Alexa, a witness of a murder?

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Echo speaker

Since the release of Amazon Alexa in 2014 there have been many controversies regarding the amount of data that the speaker is collecting at all times. The way it works is that the Echo device is designed to detect “wake words” and only then start working. However, there were a lot of cases when Alexa actually recorded more than the user would expect. Echo can sometimes misinterpret the “wake words” or other commands and start listening and recording even when a user does not intend to record.

Court cases

Even though this is something that should not happen at all, the New Hampshire authorities investigating the murders of two women still want to check. A judge ruled that they can examine recordings from the Echo device because they believe that there might be evidence related to the crime. Investigators believe that Echo could have recorded the attack and the events that followed it.

Last year, when the similar case occurred in Arkansas, the suspect who owned the speaker agreed to release recording from the day of the suspected crime. In the end, a murder charge was dropped.

Is our privacy at stake?

Though these recordings might be beneficial in such cases, we have to think about the amount of information we are giving away to large corporations. Should we question our actual privacy, or should we believe that our recordings are in good, safe hands? Using Alexa you can do almost anything, from ordering food to your home address, to checking your bank account. While at a time it is very convenient, we need to keep in mind that such devices are always listening and gathering all kinds of personal data from the user.

It all comes to personal preferences and the ability to adapt to the actual changes. In the modern world the word “privacy” almost lost its meaning. Every device that you own collects information. About you, your data usage, your shopping preferences and so on. There is almost nothing you can do about it, since this is the life that we have now. This data can be used in many different ways, from personalized ads to such things like winning presidential campaigns. In most of the cases it won’t affect you that much, however, it is worth imagining what could be done with the information that is being collected about you. Who knows, maybe one day you say something that you would like to buy around Echo speaker and a couple of days you will see ads about this on Amazon.

Sources:

  1. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/amazon-echo-judge-orders-company-produce-alexa-recordings-double-murder-case-2018-11-12/
  2. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-amazon-com-alexa/oregon-family-finds-amazons-alexa-has-a-mind-of-her-own-idUSKCN1IQ05B
  3. https://www.bestvpn.com/privacy-news/is-alexa-listening-to-you/
  4. https://edition.cnn.com/2017/03/07/tech/amazon-echo-alexa-bentonville-arkansas-murder-case/index.html
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4 thoughts on “Alexa, a witness of a murder?

  1. Orłowska Pola says:

    I believe that everyone has the right to privacy, but we live in a time when this privacy is disappearing. I know that when buying smart devices, we ourselves decide to leave our data on various websites, social media, etc. but I did not know about the existence of Amazon Alexa. It is amazing that such a device can “listen” to our conversations and later use them to obtain data about us. On the one hand, it is frightening, because we lose privacy, but on the other hand, if such devices can help in solving court cases, I think that this huge step for humanity can do a lot of good things.

  2. Chlebny Dawid says:

    To be honest I believe that we should focus on our privacy, because with every year passing by, we lose more and more of it, and one day we will wake up to find that there is none privacy left. I can imagine how much newest smart devices are helpful, but for sake of ideological fight for privacy, I won’t buy one.

  3. Radwan Wiktor says:

    Technically different devices – may it be Alexa, Cortana or whatever alike – did not change much when it comes to the privacy of technology owners. Ever since we have started using phones with access to internet and good microphones, they can do exactly the same, so record, store, analyse (if proper software is in them) and send our data. The only thing that might have changed is that Alexa can learn about us more deeply, cause we try to interact with it, but again, did not we do it with Siri before?
    The thing changing our privacy are: the quality of recording devices, the development of cybersecurity solutions and the level of innovation in the space of data analyses of what those recording devices have gathered. NOT CORTANA itself.

  4. Marchelewska Karolina says:

    In my opinion we all deserve privacy but I agree with Tomasz that today it almost lost its meaning. Whatever the name of the device is it collects our informations and uses it sometimes in a wrong way. Of course if we could use its data to prove a murder it would be sometimes extremely helpful but the reliability of this source can be easily contested. Nowadays we give our data freely to every device we use. The Echo speaker can raise some controversies but its nothing new in our day to day reality.

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