“We’re watching you”: Police Requests To Access Your Smart Speaker Are Up 72% Since 2016

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.

Police are also relying on wearables and smart devides to verify claims people make during an investigation, Orr says. Wired offers this example:

Heather Mahalik, a forensics instructor, recalls a Florida case in which a man killed his wife, then tried to impersonate her. The husband sent texts and Facebook messages from his wife’s phone in an attempt to blur the timeline of her disappearance.

While the woman’s phone activity continued, her Apple Watch showed a sudden drop in heart rate activity that the husband claimed was due to a dead battery. Activity on the man’s phone synced perfectly with when he used the wife’s phone to post to Facebook.

Her phone showed no activity except for when the husband picked it up to post, with timestamps matching his activity to the use of the wife’s phone.

“We were able to tell from his device that he would pick up the phone, take 18 steps, and it corresponded with the time he posted a Facebook post,” Mahalik said.

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