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Comment by phantarch | Hacker News Reader

How is echo audio data substantially different than something like a tape recorder that was live in the man's home? What about a cell phone that was on a call at the time of the alleged murder?

I definitely understand wanting to ensure reasonable privacy for users, but to me it feels an awful lot of a stretch to say that the echo is off-limits in this case.

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Comparing it to a tape recorder is interesting. If we consider this device to be the same as a tape recorder for the purpose of admission of evidence: (1) In some states, by having this device and turning it on you have now indeed consented for the conversation to be recorded - which would alarm most users (2) In other states, it is illegal for the device to be functioning without consent of all who are conversing, and the recording is thus inadmissable as evidence. Quite the opposite of what I think you're implying by that comparison. We keep seeing that treating new technology under previous legal definitions is very unsteady ground. You can see how comparison to previous technology would protect privacy and hinder investigation in this case, but on the other hand it makes me think of compelling you to give up encryption keys because well, they're not "papers" like the 4th amendment refers to (an argument which HAS been used before). So given that, how am I supposed to know what my actual rights are in a case like this, when it's so freely interpreted either way depending on the specific case?

Thanks for the insight.

In regards to comparing new technologies against previous ones to understand their legal definitions, it feels like the burden is on technologists to navigate us through the ethical minefield. I'm not very aware of what place ethicists have in many tech corporations, but it feels like most of us just build straight ahead and figure out the implications afterward. Not that we should halt progress on everything until we know if it's "good", but maybe a tech ethicist could be a kind of QA role during product development.

Definitely. I think I've heard Google has a handful of ethicists on staff? I don't think it's fair for the burden to be entirely on technologists either, though, but I don't know how else to progress. Uber & friends make an interesting case in this area too: Does that business model technically violate laws in various locales? Is it fair to existing taxi companies to just throw those laws away too quickly for them to plan or without re-addressing the original issue they were there for? Could they get lawmakers to re-assess the need for those laws before they had demonstrated their value and popularity? A lot of catch-22's.

> but on the other hand it makes me think of compelling you to give up encryption keys because well, they're not "papers" like the 4th amendment refers to (an argument which HAS been used before).

That makes me think, what if I wrote the keys down on a piece of paper, and then told you I always copy it from the paper because I don't remember it. Then would I be protected by saying that my papers are protected and therefore so is the key?

"Clearly the defendant is trying to hide something now. If it pleases the crown, might we have a search warrant to seize the piece of paper?"

> How is echo audio data substantially different than something like a tape recorder that was live in the man's home?

This is an interesting question that leads to (surprising?) ruling in certain jurisdictions. Take Germany for an example: The German law on telecommunication and privacy in telecommunication explicitly forbids the manufacturing, distribution and possesion of disguised recording deviced with transmission capability. Take note that it does not outlaw concealed/disguised recording deviced entirely, but is specific on the transmission capability. This law has been put into place in reaction to the massive invasions of privacy under the Nazi regime and until the iron curtain fell in the GDR by the Stasi (the agency depicted in the movie "The Life of Others").

A few weeks ago there was that case of the German Bundesnetzagentur (German equivalent to the FCC) banning a "smart doll" for that very reason. Now consider that certain variants of Amazon Echo could be mistaken for mundane wireless speakers, especially to people who are not familiar with the concept of connected devices. However the wireless transmission capability of the Echo clearly puts them into the reach of the aforementioned law, and some people actually argue, that because of that, they are in fact illegal in Germany. Now what about actual Bluetooth speakers with a microphone built-in to support speakerphone? Technically illegal, too, because one could put them in aunty's home, connected by wire to their CD player or such, yet use the bluetooth function to eavesdrop from outside the home.

On the one hand it's great to have this law in place. But on the other hand it's clearly ripe for being updated to match current technological developments.

> How is echo audio data substantially different than something like a tape recorder that was live in the man's home? What about a cell phone that was on a call at the time of the alleged murder?

It's not about the technology - a tape recorder isn't on the whole time while it's in your house and won't get accidentally turned on by you speaking. Alexa is listening the whole time and gets triggered even for non-standard phrases essentially sending snippets of conversations to Amazon you didn't explicitly plan to.

It's very very very rare that people press REC on a tape recorder and forget about it. It's very common for Alexa to trigger on phrases that aren't meant for it.

Just to clarify: The Echo - the hardware - is processing audio constantly to spot the wake word. Alexa - the cloud software - is definitely not "listening the whole time." Yes, the wake word spotting may occasionally trip a false positive, in which case the lights go on (and you can set it to also make a sound any time it wakes, if you prefer.)

I suspect that it is as much about PR as anything else. Amazon probably has no qualms handing over the data per se. But they also realize that doing so without first putting up a 'fight' would look very bad.

But of course. Corporations are amoral entities. They do whatever it is that they calculate to yield the highest expected profit. They will do good things only insofar as it happens to coincide with what's most profitable (as is the case). If the most profitable course of action was to murder children and they could do it without hurting profits via breaking the law or getting bad PR, they would do it (as at any rate they do in places where committing atrocities is the unpunished, most profitable course of action).

Where the data is stored is a fundamental difference.

That was one of Amazon's primary arguments, that they had not received a warrant valid in a relevant jurisdiction.

Interesting, thanks for letting me know.

Jurisdiction seems like a concept that is going to change a lot in the next decade if that's the basis for argument.

There's already procedures to deal with it.

I think it isn't the same (hacking vs a provider handing over data), but the FBI has been working to assert broad jurisdiction:

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-cyber-congress-idUSKBN...

If the EULA says that Amazon's listening and you agree to be okay with that, there's little you can argue against it, other than saying don't use such devices.

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