Police seek Amazon Echo recordings in Arkansas hot tub murder

Now, authorities want Amazon to fork over the data from the suspect’s Amazon Echo to see if it recorded any evidence.

Bates’ attorney said not only is this an invasion of privacy, but it’s unreliable as well.

The e-commerce giant agrees and has refused to turn any audio recordings over to police. “Amazon objects to overbroad or otherwise inappropriate demands as a matter of course”, a spokesperson told Engadget.

It is important to note that, while the Amazon product is always ‘listening, ‘ it is not always ‘recording, ‘ until someone says the trigger word.

Years after launching its Kindle line of e-readers and tablets, Amazon.com has still never disclosed how numerous devices it’s sold.

We spend less time thinking about how something that records your utterances and saves them to the cloud could some day work against you. like in a murder trial, for instance. Bates owned a few connected smart home devices.

It’s unclear whether that particular Echo may have recorded something suspicious.

Weber believes that this is unlikely. “That scares me”, she said. “There’s nothing on that device that’s going to harm his case”.

According to Bates’ affidavit, he found Collins face down in the water when he woke up several hours later. Bates was found to have bruises and scratches all over his body, and police found Collins’ wedding ring and a broken shot glass at the bottom of the tub, as well as a broken pair of Collins’ glasses. He is accused of strangling and drowning a man in his hot tub. Lynn Terwoerds, the executive director of the Executive Women’s Forum, which founded and sponsors the Voice Privacy Alliance, in an email said that a faulty premise had led to the request of information. The resident, James A. Bates, called 911 the morning after a night of drinking and watching football.

While not exactly similar to Apple’s legal tussle with the Federal Bureau of Investigation, this case raises a number of interesting issues concerning the growing popularity of IoT devices and the degree to which tech companies will take measures to protect sensitive user information. Police officers then served a warrant to Amazon asking for data found in the device at the crime scene. Amazon actually sold out of its Echo speakers in mid-December. There’s a slim chance that the device is storing evidence to help incriminate Bates, but nevertheless, the case raises a point: could always-on smart speakers or similar devices be used to testify against its owners?