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Florida Police Are Using Amazon Echo Recordings For a Murder Investigation (sun-sentinel.com) 38

Posted by EditorDavid from the I-heard-what-you-did-last-summer dept.
"Police in Hallandale Beach believe there may have been a witness to the July murder of Silvia Galva, and 'her' name was Alexa," reports the South Florida Sun-Sentinel.

Slashdot reader PolygamousRanchKid tipped us off to the story: According to a search warrant, investigators want to know what the popular voice-controlled smart speakers overheard during a fatal altercation between Galva, 32, and her boyfriend, Adam Reechard Crespo, 43, on July 12.. A month after Galva's death, police obtained a search warrant for anything recorded by the two devices that were found in the apartment between July 11 at 12 a.m. and July 12 at 11:59 p.m.

"It is believed that evidence of crimes, audio recordings capturing the attack on victim Silvia Crespo that occurred in the main bedroom... may be found on the server maintained by or for Amazon," police wrote in their probable cause statement seeking the warrant. Whether police stumbled across a silent witness or are overestimating the eavesdropping capacity of smart technology remains to be seen. Amazon turned over multiple recordings, but neither the company, police, nor the State Attorney's Office will say at this point what was on them. "We did receive recordings, and we are in the process of analyzing the information that was sent to us," said Hallandale Beach Police Department spokesman Sgt. Pedro Abut...

"Amazon does not disclose customer information in response to government demands unless we're required to do so to comply with a legally valid and blinding order," Amazon spokesman Leigh Nakanishi said.

"Amazon objects to overbroad or otherwise inappropriate demands as a matter of course."
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Florida Police Are Using Amazon Echo Recordings For a Murder Investigation More

Florida Police Are Using Amazon Echo Recordings For a Murder Investigation

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  • This happened, and was reported on, months ago... no updates since.

    Move along, nothing to see here.

    • Either this is a new case, or something happened to bring attention back to the old one. This was mentioned on one of the major news networks yesterday but I have an aversion to bullshit faucets so I didn't pay attention.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by rtb61 ( 674572 )

      There is a messy dividing line here. Clearly one did kill the other, the difference criminal negligence leading to manslaughter (once she had hold of the spear he should have let go and as a decoration why exactly was it so sharp) and murder in a fit of rage grabbed the spear and stabbed her. Who gets the benefit of the doubt the victim, how about the next victim or the killer. The recording might well be used to test the snap claim, was there one.

      The simply need to replicate the incident, I would think tu

      • The defendant has to prove that it occurred that way,

        Umm, no.

        The defendant is presumed innocent. Which, among other things, means they don't have to prove anything. It's up to the prosecutor to prove that the defendant did whatever was done, and that what was done meets the legal definition of murder (or manslaughter, or whatever the charge is).

        The only issue as far as the hypothetical recording(s) by Alexa have is whether it is legally admissible evidence. And yes, the defense attorney can (and should

  • If you're dying, yell "ALEXA!" (Score:5, Insightful)

    by The New Guy 2.0 ( 3497907 ) on Saturday November 02, 2019 @06:54PM (#59373632)

    Seems like this is a non-working down card in the plea bargain stage of the criminal process. Alexa is only supposed to record commands, so this might not lead to convicting evidence, but forcing Amazon to turn over what they do have may scare the accused.

    • The defense wants the source code and the server logs or you MUST ACQUIT

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by tlhIngan ( 30335 )

      Seems like this is a non-working down card in the plea bargain stage of the criminal process. Alexa is only supposed to record commands, so this might not lead to convicting evidence, but forcing Amazon to turn over what they do have may scare the accused.

      It can still create a recording, even if it's an invalid command. Why do you think Apple, Amazon, Google etc have humans review recordings? They're not of successfully executed commands.

      Instead, the recordings are made of unsuccessful execution - where the

  • Typical government tech overreach (Score:5, Funny)

    by Empiric ( 675968 ) on Saturday November 02, 2019 @07:04PM (#59373654)

    to comply with a legally valid and blinding order

    Disturbingly, I almost didn't realize that's a typo.

    • I saw that and assumed they needed cover their tracks.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Calydor ( 739835 )

      I wasn't sure if it was lawyer speak for the warrant being specific about the times and thus useless for anything outside that time frame, ie. blinding the viewer to the rest of the information present.

    • "Amazon does not disclose customer information in response to government demands unless we're required to do so to comply with a legally valid and blinding order," Amazon spokesman Leigh Nakanishi said.

      Two problems with this statement. First, the video recordings aren't customer information, so irrelevent statement. Secondy, the disclosure should be to a judicial warrant only, as oppose to "order" which includes administrative warrants which are not supported in law as orders.

  • legally valid and blinding order

    What's up with that?

  • WTF: "...legally valid and blinding order.''

  • If I, or one of my family members, gets murdered and you have recordings of it, please turn over the recording to the detective investigating my murder. I hereby authorize you to "invade my privacy" regarding the time of the murder.

  • is not just for the ads.
    Don't invite the US gov into your home.
    What the ad brands are collecting can also be of use to any part of the gov.
    • Do you live in the mountains?

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by AHuxley ( 892839 )
        Enjoy any tech. But a live 24/7 mic back to an ad company? Have an "off" after use for the tech?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by gweihir ( 88907 )

      is not just for the ads.

      Don't invite the US gov into your home.

      What the ad brands are collecting can also be of use to any part of the gov.

      Indeed. Do not invite any government into your home. None of them are trustworthy and that is by their very nature.

  • THAT will be what some will say. Screw that. I won't allow any of that crap in my home. Bad enough that smartphones know what they do. Heck, get in a car wreck, and "the state" will get a warrant for the "black box" computer that keeps your vehicle running, to see how fast you were going, if you hit your brakes etc, not to mention your insurance company. Everyone has become "data", to steal, sell, use for whatever purpose they want. Sadly, one day will come (hopefully after I'm gone) that you will be RE

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by vbdasc ( 146051 )

      Sadly, one day will come (hopefully after I'm gone) that you will be REQUIRED to have this
      crap in your home so the government can hear what you are saying.

      The year 1984 has come and gone, and we still don't have telescreens... wait, I'm not so sure about that.

  • ... in the form of Alexa recordings, it will be a real drag on Amazon and other home assistants.

    I say things in the privacy of my home that are private because it's my home.

  • I don't see the issue (Score:3)

    by dirk ( 87083 ) <dirk@one.net> on Sunday November 03, 2019 @07:02AM (#59374628) Homepage

    I don't see an issue with this at all. There may have been something recording, so the police are going through the proper channels with a search warrant to obtain any recordings that may exist and help. This is not the police fishing for a crime or getting recordings for no reason, there was a crime committed and there may be evidence, so they did the proper things and went to a judge to ask for a search warrant to collect the recordings as evidence.

    • Re:I don't see the issue (Score:4, Insightful)

      by HuskyDog ( 143220 ) on Sunday November 03, 2019 @10:05AM (#59374966) Homepage
      You don't see the issue because you are not looking at the matter from the relevant direction.

      The issue is the constant assurance from the likes of Amazon that these home assistants are not remote bugging devices recording everything you say in the privacy of your own home. If this is true then there can't possibly be any recordings to obtain and either the police wouldn't have even bothered asking or if they were daft enough to do so then Amazon would simply have written straight back and said "We don't keep recordings".

      The fact that the matter is being pursued suggests to those of us with suspicious minds that perhaps Amazon's assurances on the privacy of these devices are not entirely true.

      • You don't see the issue because you are not looking at the matter from the relevant direction.

        The facts fit multiple theories. For example:

        Police saw some Alexa enabled device in the home, figured it *might* have caught something and are following that lead.
        Since the warrant probably contains a time range instead of a precise time stamp, there may well be valid commands that Alexa recorded for that range - for example the victim asking for the weather in the morning, which they have now sent to the police, as expected by law.

        You don't *have* to go conspiracy theory on everything.

  • The police obviously don't understand the technology. The 'assistant' doesn't record anything until it hears the wake word, and even then, not for long. If someone is trying to murder me, I'm not likely to be screaming "Alexa! Alexa!".

    • The police obviously don't understand the technology.

      Or said technology doesn't actually work the way that was claimed.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by dacut ( 243842 )

        The police obviously don't understand the technology.

        Or said technology doesn't actually work the way that was claimed.

        This is easy to verify by looking at packet captures when the device is idle (pings Amazon servers periodically for alarms with small packets) vs. after hearing the wake word (larger packets containing audio). Cracking the packets open isn't possible (Alexa checks for a certificate signed against an Amazon private CA), but from this you can deduce that if the device is recording audio without hearing the wake word, it's not leaving the device.

        Of course, conspiracy theorists don't want to hear this and would

  • Cops can’t get your recordings without a valid search warrant, and search warrants are aggressively vetted to ensure that the rights of the citizen are .... nah just kidding, they’re pretty much rubber-stamped. Some judges have approval rates in the high ninetieth percentile.

    Judges rarely take flak for approving bogus warrants, but if they decline a warrant that ends up being valid, then they get a lot of criticism.

    Declining a warrant is all risk and no reward, but approvals will always keep yo

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