Amazon is now at the center of a debate over public safety versus privacy

A New Hampshire judge’s attempt to compel Amazon to share recordings from an Echo device at the scene of an alleged double murder is putting a fine point on law enforcement’s growing demand for data from Internet of Things devices. Prosecutors are seeking two days of recordings from the smart speaker in a Farmington (NH) home where two women were found dead in Jan 2017. The judge directed the company to turn over evidence in the case, but so far, Amazon has said it “will not release customer data without a valid and binding legal demand properly served on us." Electronic Frontier Foundation Senior Staff Attorney Nate Cardozo said law enforcement has long asked technology companies to turn over data from connected devices. Such requests date back to at least the early 2000s, when law enforcement tried to surveil via car assistance programs. But it’s happening with greater frequency as the number of IoT devices in consumers’ homes explodes. “Now that everything has a microphone or a sensor,” Cardozo said, “the amount of data is just so many orders of magnitude greater.”