> recording devices installed in users’ homes have recordings used in a court of law against the homeowner
I didn't read that Amazon have said they have recordings of the incident? Did they? It seemed like they "might". Was the alleged murderer the home-owner, or the victims? In the latter, it looks like they've been used to support justice for the homeowners?
> the third party doctrine means a warrant isn’t even required
The article I read said that a "judge has ordered Amazon to turn over recordings". That sounds a lot like a warrant to me, and if it isn't, it sounds like it isn't only under a technicality of some sort?
> the NSA can intercept these recordings
I also didn't get that from the article you're replying to?
It’s funny because the answer to this reveals a lot with respect to OPs comment about “being used against the homeowner in court”.
1. The homeowner was a known drug dealer to police and one of the victims was his girlfriend. (Normally these facts might make the homeowner a suspect)
2. As it turns out (maybe directly related the his reputation with police) he had surveillance cameras, so even without Alexa the video surveillance actually showed the defendant with the women before their death.
Not to say OP isn’t right and voice assistant recordings will regularly be used in court against their owners interest, but in this case it only helped and the home owner already had video surveillance.
1) The implication of widespread proliferation of these types of recording devices
2) The accessibility/retention of the recordings for law enforcement
3) The long-standing legal framework around the third party doctrine and the NSA’s willingness to abuse third-party private data for data mining
It smacks of “think of the children!” to talk about what a bad guy they’re using the tech to help catch. Of course the early cases are sympathetic!
It’s not hard to see what’s coming when they put large blinking neon signs like this case up for us.
It just so happens that the company that makes these devices will be deriving a large portion of its profits in the coming decades from the same government which will very deeply want access to these records.
It also just so happens the company that makes these devices has already demonstrated how eager it is to hawk its panopticonic AI to that very same government for the purposes of mass surveillance.
> It smacks of “think of the children!”
Your original comment of "against the homeowner" reads to me as a similar appeal to emotion.
> The accessibility/retention of the recordings for law enforcement
The particulars here seem to be that they probably don't have recordings, and those recordings -- if they exist -- were only obtainable under court supervision. You muddled -- deliberately or accidentally -- both of these points in your post.
> the NSA
Who were mentioned precisely zero places in the original article.
> It’s not hard to see what’s coming when they put large blinking neon signs like this case up for us
Except you've created a gigantic strawman:
* Law abiding citizen
* Warrantless seizure
* Referring to these devices as recording devices, where that's a serious distortion of the functionality they offer, and it's entirely unclear if there are any saved audio files, anywhere
* Claiming that the NSA would refer to diverting recordings from this as non-collections
And then attacked that.
Because the facts of this case are direct counter examples to all your points.
You claim no one is surprised Alexa is used in court against homeowners. Surprise Alexa (and video surviellence) are actually being used as a alibi for the homeowners innocence and potentially helping bring the murderer of the homeowners girlfriend and friend to justice.
You bring up warrantless searches. Again in this case no warrant would be needed because the homeowner would want to voluntarily waive their rights and turn over any and all recording that might help prove his innocence and bring the murderer to justice.
It’s strange you would question why I would bring up the facts of the case and call that a think about the children arguement. Whereas ignoring the facts to make arguements that are contradicted by the facts of this case is exactly that...a think about the children [privacy] arguement.
And it would be a surprise to me if the NSA spent its time intentionally and broadly intercepting and analyzing the domestic recordings of the kind described in this case. Not just because it would be illegal, but pointless for their institutional mission, which they seem barely able to manage as is.
[0] https://www.wired.com/story/carpenter-v-united-states-suprem...
The Alexa recordings are collected as a primary function of the device purchased and setup at the whim of the owner specifically for the purpose of capturing audio in their own home for advanced processing and analysis by a third party.
The precedent you cite is unfortunately not going to protect this data, in my opinion, because the specific rationale the Supreme Court used to start requiring a warrant for cell site data are perfectly avoided in this case.
As for the NSA doing things that are illegal or “pointless for their institutional mission”, which also happen to massively infringe on basic human privacy rights,... it would seem from recent history that that is exactly what they are most likely to do.
I definitely didn't mean to imply that the NSA is above doing illegal activities. But it seems self-evident that people were very surprised by the Snowden revelations, enough to demand reforms [1] (or at least "gestures", if we want to be cynical). And people would be just as surprised to find out the NSA doing something far more invasive today. Laws and regulations don't mean that illegal activity will cease to exist -- but it makes such activity much more difficult/cumbersome to do, especially on such a wide-scale, without the conspiratorial buy-in from agency managers, leaders, and high-ranking legislators. So I'm not surprised that the NSA has the capability to do massive 1984-like domestic surveillance, but I would be surprised that such a program was approved and implemented. The laws/regulations on paper are what make it possible for anyone to get punished when someone like Snowden whistleblows.
[0] https://www.reviewjournal.com/crime/shootings/unsealed-docum...
[1] https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/article/how-the-nsa-spyin...
The NSA also does a lot of interception for World of Warcraft chats and other stuff like that. And the new FISA law allows 17 agencies (including DEA, IRS, SEC, ETC) to gain access and analyze raw internet data that passed unencrypted through internet cables. Oh and they don't need a warrant to do that either (very likely unconstitutional but still "legal" at the moment). They only need the warrant for the cherry picked data they intend to use in court. And of course we all know the damage against many innocents will already be done by then.
Law enforcement has managed to convince some judges at the right time in history with their twisted logic and unfortunately the case precedent thing makes this a thing that goes on for decades, even though that old ruling is now being applied to orders of magnitude more data on someone compared to the original case.
Until this changes just minimize or completely eliminate anything that can both record what you say or do and also send it to someone else's servers. Eventually all humans will have to fight for (I guess new) rights that can protect them against overzealous governments using advertising companies, surveillance powers and artificial intelligence against them. I think the 2020's will be the new 50's in terms of fighting for new rights and against government oppression. I don't expect this to go down very peacefully. It almost never does in such cases.
They do. They even give it away to third parties. Legally speaking your bank deposit is a loan to the bank.
I encourage everyone who is not familiar with them to read all of James Bamford's books on the NSA. And Robert Baer's books on the CIA.
I would imagine Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the UK, & the US.
Collectively, they point to a much more insidious state of affairs than I think most people want to admit.
In a surprise to no one, the third party doctrine means a warrant isn’t even required to demand these recordings from the cloud provider.
In a surprise to no one, the NSA can intercept these recordings (and associated speech to text transcripts), load all the associated data into their monster correlation engine, mine the shit out of it, and say they didn’t “collect” anything because they haven’t actually put a bag over your head, driven you to a black site, and waterboarded you. Yet.