Amazon refuses to provide authorities with data from Alexa servers as part of a police killing investigation



    Amazon has become a party to the murder case. More precisely, the corporation itself has nothing to do with it, but law enforcement agencies believe that its servers contain important information on the 2015 case of the murder of a police officer, collected by Alexa Voice Service. We are talking about audio files that were transferred by one of the Echo devices to the cloud. Now these data require law enforcement to analyze. But the company's lawyers claim that the data recorded by Amazon Echo near the place of the murder is protected by the First Amendment .

    Amazon officials also said law enforcement could adversely affect the market for voice-controlled devices, including various Echo models and similar gadgets from other manufacturers. According to the company, the police, demanding access to information stored on Amazon’s servers, must provide evidence that this data is necessary to solve the murder, showing that all other possibilities have already been exhausted: “In order to avoid a negative effect, the court must demand from regional law enforcement agencies that the recordings made with the Echo device are really necessary. ”

    How it all began


    In 2015, an ex-police officer in Georgia (USA) named Victor Collins was found dead in a backyard hot tub in a house previously purchased by James Andrew Bates. Bates said his friend drowned by accident. He stated this in the morning at 9.30 a.m. by calling 911 rescue service. Next to the same bathtub was a mobile Amazon Echo column, which, presumably, could record all the data necessary to solve this case.

    Police suspected the killing immediately after law enforcement officers discovered traces of some red substance near the jacuzzi and in the water. It turned out to be blood. It was everywhere - except for the jacuzzi, blood was found in the patio and elsewhere. A little later, the police found out that the owner of the villa used a large amount of water between an hour and three hours on the night of the murder.


    Documents filed with the court

    It may well be that all the audio information was recorded by the Amazon Echo mobile column. Despite the limitation of the case, the data needed by the police may be located somewhere on Amazon servers. Bentonville Police (USA) is looking for the possibility of receiving audio or text recordings that were transmitted between the Echo device and Amazon servers for two days, November 21-22, 2015.

    Why am Amazon resisting


    As mentioned above, company representatives are confident that even if the court verdict is positive for law enforcement, the judge must familiarize himself with these data in order to make a decision - are they related to the murder to some extent or not. And only then the audio files can be made public.

    Amazon lawyers are trying to prove that not only the user's request, but also the responses of Alexa are protected by the first amendment. In particular, the responses may contain various data, including podcasts, audio books, or music requested by the user. Interestingly, the court had previously ordered the police to provide the requested data, but the company did not seem to do so. In any case, the police complained that Amazon provided only part of the required information.

    The officials and the police have a slightly different opinion. Law enforcement officials believe that users of devices such as Alexa should provide data at the request of law enforcement officers, backed up by a court decision and the First Amendment has nothing to do with it. The police’s demand for information from Amazon’s digital assistant servers raised a general question about whether the authorities could use data collected by Alexa and similar services.

    The company informed the court that Amazon Echo is "a 9.3-inch voice-controlled speaker that is equipped with several microphones used to pick up any noise in the room, including music." According to company representatives, to wake up Echo, the user must say a word that allows the device to exit the standby mode. As soon as the user pronounces the word, “Echo connects remotely to the Amazon Voice Service, Amazon’s smart assistant, and transmits sound recordings to Alexa Voice Service servers to process the user request. If the code word was not spoken, then the column most likely did not record anything. Amazon emphasizes that audio data is not stored on the device, but it can be obtained in the "cloud", as well as in the Alexa application for Android,

    “If the respondent installed the Alexa application on his mobile device and the mobile phone is available, then all stored audio files and records, including responses from Alexa, will be available on the phone,” the company said in a statement. The problem here is that all the data on the Nexus phone of the James Bates murder suspect is encrypted on the chipset level, so it is not available to the authorities.

    What's next?


    The defendant pleaded not guilty and was released on bail of $ 350,000. A hearing on the Amazon case has not yet been scheduled. The case seems to drag out for a long time. If the company refuses to provide data, then the case may simply come to a standstill - it seems that the police have no other sources of information on the murder.

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