Amazon said it had received more than 3,000 requests for smart speaker user data from police earlier this year, according to a new article from Wired. Even more stunning, Amazon complied with the police’s requests on more than 2,000 occasions, forking over recordings and data that give law enforcement an ear into someone’s household.
This number marks a 72% increase in these types of requests from the same period in 2016 – the first time Amazon disclosed the data. The number of requests are up 24% year over year.
Douglas Orr, head of the criminal justice department at the University of North Georgia, told Wired that police look for this smart home data “as routinely as data from smartphones”. Police can continue to collect data if one electronic device (like a phone) leads them to another (like a smart home speaker) simply by amending search warrants, he said.
Google’s Nest unit has also seen a similar spike in police demands for data from its smart speakers. The company’s annual transparency report shows consistently rising numbers for police requests for data.
Meanwhile, Amazon said that “any number of entities” can request the data, but that they prioritize it based on urgency. Lee Whitfield, a forensic analyst, said: “Things like Homeland Security, they’re going to take high priority. Other law enforcement requests will come in under that. And then things like divorce cases or civil cases, they have a lower ranking.” – READ MORE
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