Alexa, Can I Get A Witness?

This holiday was a huge success for Amazon, especially for its in-home audio assistant device, the Amazon Echo.

Amazon.com Inc. said it had its best holiday season yet, having shipped more than 1 billion items through its Prime and Fulfillment services, and receiving a record number of orders for its own Alexa devices.

Sales for Echo speakers based on Alexa’s voice-recognition software were nine times more than the 2015 holiday season, Amazon said in a statement Tuesday. The Seattle-based company had trouble keeping them in stock despite “ramped-up production,” said Jeff Wilke, chief executive officer worldwide consumer.

Gauging demand for a product is difficult. Retailers risk losing money by overstocking or missing sales and disappointing shoppers by not having enough items available. Amazon actually sold out of its Echo speakers in mid-December. The Echo shortage shows voice-activated assistants are resonating with shoppers. Consumers can use voice commands on the gadget to order pizza, check homework, play music, among other tasks.

“Echo and Echo Dot were the best-selling products across Amazon this year, and we’re thrilled that millions of new customers will be introduced to Alexa as a result,” Wilke said.

But here's the dark side of Alexa: putting a device in your home whose job it is to listen to you speak and then recognize and use that data means you should have zero expectations of privacy around it.

This was bound to happen eventually, the question now becomes what privacy standards will be imposed as law tries desperately to catch up to technology. Police in Arkansas want to know what an Amazon Echo device may have overheard in a murder case, and suddenly that hot new Christmas gift you got this year is looking rather Orwellian.

Amazon's Echo devices and its virtual assistant are meant to help find answers by listening for your voice commands. However, police in Arkansas want to know if one of the gadgets overheard something that can help with a murder case. According to The Information, authorities in Bentonville issued a warrant for Amazon to hand over any audio or records from an Echo belonging to James Andrew Bates. Bates is set to go to trial for first-degree murder for the death of Victor Collins next year.

Amazon declined to give police any of the information that the Echo logged on its servers, but it did hand over Bates' account details and purchases. Police say they were able to pull data off of the speaker, but it's unclear what info they were able to access. Due to the so-called always on nature of the connected device, the authorities are after any audio the speaker may have picked up that night. Sure, the Echo is activated by certain words, but it's not uncommon for the IoT gadget to be alerted to listen by accident.

Police say Bates had several other smart home devices, including a water meter. That piece of tech shows that 140 gallons of water were used between 1AM and 3AM the night Collins was found dead in Bates' hot tub. Investigators allege the water was used to wash away evidence of what happened off of the patio. The examination of the water meter and the request for stored Echo information raises a bigger question about privacy. At a time when we have any number of devices tracking and automating our habits at home, should that information be used against us in criminal cases?

Bates' attorney argues that it shouldn't. "You have an expectation of privacy in your home, and I have a big problem that law enforcement can use the technology that advances our quality of life against us," defense attorney Kimberly Weber said. Of course, there's also the question of how reliable information is from smart home devices. Accuracy can be an issue for any number of IoT gadgets. However, an audio recording would seemingly be a solid piece of evidence, if released.

Smart devices used in criminal investigations are just further data points to be gathered by investigators, law enforcement argues.  The larger question is if the data you generate in your home through internet-connected devices your data at all.  To whom does it ultimately belong to?  Corporate America? Your employer? The state?

What I do know is that the answer to that question is increasingly "not you", the consumer. And more and more the data generated by these devices is going to be used against you by people whose interests may not match your own.