SEATTLE (dpa-AFX) - Police officials have issued a warrant to access data from Amazon's Alexa voice assistant in order to solve a murder case.
The police want access to data from the Amazon Echo speaker belonging to James Bates of Bentonville, Arkansas, who has been charged with first-degree murder.
The officials claim that since the Echo speaker always listen for Alexa voice commands, the audio it recorded could provide clues about the murder.
On November 22, 2015, Bates was taken into custody on suspicion of first-degree murder in the death of Victor Collins of Centerton. Collins was found dead in Bates' hot tub.
Amazon is very secure and secretive about they way it handles the audio recorded from Alexa-enabled devices. According to Amazon's privacy statement, it collects 'information about use of Alexa and its interaction with your Alexa Enabled Product (such as device type, voice information, content metadata, and location).' Amazon reserves the right to store that information on its servers.
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