Amazon Alexa is being asked to give evidence in another murder trial
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Loading... - Mary Campbell
- 14 Nov 2021
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Amazon's Alexa is being summoned to court after an unpleasant double murder. Prosecutors in the case in New Hampshire believe the voice assistant may have clues that could help solve the crime.
The idea is simple - Alexa, the AI which powers Amazon's Echo speakers, has to listen for a wake word. When you say "Alexa" the audio from the device's microphone is sent to Amazon for processing.
This allows Amazon's cloud servers to analyse the commands and to send the appropriate response to your speaker.
If Alexa was triggered during the crime then it's possible the audio could help provide evidence of the suspect's guilt or innocence.
Alexa doesn't continually stream audio back to Amazon though, so any evidence would need to happen while the device was listening - indicated by a solid blue light on the top of the speaker.
Amazon takes the security of this audio very seriously. Users can replay their own command history via the Alexa app and delete it whenever they want but Amazon won't release it without a valid court order.
The judge in this case has issued exactly that, but Amazon hasn't yet responded. The company always gives the same response "Amazon will not release customer information without a valid and binding legal demand properly served on us".
In the past, cases like these have relied on the owner of the device giving permission for police to download the data.
In 2015 James Bates was accused of the murder of Victor Collins in Arkansas, at Bates' home. Police seized his Echo speaker and demanded Amazon hand over the recordings.
Amazon initially refused, but relented when Bates gave his consent. In 2017 police dropped that case against James Bates - so perhaps Alexa helped prove his innocence.
It's clearly important that Amazon protects this sensitive data where possible. For the public to buy into the idea of virtual assistants they have to trust that their personal data is secure, and Amazon won't hand it over without a fight.
