Echo & Alexa Forums
General Category => Amazon Echo Discussion => Topic started by: renegade600 on December 27, 2016, 03:43:48 pm
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ran across the following article about the police in a Arkansas town, well read the first paragraph of the article
Amazon's Echo devices and its virtual assistant are meant to help find answers by listening for your voice commands. However, police in Arkansas want to know if one of the gadgets overheard something that can help with a murder case. According to The Information, authorities in Bentonville issued a warrant for Amazon to hand over any audio or records from an Echo belonging to James Andrew Bates. Bates is set to go to trial for first-degree murder for the death of Victor Collins next year.
https://www.engadget.com/2016/12/27/amazon-echo-audio-data-murder-case/
might be an interesting case to follow to see what amazon really collects when the echo is supposed to be listening for the wakeup word. That is if the authorities push a bit more than they done so far.
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Arkansas? The tech capital of the Midwest? Yea, it will be interesting, but the likelihood of finding anything substantive is close to slim and none. If Amazon is smart, they don't keep the data forever, even if there is hidden chatter in there.
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"Police say they were able to pull data off of the speaker, but it's unclear what info they were able to access."
In terms of data actually relevant to their investigation I'd guess what they got from the Echo itself fell somewhere in between diddly and squat.
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Sounds like an attempt to get in the headlines.
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Also sounds like some pretty computer illiterate cops and lawyers grabbing at straws to me. This includes the judge for not throwing the request out, too.
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Arkansas? The tech capital of the Midwest? Yea, it will be interesting, but the likelihood of finding anything substantive is close to slim and none. If Amazon is smart, they don't keep the data forever, even if there is hidden chatter in there.
It is Bentonville and that is the headquarters of Walmart so it could be the tech capital of Arkansas :-) Walmart has a lot of computers and tech that supports their stores world wide in that town.
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Also sounds like some pretty computer illiterate cops and lawyers grabbing at straws to me. This includes the judge for not throwing the request out, too.
grabbing at straws yes but who know...lately there has been so many articles about what the echo and google home collects, it could put some minds at ease when they find there is nothing to be found.
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yea, agree; lots of people think Alexa can do most everything. Some of those people come here to ask "can it do such and such?" (Or. why can't it do . . . . .)
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It records brief snatches of voice when it doesn't recognise a command. Reviewing those, I can hear my own voice and clips from radio or TV programmes. Very brief, but if an offender were to be unlucky enough to trigger a device then say something it didn't recognise as a command, that voice would be on record.
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Also sounds like some pretty computer illiterate cops and lawyers grabbing at straws to me. This includes the judge for not throwing the request out, too.
grabbing at straws yes but who know...lately there has been so many articles about what the echo and google home collects, it could put some minds at ease when they find there is nothing to be found.
If you go into your Alexa app Settings>History you will see every recording you have made if you have not deleted them.
I have the DOT which I purchased on 12/9/16. My recordings are the full recordings up until todays date (12/28/16). I plan on deleting all before the year is out.
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Most of us know that; I think the lawyers believe it records even if there is no wake word spoken, basically EVERYTHING; even non-echo conversations. Not true, it only records when spoken to.
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If 'most of us know that' I'd assume that includes lawyers. They'd hardly disregard the possibility of finding a snatch of aural DNA when they'll spend a good hour debating the meaning of one word. Yep - been there :)
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Also sounds like some pretty computer illiterate cops and lawyers grabbing at straws to me. This includes the judge for not throwing the request out, too.
grabbing at straws yes but who know...lately there has been so many articles about what the echo and google home collects, it could put some minds at ease when they find there is nothing to be found.
If you go into your Alexa app Settings>History you will see every recording you have made if you have not deleted them.
I have the DOT which I purchased on 12/9/16. My recordings are the full recordings up until todays date (12/28/16). I plan on deleting all before the year is out.
you missed the point. the authorities were also looking for additional recordings that alexa might be making when the wakeup word is not used. if you scan through this forum, you will find the alexa has scared the dickens out of some members when out of the blue it starts talking or playing music. When that happens usually nothing is found in the logs.
in addition there has been recent articles written by so called privacy advocates that says the echo could be listening and recording even when its not awaken by the user. That was the purpose of my comments that you quoted and highlighted.
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Most of us know that; I think the lawyers believe it records even if there is no wake word spoken, basically EVERYTHING; even non-echo conversations. Not true, it only records when spoken to.
so true, but people is so paranoid these days they believe almost anything.
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>>> If 'most of us know that' I'd assume that includes lawyers.
No, it doesn't, it only includes "us". i.e. most members of this forum.
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>>> If 'most of us know that' I'd assume that includes lawyers.
No, it doesn't, it only includes "us". i.e. most members of this forum.
So what you mean is that the small percentage of the population that visits this site 'knows' but the rest don't. That would make lawyers no different from the majority then, or the police for that matter. But we'll all learn in due course, and this case could establish what is and isn't possible, at least as far as the Echo's capabilities stretch now. I think that's fascinating.
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Strayfish, you are being a bit anal and argumentative. If you will look back a few posts, I said this in a reply to Alpha Bitch (who stated the obvious) to those who had been at this forum a while) and renegade also responded to her comment. too.
Get back on track and be helpful.
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Mike, I'm not sure it's me that's being anal and argumentative. You'll see that my post extended the discussion to include possibilities associated with legal evaluation of Echo's capabilities and that I see this as an exciting opportunity. Maybe you don't, that's maybe how we differ.
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Let's just agree to disagree, and drop the whole thing. I really don't find this very important anyway other than as a curiosity and another example of "ambulance-chasing lawyers doing their "thing"..
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"ambulance-chasing lawyers doing their "thing"..
Except that it has absolutely nothing at all to do with ambulance-chasing lawyers. It has to do with a police department...and therefor the state...trying to compell a large company to surrender information about a customer.
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It has to do with both; cops and the lawyers. No matter; it sucks, I believe we will agree.
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It has to do with both; cops and the lawyers.
LOL. No, it doesn't.