No, but companies are (sigh). This is really an expression of Citizens United. Alexa and Siri use cute names to cover it, but "Ok Google" reveals what you're really interacting with for these sorts of tools: You're talking to a company.
This isn't really an HN quality comment. It's dismissive, you don't make a strong point, and it's not really interesting - this is just a rehashing of a common political opinion/disagreement with Citizens United.
I respectfully disagree. The parent comment was insinuating this was about bots or robots, which it really isn't. Chat-like interface aside, Alexa is no more a "robot" than Gmail or the Amazon.com homepage: It's just an interface to a company's web service.
And while I added a (sigh) which indicates some disapproval for the Citizens United decision, my comment wasn't meant to start a conversation of the merits of that decision, but simply indicate that this was effectively a corporate personhood case. If anything, I added the (sigh) because of my concern that I would get downvoted into oblivion by other people who disagree with the Citizens United decision. :/
Please, please don't let HN become Reddit. Don't comment just to tell someone you think their comment is low quality and uninteresting.
I bought that as an ebook on Amazon but it got remotely deleted for 'copyright' reasons from my kindle so I never got to read it. Is there something about listening devices in it?
Telescreens more or less fit the bill. From Wikipedia:
> Telescreens are fictional devices which operate as both televisions and security cameras. [...] All members of the Inner Party (upper-class) and Outer Party (middle-class) have telescreens in their homes [...] Telescreen cameras do not have night vision technology [but] their microphones are incredibly sensitive, and they are said to pick up a heartbeat.
why isn't alexa scrubbing the data or anonymising it? presumably amazon is fighting this hard because they don't want it known that the government/amazon effectively has a listening device in your home
apparently they give the ability to access your communication with Alexa with a phone app. So they put themselves in a box by having features in an app that prevent anonymization of the data. Going forward they may have to drop the app or limit its functionality.
I don't have the app in question and am only extrapolating based on the text in the article. Does anyone here have the Alexa app? What are its features?
So is law enforcement going to try to go with voluntarily allowing recording of oneself allows them access? Push a claim that Amazon has no standing in the case and cannot object?
I have the app, it allows you to play back any prompt that Alexa was triggered with. For instance the maintenance people at my apartment complex decided to play with it and I can listen to them ask stupid stuff like: "how many apples are in a bushel"
Encrypt it with what? The echo? But then how can you listen on your phone? They would need to compromise the UX or store the key themselves, which defeats the whole purpose.
why isn't alexa scrubbing the data or anonymising it?
So that if you're a parent and Amazon ships you a doll house, you can figure out whether it was ordered by you, your partner, your child, a TV presenter, or an Amazon mistake.
Recognizing spoken word can be improved when you have historical data related to a specific user (or a smaller group of users sharing the device).
Sure, anonymizing it and aggregating much larger numbers helps too. But modeling specific speech of one person, as well as the type of requests they make (to better understand/predict future recognition), can offer better improvements.
I think it is an important factor that many murders are quite straightforward, so it isn't just the overall rate, it's the rate where the Alexa evidence is important enough to pursue.
I also wonder how many people own more than 1 echo (probably only hundreds of thousands so not all that important to estimating the number of homes being listened to. I guess Amazon could tell us how many users they have though).
I don't understand the use of the 1st amendment in this case, which is about free speech, but Amazon is trying to avoid giving data to the gov which would fall under the 4th and 5th amendments. Does anyone understand their reasoning for this approach?
I would also like to add, And I said the same thing about Apple, this feels like public relations via the courtroom more than a genuine desire to protect data from the gov. Don't forget Jeff Bezos's CIA connections!
As a non-lawyer and not legally trained it seems like 1st amendment has nothing to do with this but 4th and 5th has everything. This is scary. It means the 4th and 5th amendment has no power with these devices?
The 4th amendment and 5th amendment don't protect you from having to hand over incriminating evidence pursuant to a valid warrant. If the government suspects e.g. you're part of a criminal organization and have tapes with your co-conspirators (for future blackmail purposes) hidden in your house, it can get a warrant and get those tapes. It can play those tapes to the jury. The only thing the 5th amendment protects you from is the government making you testify against yourself.
Those amendments only apply to the government. A corporation may arbitrarily restrict your rights and you have no recourse other than to avoid the corporation. This is why social media is a trap. It looks at first glance like a highly evolved town square but it is not. It is a private space masquerading as a town square, but one where you may be silenced for the wrong words.
The same applies to the alexa device you chose to put in your living room. Your private life now belongs to Amazon. The 4th amendment does not apply. Your privacy is now the property of a corporation that may do what it pleases with the information from your previously private home life.
They're arguing that the speech that is recorded and the generated responses are both expressive, and that's a key difference.
Their argument is basically that people are talking to or in front of their Alexa device, and that speech is protected, and if Amazon is compelled to hand it over, they argue it will have a significant chilling effect on speech by making people concerned they can not openly talk in their own home.
Yeah, and honestly I don't feel like the defense will hold up for much. It's not uncommon or unreasonable to request data from a company pertaining to a criminal investigation. It's not an overreaching request, they're asking for a narrow field of data, they have probable cause for a warrant. This is really not unusual from a criminal investigation standpoint, except for the interface in question being somewhat novel.
But the case has gotten national attention, and people are talking about privacy of services like this, so it makes sense for them to put up that "we're protecting your data" fight. But the only real way to protect your data from the government is simply to not collect it in the first place.
I thought it was strange too. I would suspect the caselaw involving the First Amendment provides more definition of the limits upon governments than the Privacy amendments, especially since this is such a novel set of facts with no easily applicable precedent. First Amendment seems to be more broadly protected than privacy anyways, so extending it to this set of circumstances would be ultimately useful.
However, their First Amendment argument would be more compelling if the search request was wider instead of specific. It looks like the request only wants a 48 hour period, so its not a dragnet kind of request (i.e., who checked out books on chemistry in the past 4 weeks?). In the event the ruling is against Amazon, I would guess the in camera evaluation will probably happen.
Amazon is arguing that handing over the data would chill speech by making people fear that conversations they would otherwise consider private may be used against them by government, and as such have a similar effect to direct censorship.
I have no idea about the strength of that argument, but that's the argument they made.
It's only not private if you can't trust the information to be kept private, which is the central point of Amazons argument: the information is currently private; it will cease to be private if Amazon can be compelled to hand it over.
Bank records would presumably not be considered expressive speech, and so it would be hard to argue that it would be protected under the 1st. And as you point out, the courts have already pretty much nixed privacy protections of third party records under the 4th.
I have no idea if Amazon has a snowballs chance in hell of making this work, but it's an interesting angle, and also seemingly their only potentially viable angle because of what you mention.
The point is that they're not arguing for privacy. If their argument is accepted, then privacy of the data is an incidental necessity in order to avoid the chilling effect on speech of removing the privacy.
It may very well prove entirely futile, but at least they're trying (though I have no illusion that their reasons are selfless - they have a strong vested interest in making sure people will trust having these devices in their homes)
I think this has more in common with that case -- where it's being maintained as a business record -- than a phone call.
Also, if the party you're on the phone with (legally) records the call, the courts can subpoena it. Why would this be different, even granting the (I think) inaccurate phone analogy?
Not a lawyer, but I imagine they have not ability to exercise the fifth amendment as it's not self-incrimination, and I believe only natural persons (i.e. not corporations) are protected by it.
One of the things that they are arguing (per the article) is that _Alexa's_ speech is protected under the First Amendment (similar to a case that was decided in favor of Google relating to search results.)
It's a good question, and vidarh's response that "it's right there in the article: chilling effect" is clearly not helpful, since your question still applies without modification.
Looking through the memorandum, it appears that there are different levels of need/importance the government must establish depending on whether they are requesting information that could chill free speech. That is, warrants are granted more liberally for information that does not have a tendency to suppress speech (e.g., the date you filed for your car registration) than info that does (e.g., the list of books you've checked out at the library). The latter category must be shown to be more directly related to the issue of the case, rather than being merely a search for possibly-useful background info.
Amazon is arguing that (1) Alexa searches are of this second, more protected form of private information, and (2) the government has not met the higher burden of showing their importance to the case.
That, at least, is my reading of the memorandum. I am not a lawyer.
"You want us to turn over that information? You're going to have to meet your full burden of proving need before we do so." That's reasonable for a case about a device that sits in your house and is constantly listening.
I don't understand Amazon's position here. They're being asked for evidence in a murder investigation. I don't see how the first amendment could be construed to protect against this. The data being asked for concerns the two involved individuals and the request doesn't seem overly broad.
What this case does show is that Amazon puts a listening device in your home which has a very acute understanding of your live. As they argue themselves.
If they do end up giving out the data they will most probably face a severe dip in sales as most people (even those who aren't that privacy focused) will be scared of buying it.
I've been putting off buying one of these devices (Echo/Google Home, etc) just becasue I dont like someone listening to me all the time. But I'm usually a bit paranoid about privacy.
I'm not sold on Alexa personally. I can guarantee with 100% certainty that if this case moves against Amazon I will never knowingly be in the vicinity of one of these devices. Not because I plan on killing someone, but because of the litany of privacy implications.
If it goes the other way, I might get one because I think it would be useful but I'm still very worried about the privacy aspect, and I know my wife would be more lax than I - not to mention I don't want to have to be vigilant about every comment I make in my own home.
The complexity of the issue concerns the specific use in this instance and its application to broader uses in other possible cases. I think they're fighting/trying to fight future fights with this approach. I say this because their current stance is relatively weak when regarding this case alone (IMO obviously). The guy was murdered, Alexa is a recording device, they want to see the recordings. This isn't overly broad in this case, but in the future it may be attempted to be applied to other cases walking down the proverbial slippery slope.
This is of course in addition to them already fighting a technophobic AI battle in consumers' minds, gradually introducing AI functionality to the masses. This, I think, is largely why they are so reluctant to introduce push notifications even though so many fellow Alexa Skill developers would like it.
In the end though, if I were murdered and Alexa was in the room - I'd want them to give them the darn recordings. Which makes me wonder, what does the family of the victim want?
I suspect they believe they're fighting against a potential chilling of speech. Similar to how constant surveillance affects people's words and behavior.
But to me it seems Amazon has more of a business problem than a legal one: if customers know Alexa is "listening" and that law enforcement can get at the recordings, they'll be less likely to speak openly around the device, or just turn it off and never buy one again.
If they lose this case, this entire product category goes in the shitter.
No one wants a government listening device in their house, which is essentially what this is if the government can issue a search warrant for recordings.
I would love for that to be the case, but I really doubt that it would be. No one wants a government tracking device on them at all times, but I don't see people abandoning cell phones en masse because the government can get a warrant for your location data from cell phone data towers and/or Google.
I see a huge difference between a device that records its location (not mine, even if the two are largely correlated) and one that records the things I say in my own home.
A cell phone can be used to record your voice or even video, but there are technical, legal, and logistical hurdles to cross to enable that functionality for a given phone. Alexa, in contrast, is always on with the technical and logistical hurdles already leapt and the legal one a fairly low bar if Amazon loses here.
I can definitely see people abandoning a brand of phone that features always on audio and/or video recording that can later be used by law enforcement (although the frequency with which gf uses snapchat, maybe not...)
Would you like to make a wager supporting this view? I will bet you $1000 that combined sales of Amazon Echos + Google Homes will be bigger in 2017 than they were in 2016.
(The bet is off and no one wins if Amazon wins the case as your prediction becomes untestable.)
Ha! Yeah, I probably wouldn't take that bet...too short term.
Long term...I might be right though, assuming a few things...
1) The product category goes main stream, which it hasn't even touched yet.
2) The government uses it as source of information over and over.
3) The mass media actually covers it.
I have changed my behavior based on court cases. The government can force me to touch my phone to login, but I don't have to give up my passcode. So I always turn off my phone when going through TSA, which forces it to require my passcode on restart. I realize I'm probably in the minority here.
So, it seems highly likely that the device doesn't have the information the police want. Barring any nasty surprises, Alexa only stores the actual requests made to it.
However, Amazon doesn't want to win this case based on the technical details of this specific device, because maybe a future device will store more—and then they'd need to fight this battle all over again.
So they're trying to make an argument that doesn't rest on the technical details of their current devices. If they win that, then they won't have to worry about this kind of case later.
That part makes sense, but it would seem that the fourth amendment (or even the fifth) would be the one they'd want to cite. The first amendment would only make sense if they government was trying to punish someone for the content of their speech. That isn't the case here. The government is trying to punish someone for murdering someone else. That is in no way protected under the first amendment.
The fourth amendment is usually the one where judges find privacy rights. The first amendment is the opposite...it guarantees you the right to be public without being punished for it. It would even make more sense to argue that the fifth amendment protections on self-incrimination cover these recordings, though that would be a really hard sell considering wire taps don't enjoy that kind of protection.
The 5th amendment says you can't be forced to testify against yourself at a trial. It says nothing about things you say outside of a trial being used against you. It definitely doesn't apply here.
Furthermore, as I've read some of the commentary around this case, it's pretty clear that--even in technical circles--a lot of people assume that everything that's said in Alexa's earshot goes back to the mothership. I think it's a safe bet that the typical consumer isn't up on nuances like listening for a keyword is a local operation.
Barring "Alexa: How do I clean up blood stains?" there's unlikely to be anything here (and would a Google search be any different?) But, if there were something incriminating in Alexa queries, the last thing Amazon wants is the inevitable headlines about how someone was convicted based on an Alexa recording which many would read as being an always-on ambient record.
This might be an important case for the future of robotics at home. Imagine a day when androids or highly capable home robots are inexpensive and commonplace. They will see and hear everything you do.
Let's extend that to the same kinds of robots at work. Working alongside humans, participating in meetings, completing various tasks internal and external to the business. Maybe even interacting with similar robots at other companies, vendors, etc.
Not sure any rights regarding these scenarios are well defined today.
I'll let an attorney answer this. I think there's a huge difference. Part of it being that, as far as I know, there's no case law for the scenario of a robot being a part of a person's daily life while recording data from an array of sensors, including vision and sound.
But how are robot sensors different than if I choose to have, eg security cameras around my house or a maid doing the cleaning? In fact, the robot sounds exactly like a live in maid, who can already be compelled to testify on my activities.
Both the camera footage and maid testimony can be demanded by the courts, so why would a hybrid of the two be different?
This is bonkers. The idea that someone hearing you and being required to testify against you violates the first amendment is ridiculous, so why should a device be different from a person?
Maybe it's more akin to the fifth amendment rights of a spouse/significant other/close family? I don't think Amazon would have an easy case in either direction, but at least to this layman it sounds more like a fifth amendment issue than a first amendment issue.
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[ 3.1 ms ] story [ 234 ms ] threadPlease, please don't let HN become Reddit.
And while I added a (sigh) which indicates some disapproval for the Citizens United decision, my comment wasn't meant to start a conversation of the merits of that decision, but simply indicate that this was effectively a corporate personhood case. If anything, I added the (sigh) because of my concern that I would get downvoted into oblivion by other people who disagree with the Citizens United decision. :/
Please, please don't let HN become Reddit. Don't comment just to tell someone you think their comment is low quality and uninteresting.
Cloud AI and comm services are sure convenient, but private they are not. Although that's the Internet world we live in now...
http://www.george-orwell.org/1984/
> Telescreens are fictional devices which operate as both televisions and security cameras. [...] All members of the Inner Party (upper-class) and Outer Party (middle-class) have telescreens in their homes [...] Telescreen cameras do not have night vision technology [but] their microphones are incredibly sensitive, and they are said to pick up a heartbeat.
If you're not joking, please write a blogpost about it and post it on HN.
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2009/jul/17/amazon-ki...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nineteen_Eighty-Four
I don't have the app in question and am only extrapolating based on the text in the article. Does anyone here have the Alexa app? What are its features?
So is law enforcement going to try to go with voluntarily allowing recording of oneself allows them access? Push a claim that Amazon has no standing in the case and cannot object?
I've used this several times to figure out items on my shopping list where it misheard me.
Sure, anonymizing it and aggregating much larger numbers helps too. But modeling specific speech of one person, as well as the type of requests they make (to better understand/predict future recognition), can offer better improvements.
Why has no other police department in the country attempted this?
This took place what, two year ago?
5 murders per 100,000 people (US average).
318 million people in the US, so 15,900 murder per year.
Amazon has sold over 5 million echos in the last 2 years.
So, Amazon would have to sell over 159 billion Echos, before a second murder overlap in the US?
If we assume all are US based, that would be about 1.5% of the population has Echos?
I also wonder how many people own more than 1 echo (probably only hundreds of thousands so not all that important to estimating the number of homes being listened to. I guess Amazon could tell us how many users they have though).
I would also like to add, And I said the same thing about Apple, this feels like public relations via the courtroom more than a genuine desire to protect data from the gov. Don't forget Jeff Bezos's CIA connections!
> The tech titan has filed a motion to quash the search warrant for recordings
ps. Ianal
The same applies to the alexa device you chose to put in your living room. Your private life now belongs to Amazon. The 4th amendment does not apply. Your privacy is now the property of a corporation that may do what it pleases with the information from your previously private home life.
Their argument is basically that people are talking to or in front of their Alexa device, and that speech is protected, and if Amazon is compelled to hand it over, they argue it will have a significant chilling effect on speech by making people concerned they can not openly talk in their own home.
But the case has gotten national attention, and people are talking about privacy of services like this, so it makes sense for them to put up that "we're protecting your data" fight. But the only real way to protect your data from the government is simply to not collect it in the first place.
However, their First Amendment argument would be more compelling if the search request was wider instead of specific. It looks like the request only wants a 48 hour period, so its not a dragnet kind of request (i.e., who checked out books on chemistry in the past 4 weeks?). In the event the ruling is against Amazon, I would guess the in camera evaluation will probably happen.
Amazon is arguing that handing over the data would chill speech by making people fear that conversations they would otherwise consider private may be used against them by government, and as such have a similar effect to direct censorship.
I have no idea about the strength of that argument, but that's the argument they made.
That's like the definition of not private.
It's been US policy that third party record have no expectation of privacy.
I have no idea if Amazon has a snowballs chance in hell of making this work, but it's an interesting angle, and also seemingly their only potentially viable angle because of what you mention.
The point is that they're not arguing for privacy. If their argument is accepted, then privacy of the data is an incidental necessity in order to avoid the chilling effect on speech of removing the privacy.
It may very well prove entirely futile, but at least they're trying (though I have no illusion that their reasons are selfless - they have a strong vested interest in making sure people will trust having these devices in their homes)
I think this has more in common with that case -- where it's being maintained as a business record -- than a phone call.
Also, if the party you're on the phone with (legally) records the call, the courts can subpoena it. Why would this be different, even granting the (I think) inaccurate phone analogy?
Amazon is arguing that they don't have to turn over information in response to the warrant.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13714797
Looking through the memorandum, it appears that there are different levels of need/importance the government must establish depending on whether they are requesting information that could chill free speech. That is, warrants are granted more liberally for information that does not have a tendency to suppress speech (e.g., the date you filed for your car registration) than info that does (e.g., the list of books you've checked out at the library). The latter category must be shown to be more directly related to the issue of the case, rather than being merely a search for possibly-useful background info.
Amazon is arguing that (1) Alexa searches are of this second, more protected form of private information, and (2) the government has not met the higher burden of showing their importance to the case.
That, at least, is my reading of the memorandum. I am not a lawyer.
"You want us to turn over that information? You're going to have to meet your full burden of proving need before we do so." That's reasonable for a case about a device that sits in your house and is constantly listening.
There aren't "connections". Amazon is just building a private cloud for the CIA. There's nothing nefarious going on.
What this case does show is that Amazon puts a listening device in your home which has a very acute understanding of your live. As they argue themselves.
If they do end up giving out the data they will most probably face a severe dip in sales as most people (even those who aren't that privacy focused) will be scared of buying it.
I've been putting off buying one of these devices (Echo/Google Home, etc) just becasue I dont like someone listening to me all the time. But I'm usually a bit paranoid about privacy.
If it goes the other way, I might get one because I think it would be useful but I'm still very worried about the privacy aspect, and I know my wife would be more lax than I - not to mention I don't want to have to be vigilant about every comment I make in my own home.
This is of course in addition to them already fighting a technophobic AI battle in consumers' minds, gradually introducing AI functionality to the masses. This, I think, is largely why they are so reluctant to introduce push notifications even though so many fellow Alexa Skill developers would like it.
In the end though, if I were murdered and Alexa was in the room - I'd want them to give them the darn recordings. Which makes me wonder, what does the family of the victim want?
But to me it seems Amazon has more of a business problem than a legal one: if customers know Alexa is "listening" and that law enforcement can get at the recordings, they'll be less likely to speak openly around the device, or just turn it off and never buy one again.
Better yet, never get one in the first place! Heck, if this doesn't get buried by the weekend sales will drop starting next week.
No one wants a government listening device in their house, which is essentially what this is if the government can issue a search warrant for recordings.
A cell phone can be used to record your voice or even video, but there are technical, legal, and logistical hurdles to cross to enable that functionality for a given phone. Alexa, in contrast, is always on with the technical and logistical hurdles already leapt and the legal one a fairly low bar if Amazon loses here.
I can definitely see people abandoning a brand of phone that features always on audio and/or video recording that can later be used by law enforcement (although the frequency with which gf uses snapchat, maybe not...)
(The bet is off and no one wins if Amazon wins the case as your prediction becomes untestable.)
Long term...I might be right though, assuming a few things...
1) The product category goes main stream, which it hasn't even touched yet.
2) The government uses it as source of information over and over.
3) The mass media actually covers it.
I have changed my behavior based on court cases. The government can force me to touch my phone to login, but I don't have to give up my passcode. So I always turn off my phone when going through TSA, which forces it to require my passcode on restart. I realize I'm probably in the minority here.
However, Amazon doesn't want to win this case based on the technical details of this specific device, because maybe a future device will store more—and then they'd need to fight this battle all over again.
So they're trying to make an argument that doesn't rest on the technical details of their current devices. If they win that, then they won't have to worry about this kind of case later.
The fourth amendment is usually the one where judges find privacy rights. The first amendment is the opposite...it guarantees you the right to be public without being punished for it. It would even make more sense to argue that the fifth amendment protections on self-incrimination cover these recordings, though that would be a really hard sell considering wire taps don't enjoy that kind of protection.
Barring "Alexa: How do I clean up blood stains?" there's unlikely to be anything here (and would a Google search be any different?) But, if there were something incriminating in Alexa queries, the last thing Amazon wants is the inevitable headlines about how someone was convicted based on an Alexa recording which many would read as being an always-on ambient record.
Let's extend that to the same kinds of robots at work. Working alongside humans, participating in meetings, completing various tasks internal and external to the business. Maybe even interacting with similar robots at other companies, vendors, etc.
Not sure any rights regarding these scenarios are well defined today.
If you want to live with observers, you have always had to accept that they can be used in court.
Both the camera footage and maid testimony can be demanded by the courts, so why would a hybrid of the two be different?
I hope an attorney on HN can comment on this. Happy to be wrong but I don't think I am, at least not massively wrong.