Police seek murder suspect’s Amazon Echo data

James Bates, 32, faces a charge of first-degree murder in the November 2015 death of his co-worker, Victor Collins. Bates and Collins had been drinking and watching football with two other friends the night the alleged murder took place.

According to The Information’s report, Bates has a number of Internet-connected devices – including an Amazon Echo, a Honeywell alarm system, and a Nest thermostat – in his home. Of the items shipped, the Echo and the Echo Dot, smart speakers that can be controlled with your voice and recognize and respond to the name “Alexa”, topped the charts in sales for Amazon. Echo is said to only capture audio and stream it to the Amazon servers when the device hears the wake word “Alexa“. Police discovered the corpse of Collins in a hot bath tub at the suspect Bates’ home in Bentonville.

If you just purchased or received an Amazon Echo device this holiday season, check out our guide for the best Alexa skills to help you get started. “Google only stores voice-based queries received immediately after recognizing of hotwords “OK Google” or “Hey Google.’ Hotword detection runs locally on the Google Home device across a short snippet of microphone data”.

However, the police said a detective found a way to extract data from the device itself.

Aside from the great success of Echo, Amazon released other interesting stats that are related to its overall success during the holiday season.

Amazon have declined police requests to access this information and any recordings though without a “valid legal demand”. Webcams, cellphones, and power meters are all common devices which can collect important data that can be used by investigators when solving a crime.

Bates’s lawyer Kim Weber told the Daily News that she thinks that prosecutor’s request for her client’s Echo information was overbroad, but added that she did not believe that any incriminating evidence would be found if police had access to everything on the device.

Information from the filter says 140 gallons of water was used between 1am and 3am on the night of the victim’s death.

The use of data obtained from smart devices in criminal proceedings is a troubling issue for authorities and the makers of such devices.

Bates defense attorney says he has nothing to hide but is calling this an issue of privacy.