![]() It’s not entirely clear whether companies are legally bound to notify users about the manner of information they gather or how they ultimately act upon it. There also seems to be some lingering legal questions regarding disclosure. To me those things are independent of your reasonable expectation of privacy.” “You are trusting that third-party to assert your rights, to notify you when your information is being sought. “I would push back against a legal argument that said categorically that users don’t have a reasonable expectation for privacy when they’ve installed one of these devices in their home,“ says Electronic Frontier Foundation Senior Staff Attorney and Civil Liberties Director David Greene. ![]() It’s a familiar feeling, surely, to anyone who’s ever covered a webcam with electrical tape for fear of snooping. “It is exactly this kind of self-consciousness and chilling effects that surveillance - or even the most remote threat of surveillance - casts over otherwise freewheeling private conversations, and is the reason people need ironclad assurance that their devices will not - cannot - betray them.” Joking or not, in short order, our host walked over and unplugged it,” he writes. “The group’s conversation became self-conscious as we began joking about the Echo listening in. Stanley covered the topic recently in an article penned for the ACLU that was inspired when he encountered an Echo at a friend’s dinner party. ![]() do hear trigger words when trigger words are not intended.”Įven with the best of intentions, such devices leave open the possibility of collecting unintended information, courtesy of advanced recording technologies capable of firing up from across the room. “I think most people don’t expect that snippets of their conversation might accidentally get picked up. “As a legal matter, it’s unresolved, which is part of what worries us about the whole thing,” ACLU senior analyst Jay Stanley tells TechCrunch. Home assistants are designed to have an ear open at all times, monitoring their surroundings for keywords like “Alexa,” “Google” or “Siri.” But once a user consents by introducing such a device into their home, are its manufacturers bound by law to only record and store the information their products were designed to act upon? Or has the consumer effectively waived those rights? ![]() Still, constant recording and storage is another question entirely. In a sense, people who buy an Echo or Home know what they’re getting themselves into from the very basic fact that they’ve purchased an internet-connected device, with built-in microphones, that is designed (in some sense) to always be listening - and it’s created by companies that thrive on tailoring ads based on the boatloads of data they collect from users. The question of how much privacy we can reasonably expect when installing a home assistant is complex and unresolved. I don’t know if all of them were on or recording, but if you were going to set up a hypothetical situation to decide if the internet of things could be used as an investigative tool, you’ve got this mysterious hot tub murder.” A reasonable expectation of privacy “Alexa is only one of the smart devices in that guy’s house. “It’s like this perfect test case,” says Andrew Ferguson, a professor of law at the University of the District of Columbia. What do devices like the Echo or Google Home actually record and save? Have we, as consumers, effectively surrendered a reasonable right to privacy from corporations and the government by bringing such devices into our home? While Amazon’s fight has been rendered moot, this case lays groundwork for some tough and important conversations to come, raising a slew of fascinating questions around the technologies. They hoped his Echo might hold some insights into what happened the night before.Īmazon initially pushed back against the request, citing First Amendment protections, but ultimately conceded when Bates agreed to allow the information to be handed over to police. The police were considering Bates a suspect in what they suspected was a murder after signs of a struggle were found at the scene. This past December, The Information reported that authorities had subpoenaed Amazon over the case. He’d gone to bed at 1 AM, while Collins and another friend stayed up drinking. The home’s resident, James Andrew Bates, told authorities he’d found the body of Victor Collins dead that morning. On a November, 2015 morning in Bentonville, Arkansas, first responders discovered a corpse floating in a hot tub.
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