Alexa - Privacy at Risk

The Alexa was developed by Amazon along with Echo Dot. It is a type of computerized virtual assistant that is a cloud-based voice service. The Echo Dot is a speaker that may be attached to Alexa, and you can even give it a command while it is playing your choice of music. It has become very popular over the past few years.

The Echo Dot actually records your voice so it can process your requests. The voice recordings are transferred to a processor for analysis, then they are streamed and stored. They can be reviewed or deleted. There is typically some particular wake words that begins the recording process.

By building a natural voice experience you can tell Alexa to play specific songs by requesting the artist, the song title or a specific genre. It will give you the latest news, weather, sports scores or other general information. You can also set it up to control a smart home, so you can say “Alexa, turn on the light” or “Alexa, put the garage door down.” Alexa also provides entertainment with games, or it will make a phone call for you. The Alexa uses an intuitive method for people to interact with technology.

In Portland, Oregon, a private conversation between a husband and wife was recorded by Alexa in 2016. Amazon was forced to explain how an Alexa Echo was able to record this private conversation and send it to another Echo user without their knowledge.The other person was an employee of the husbands.

According to an Amazon employee the “Echo woke up due to a word in background conversation sounding like Alexa.” Somehow in the subsequent conversation Alexa said “To whom?” Alexa interpreted the background conversation as naming an individual in the couple’s customer contact list. Therefore, Alexa sent the private conversation to that contact, which was unknown by the couple.

The Amazon spokesperson stated that this incident actually took place, but he stated this was unusual. The Alexa followed what it thought was commands, but the couple assumed they were talking privately. The couple did not intend to send the conversation to anyone. Amazon is looking at options to make this particular case unlikely to happen in the future.

In a current murder case in Arkansas the recordings from the Alexa Echo smart speaker recordings were requested as evidence, and turned over last week. The defendant’s Echo was seized at the crime scene, but the recordings are actually stored on Amazon servers. The Arkansas murder suspect is accused of killing his friend who was found dead in the spa after a night of drinking and football.

Initially the online retailer rebuffed the request, but ultimately they voluntarily turned over the recordings. Amazon provided the recordings to the prosecutors. However, the Amazon lawyers tried to quash the request for the search warrant and wrote "Given the important First Amendment and privacy implications at stake, the warrant should be quashed unless the Court finds that the State has met its heightened burden for compelled production of such materials."

A judge in New Hampshire ordered Amazon to give two days of Alexa Echo recordings in a double murder case. Two women were murdered in a home in January 2017. Again, the police confiscated the Echo and stated they had probable cause for the audio recordings as they may have captured the attack or events leading up to the attack. Additionally, they directed Amazon to turn over any “information identifying any cellular devices that were linked to the smart speaker during that time period.”

Impact of These Cases

Perhaps technology has moved along faster than the law. On a personal note my husband and I are retired. We get constant phone calls concerning Medicare insurance and back or knee braces. I know most people are dealing with nuance phone calls, and they are frustrating. It seems our personal information is not private.

There are cameras everywhere: on city streets, some cities have cameras on red lights and many homes have outside cameras. The facts are we no not have as much privacy as we once had.

Perhaps technology has moved along faster than the law. On a personal note my husband and I are retired. We get constant phone calls concerning Medicare insurance and back or knee braces. I know most people are dealing with nuance phone calls, and they are frustrating. It seems our personal information is not private.

There are cameras everywhere: on city streets, some cities have cameras on red lights and many homes have outside cameras. The facts are we no not have as much privacy as we once had.

This is a fictional scenario. Let’s say a woman finds out her husband is cheating on her, and she is so angry she wants payback. She might have her husband’s voice on a voicemail. She could play that in the background and scream something, “No, Tom, don’t hit me again.” She could break a glass and turn over a chair. She might use something to create some bruises or even a cut. Alexa would record the whole thing, and the wife could say she was abused. The Alexa could be proof.

This may be far fetched, however, using recordings could be a slippery slope.

According to Daniel Kahn Gillmor, a Senior Staff Technologist for the ACLU Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project, "The code in that device is under the control of Amazon, and it's basically up to Amazon (not to the owner of the device) to make sure that it's not transmitting to the cloud," he said. "Clearly, Amazon isn't making those decisions correctly all the time."

Our daily lives are constantly intertwined with technology today. The requests from police and prosecutors are constantly increasing and now includes requests for evidence from laptops, mobile phones, social media and even the “Warcraft” video game has been used. This trend will surely increase as police and prosecutors want all available evidence of a crime.