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Amazon Argues That Alexa Is Protected By the First Amendment in a Murder Trial (qz.com)
Amazon is sticking to its guns in the fight to protect customer data. The ecommerce giant has filed a motion to quash the search warrant for recordings from an Amazon Echo in the trial of James Andrew Bates, accused of murdering friend Victor Collins in Bentonville, Arkansas in November 2015. And it's arguing that the responses of Alexa, the voice of the Echo, has First Amendment rights as part of that motion. From a report on Quartz: The company's lawyers claim that Alexa's recordings and responses are subject to free speech protections under the US constitution's bill of rights, and that prosecutors need to provide more evidence that this audio is essential to the case. "It is well established that the First Amendment protects not only an individual's right to speak, but also his or her 'right to receive information and ideas,'" Amazon lawyers wrote in a court filing. "At the heart of that First Amendment protection is the right to browse and purchase expressive materials anonymously, without fear of government discovery." Amazon also referenced a 2014 case involving Chinese search giant Baidu, where a court ruled that results returned by a search engine are protected by the First Amendment.
You'd think someone in product development would have been smart enough to say "hey, we should only store post-processed voiceprint data not raw speech so we don't have to deal with legal bullshit."
Someone had to do it.
Amazon likely doesn't want to reveal what it's recording (everything) and how long it holds onto it (forever).
This, pretty much. People might have second thoughts about buying one if they realized Amazon records *everything*, forever.
I'm far from a legal expert but doesn't the gov't already have the power to subpoena library records to see if a defendant checked out books on poison or bombs?
Most states have strict laws about recording conversations without informed consent. Even if the owner has given consent to Amazon, Google, Apple and Microsoft to listen for commands, visitors and others might not have. And it could be illegal for them to record anything before getting consent.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
The summary does a poor job of explaining Amazon's point (which isn't to say it's a good point anyway). Amazon doesn't seem to be saying that Alexa has rights, so much as it's saying that you or I or anyone else who owns an Echo has rights, and that those rights would be trampled if this warrant was served.
Their line of argumentation seems to be the following:
1) People have a First Amendment right to say and express anything they want in the privacy of their home (which is true)
2) If people aren't secure in their privacy, we've stripped them of their right to express themselves freely (also true)
3) If the police could hear anything anyone has said, it would have a "chilling effect" because people wouldn't be secure in their privacy (yup)
4) The police are asking for days' worth of audio without any direct evidence it has anything to do with the crime (true, I guess)
5) Thus, if they granted the police access to those recordings, they would be compromising the rights of Alexa users everywhere (wait...what?)
The problem with their logic is, of course, that the police aren't forcing anyone to buy an Alexa device. If I choose to purchase a device that, by design, records everything I say, then I've voluntarily sacrificed my right to privacy in exchange for the benefits afforded by the device. It's not the police's fault that I've done so, and they're entirely within their rights to seek a warrant for the information that I've served up on a platter.
This isn't blanket police surveillance, like Amazon appears to be asserting. This is a blanket devaluation of and disregard for the importance of privacy. Amazon is trying to protect us from the consequences of our poor choices, not because they're interested in protecting our interests, but rather because their business depends on having no consequences for using their products. If people actually understood just how creepy Alexa and similar products are, they'd stop inviting them into their homes. Amazon is worried that a case like this will shine light on Alexa's privacy-destroying behavior.
Sacrificing one's privacy should never be treated lightly.