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Comment by nashashmi | Hacker News Reader

I remember when law officers wanted the Alexa recording at the home of a murder. Amazon did not give it up.

I always thought that data was meaningless if it takes a person hours to go through it. Now we have AI. Which means the data is not meaningless. And the always on feature actually means something. And that means all your data at home can be at someone's fingertips ... because say they are looking for ways to make your home and government more efficient?

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I think your memory is mistaken. Amazon will give up recordings when legally obligated to do so, because that’s the law. They can’t choose to ignore the law.

However, Alexa and similar devices don’t actually record everything. Amazon doesn’t get a recording of everything the devices hear. They have to be triggered by the wake word (or possible a false positive).

Here’s a case where the Alexa command was used as part of the case, though it didn’t have recordings of the actual crime: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11899217/Murderer-j...

Try these searches: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...

Alexa only sends network data when the hotword is heard...how exactly does that happen during a murder?

I don't know the specifics of this case, but maybe the investigators just asked in case there was an accidental trigger, or a real trigger etc. Seems reasonable for the detective to attempt to turn over any stone they can to aid the investigation.

With an unfortunately named victim, I suppose.

I think if an Alexa device were present in a home in which a person named Alexa lived, they would reconfigure the wake word. A more likely hypothetical would be one in which the murder was named was Alexa, and the surprised victim exclaimed, "Alexa, what are you doing here!?!"

I don't know about Alexa specifically, but I've seen stories where the police requested Ring videos from a neighbor's house, including cameras inside the neighbor's house that they could not have known of without Amazon's assistance, that were not pointed outside, and even, if I remember correctly, one that was in the neighbor's business in a completely different location, where the justification pointedly identified the neighbor as not a suspect, but Amazon gave over this video anyways.

How is that weird of the police to ask tho?

I would say it would be standard practice to go check all neighbors with sightline for any kind of recording. Local or cloud based.

No assistance from anyone needed to go ask.

They were requesting it from Amazon, not from the neighbor. And it absolutely is wrong (weird is not a word I would use to describe police using their power unscrupulously) to take data that you know is irrelevant.

You did not specify any of this information in your comment. You just said that without Amazon's knowledge the police wouldn't have known that the cameras were there.

Well in fact yes they could have. By just asking the neighbors. And then summarily submitting a request to Amazon to get all relevant video all in one go.

We don't know all the details of the stories you refer to, so you have to provide all relevant information. For all we still know, you are just making assumptions.

Amazon has given police recordings:

https://apnews.com/general-news-343c0f5ed0884d1eb1dbe911e8ce...

https://broward.us/2023/07/18/amazons-alexa-is-surprise-witn...

Until last year, Amazon gave police video from Ring without a warrant.

https://www.wired.com/story/ring-police-rfa-tool-shut-down/

There’s a difference, though. Alexa’s recordings are made inside your house. Ring videos are taken outside your house. This distinction matters both as a fact and in the law.

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