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Amazon.com<br />

Amazon refuses to let police access US murder<br />

suspect’s Echo recordings<br />

Company has declined to provide audio recorded by smart speaker system at house where man died,<br />

according to a report<br />

Amazon’s Echo smart speaker listens for commands and can carry out tasks such as calling an Uber or<br />

turning on lights. Photograph: Mark Lennihan/AP<br />

Alex Hern and Sam Thielman in New York<br />

Wednesday 28 December <strong>2016</strong> 10.36 GMT Last modified on Wednesday 28 December <strong>2016</strong><br />

22.00 GMT<br />

Amazon has refused to hand over data from an Echo smart speaker to US police want to access as<br />

part of an investigation into a murder in Arkansas, according to court records seen by tech industry<br />

news site <strong>The</strong> Information.<br />

Arkansas police issued a warrant to Amazon to turn over recordings and other information associated<br />

with the device owned by James Andrew Bates. Bates has been charged with the murder of a man<br />

found dead in his hot tub in November 2015.<br />

<strong>The</strong> Seattle-based tech company twice declined to provide the police with the information they<br />

requested from the device, although it did provide Bates’s account information and purchase history,<br />

the report said court records show.<br />

Although the Echo is known for having “always-on” microphones to enable its voice-controlled<br />

features, the vast majority of the recordings it makes are not saved for longer than the few seconds it<br />

takes to determine if a pre-set “wake word” (usually “Alexa”) has been said. Only if that wake word<br />

has been heard does the device’s full complement of microphones come on and begin transmitting<br />

audio to Amazon.

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