to seek a warrant to obtain information so long as is it relative to the case. They may not however use warrants to conduct fishing expeditions on the off-chance that information might be found that might be relevant to the case.
What you seem to be suggesting (that they may not search when something only
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You really should look up a definition for probable cause, since nothing you said resembles it, and it's what I was talking about.
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2) If people aren't secure in their privacy, we've stripped them of their right to express themselves freely (also true)
That's a novel argument. This is a 4th amendment issue, and they have a warrant. Amazon's argument is specious.
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That's a novel argument. This is a 4th amendment issue, and they have a warrant. Amazon's argument is specious.
It's not a novel argument. It's something the courts have already upheld, but I do agree with the rest of what you said.
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In what case?
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APK loves it (Score:2)
More bullshit fodder for a technology that is easily bypassed by built-in DNS entries.
Thus proving he knows nothing about real security.
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why share the monetized commodity, also if "private" data is freely accessible maybe another % or 2 of the commodity will not like Alexa in their homes.
this applies to all EU and Canadian citizens too (Score:1)
Under the treaties that the US signed with the EU and with Canada, this applies to all such recordings - even in the US or stored in the US - of any conversations of citizens of the EU and of Canada.
Next time, don't sign treaties which overrule laws passed by Congress.
Re: this applies to all EU and Canadian citizens t (Score:1)
Treaties need ratification. That usually happens with a lower house of elected representatives. Treaties also are negotiated by teams put together by elected officials. If a treaty supercedes a law, it is still democratic. The people voted in the politicians to make these decisions on their behalf.
Third-party exception (Score:5, Informative)
In most cases, evidence held by a third party is not protected by the Fourth Amendment. (This is bullshit but it is precedent). I imagine Amazon is going for a novel First Amendment argument here because the Fourth Amendment argument is a loser. I doubt it will get anywhere. I could hope it would make people think twice about bugging their own houses, but they won't.
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novel First Amendment argument
Same as Google Search history
Library checkouts
Free information access and sharing is part of the first amendment. Reading the "wrong" thing at the wrong time because it looks suspicious and having that count against you legally is absolutely a first amendment issue.
First Amendment rights, so responsibilities (Score:1)
Subpoena Alexa/Amazon as a witness, then.
She might need an interpreter.
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Subpoena Alexa/Amazon as a witness, then.
She might need an interpreter.
I'm imagining the testimony being submitted as a written statement -- made up of a few bank boxes of paper covered with binary code.
not buying it (Score:5, Insightful)
First of all, the 1st Amendment protection is about the right to speak and publish opinions, or the right not to be forced to speak or publish opinions. Neither Amazon's nor the victim's right to speak or right not to be required to speak a certain message is at stake when the Alexa recording's history is discovered. The same would hold for your or my browser history being subpoenaed as evidence. That is a privacy issue, not a free speech issue, and nowhere in the Constitution is privacy an enshrined right, much as even I would like to believe.
These would be much more plausible arguments for Amazon to take:
- That the government has not demonstrated that delving into the user's private search history is relevant or may advance the case at all,
- That the data is not the property of the individual but rather a trade secret, or
- That Amazon is an unrelated 3rd party and should not be compelled to cooperate in something which it is peripherally related.
I actually think Amazon might fail on all of these fronts, because if the Alexa can record things like the sounds of a crime or victim asking for help, it's pretty plausible that they could be compelled to do so for multiple good arguments. It's not even like the data is being heavily shielded or stored securely as a selling point, as Apple's was. The very purpose of Alexa's data is to make purchasing and buying things from Amazon easier! It would be like Nest saying that the video it recorded in someone's home who got murdered was private and subject to free speech protections. Because no one shares videos, right?
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- That the government has not demonstrated that delving into the user's private search history is relevant or may advance the case at all,
A search warrant merely needs probable cause. One user's history seems like "a particular place or thing to be searched". The gov't doesn't have to prove that any evidence seized will even be used.
- That the data is not the property of the individual but rather a trade secret, or
That might work for a civil lawsuit, but it's absolutely not gonna fly in a murder case.
- That Amazon is an unrelated 3rd party and should not be compelled to cooperate in something which it is peripherally related.
Doesn't work for banks, telephone companies, Internet providers, etc. It doesn't work for a retailer with security cameras. This also isn't a fishing expedition; it's probable (at least according to the judge who approved the w
The spin that title implies is a problem (Score:2)
Yes, Amazon is claiming First Amendment protections for their users of Alexa and NOT for Alexa "herself".
But let's not have that interfere with the sensational title of the linked article: "Amazon argues that Alexa is protected by the First Amendment in a murder trial".
Contrary to that title the author wrote:
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Yes, Amazon is claiming First Amendment protections for their users of Alexa and NOT for Alexa "herself".
But let's not have that interfere with the sensational title of the linked article: "Amazon argues that Alexa is protected by the First Amendment in a murder trial".
Contrary to that title the author wrote:
Well, in that case, maybe they shouldn't have made something that relies so heavily on snooping on their owners? I could only hope that abortions of privacy like Echo / Google Home are tainted by this investigation and subsequent realization by the public that they're adding to their own police dossier.
Does Alexa and clones violate wiretap laws? (Score:4, Interesting)
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Actually it's only 11/50 states that require the consent of all parties involved in order for an audio recording to take place.
Interesting point however & certainly something to keep in mind for people who live in those states and own these devices. Who's doing the recording though? If a person brings the device into their home wouldn't they also be responsible for getting the consent of their visitors?
It would be sort of cool if the device knew where it was, then, upon detecting a new voice, asked if
History in the making.... (Score:5, Funny)
The roots of what would later be called "The robotics rights movement" began early in 2017, when the shopping giant, Amazon, asserted that its weak AI based shopping assistant could legally claim rights enshrined to "The people" in the US constitution. The far reaching effects of this legal precedent would not be challenged again until late 2037, during the historic murder trial of Roomba X36-1. which led directly to the robotic riots of 2038, based largely in the recently annexed New California republic
Simple defense (Score:3)
Bates should just marry Alexa. She can't be compelled to testify against her spouse.
Heck, she's already got his credit card.
Hmmmm (Score:2)
So they're claiming that anything a robot says is covered under the 1st Amendment?
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Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
If accessing the wrong information at the wrong time makes you culpable for a crime, that violates your first amendment rights. If you check out a book on "how to murder" from the library and suddenly find yourself in a murder trial, that cannot (should not) be used against you.
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I understand what you're saying, I'm just trying to clarify what they're saying.
That is, is it Amazon's position that anything a robot says is covered under the 1st Amendment?
I'm not against it, I'm just trying to figure out if this is what they're asserting.
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No. The headline on Slashdot is screwing up everyone's comprehension. They're saying that your ability to access information is a first amendment right (free speech delivered to you). The idea that accessing information would automatically implicate you in a related crime is a first amendment violation. Example - I am curious about methamphetamine so I look up the formula for how to make it. Later, I'm a suspect as a producer of methamphetamine. The fact that I looked up information is not proof that
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The fact that I looked up information is not proof that I am a criminal.
No, it's not proof, but it is evidence that the prosecution can and will use against you (whether or not you were actually producing methamphetamine).
Lots and lots of people have had their library and internet usage used against them in court, and often very successfully.
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Lots and lots of people have had their library and internet usage used against them in court, and often very successfully.
Which is why Amazon is stepping in... It is an abuse of first amendment rights, success in court or not. And unless someone has deep enough pockets and decent lawyers to defend it all the way to the Supreme Court, our liberties are going to be eroded away even further.