It was only a matter of time before the Internet of Things would eventually be used as evidence in a crime. Well, at least that’s what law enforcement wants to happen in this particular murder investigation. Police in Arkansas have served Amazon a warrant for recordings from a suspect’s Echo smart speaker, in connection with a murder investigation dubbed the “Hot Tub Murder”. Investigators believe that there may be some pertinent details that the device has caught due to its “recording” feature.
Victor Collins was found strangled and drowned to death in a hot tub in the home of James Andrew Bates. The latter called emergency services when he found the body, but he became the prime suspect in the crime and has pleaded not guilty to murder charges. Police are curious to know if his Amazon Echo was able to capture relevant information in its recording, but Amazon has refused to comply in terms of releasing audio that has been saved on the cloud, as it violates their privacy deal with its customer. They have however granted them access to his Amazon account details, which includes a list of purchases that he has made.
In case you don’t know what an Amazon Echo is, it’s an always-on speaker that you can use for productivity and information purposes. You “wake it up” with trigger words like “Alexa” or “Amazon” then you ask the question or make it do stuff for you. Amazon says that a fraction of a second of audio of the wake word is captured and is sent to the cloud. Now we don’t know if the suspect said anything of consequence in that fraction of a second but we’ve watched enough CSI episodes to know that there may be something there.
But of course, this brings about privacy issues for smart home speakers like Echo and Google Home. Bates’ defense attorney says that there is “an expectation of privacy in your home,” and finds it disturbing that law enforcement can use technology against us. We eagerly await the next developments in this case.
VIA: SlashGear
