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Voice-Activated Smart Home Technology Used to Make Arrest in Assault Case

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A new type of court case is slowly but demonstrably taking shape within the American legal system: alleged crimes being detected from data supplied by smart home devices.

In December of last year an Arkansas murder case made headlines not so much for the death itself, but how a suspect was brought into custody. James Bates hosted a party at his Bentonville home on the night of November 21st, 2015. At some point during the event a man drowned in a hot tub on the property. Bates claimed to have found the victim the next morning when he awoke, stating that it was a tragic accident, but Arkansas police obtained smart water meter readings that showed an anomaly between 1 a.m. and 3 a.m. Based solely on this data – and obtained without a warrant – Bates was arrested and charged with 1st degree murder.

Somewhat ironically, James Bates subsequently requested recordings from his Amazon Echo to defend himself against these charges. So far Amazon appears to be fighting this request. At stake could be the very nature of the 1st, 4th and 5th Amendments to the Constitution in addition to the freedom or incarceration of James Bates.

Meanwhile, another case has presented itself in New Mexico where a voice-activated smart device called law enforcement during an alleged altercation. As reported by ABC News:

Eduardo Barros was house-sitting with his girlfriend and her daughter Sunday night at a residence in Tijeras, some 15 miles east of Albuquerque. The couple got into an argument and the altercation became physical, according to the Bernalillo County Sheriff Department’s spokesperson, Deputy Felicia Romero.

Barros allegedly wielded a firearm and threatened to kill his girlfriend, asking her: “Did you call the sheriffs?” A smart speaker, which was hooked up to a surround sound system inside the home, recognized that as a voice command and called 911, Romero said.

(Emphasis added)

After an hours-long standoff, the suspect was taken into custody and charged. In this case, law enforcement is touting smart technology as having “saved a life.” And apparently the presiding judge is accepting the evidence regardless of how it was obtained, saying that there was indeed probable cause for the arrest – no warrant needed.

Vin Armani and Aaron Dykes cover this emerging privacy crisis in the following two videos and how the American legal system might adjust to a modern life filled with pervasive surveillance devices.

(For more from the author of “Voice-Activated Smart Home Technology Used to Make Arrest in Assault Case” please click HERE)

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Think Amazon Echo, Other Home Smart Devices Won’t Disclose Private Conversations? Police Armed With Search Warrants Have Different Plans

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Amazon’s Echo and Echo Dot are in millions of homes now, with holiday sales more than quadrupling from 2015. Always listening for its wake word, the breakthrough smart speakers boast seven microphones waiting to take and record your commands.

Now, Arkansas police are hoping an Echo found at a murder scene in Bentonville can aid their investigation.

First reported by The Information, investigators filed search warrants to Amazon (see below), requesting any recordings between November 21 and November 22, 2015, from James A. Bates, who was charged with murder after a man was strangled in a hot tub.

While investigating, police noticed the Echo in the kitchen and pointed out that the music playing in the home could have been voice activated through the device. While the Echo records only after hearing the wake word, police are hoping that ambient noise or background chatter could have accidentally triggered the device, leading to some more clues.

Amazon stores all the voice recordings on its servers, in the hopes of using the data to improve its voice assistant services. While you can delete your personal voice data, there’s still no way to prevent any recordings from being saved on a server. (Read more from “Think Amazon Echo, Other Home Smart Devices Won’t Disclose Private Conversations? Police Armed With Search Warrants Have Different Plans” HERE)

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Amazon Secretly Removes “1984” From the Kindle

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Thousands of people last week discovered that Amazon had quietly removed electronic copies of George Orwell’s 1984 from their Kindle e-book readers. In the process, Amazon revealed how easy censorship will be in the Kindle age.

In this case, the mass e-book removals were motivated by copyright . A company called MobileReference, who did not own the copyrights to the books 1984 and Animal Farm, uploaded both books to the Kindle store and started selling them. When the rights owner heard about this, they contacted Amazon and asked that the e-books be removed. And Amazon decided to erase them not just from the store, but from all the Kindles where they’d been downloaded. Amazon operators used the Kindle wireless network, called WhisperNet, to quietly delete the books from people’s devices and refund them the money they’d paid.

An uproar followed, with outraged customers pointing out the irony that Amazon was deleting copies of a novel about a fascist media state that constantly alters history by changing digital records of what has happened. Amazon’s action flies in the face of what people expect when they purchase a book. Under the “right of first sale” in the U.S., people can do whatever they like with a book after purchasing it, including giving it to a friend or reselling it. There is no option for a bookseller to take that book back once it’s sold. (Read more from “Amazon Secretly Removes “1984” From the Kindle” HERE)

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Amazon.com Pressured to Drump Trump

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Amazon.com, the popular online retailer, is reportedly under pressure from shareholders to stop selling products associated with Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee for president.

According to the New York Post, a group claiming to represent 1,500 Amazon shareholders has asked CEO Jeff Bezos to end its marketing of Trump shirts, hats, ties and other products promoting the Trump campaign.

“This isn’t about politics: Donald Trump’s misogyny, racism and outright bigotry are dominating the political news cycle,” shareholder group UltraViolet said in a letter to Bezos.

The letter noted the continued presence of Donald Trump products “poses a risk to Amazon’s reputation” . . . (Read more from “Amazon.com Pressured to Drump Trump” HERE)

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