Police seek Amazon Echo data in murder case

The Internet of Things (IoT) requires some risk to security and privacy in exchange for convenience.

Source: Engadget

An Amazon spokesperson gave Engadget the following statement on the matter:

"Amazon will not release customer information without a valid and binding legal demand properly served on us. Amazon objects to overbroad or otherwise inappropriate demands as a matter of course."

Echo only captures audio and streams it to the cloud when the device hears the wake word "Alexa."

Those clips, or "utterances" as the company calls them, are stored in the cloud until a customer deletes them either individually or all at once.

How to Hack the Backbone of the Internet

Source: The Motherboard blog at Vice Magazine

The highlight of the NSA’s Powerpoint presentation is a hand-drawn slide of two circles that shows where the public internet meets Google's private cloud. That meeting point is a prime spot for the NSA to intercept traffic,  encryption is “added and removed here!” as the slide states, with a smiley face no less.