Alexa... call the cops!
Crime victims could use their Amazon Echo to summon help – without getting off the sofa
IT is the voice-activated device that millions use to play music, order groceries or check on the weather.
Now police are exploring whether an Amazon Echo could be used by victims and witnesses to report crimes without getting off their sofa.
They also want to use the technology to deliver crime bulletins to householders about offences committed in their area, wanted suspects and missing people.
Lancashire Police is set to be the first force to launch news briefings through voice-activated smart speakers so residents can ‘Ask Alexa’ what is happening in their street or area. The force plans to use the technology for internal briefings updating officers on anything from a terrorist attack to reading out a crime log.
Police are also exploring whether the device – connected to a voice-controlled personal assistant service, which responds to the name Alexa – could be used to call in crime reports to officers without leaving home.
The Lancashire force’s Rob Flanagan came up with the idea after experimenting with the digital voice assistant to read nursery rhymes to his daughter.
The officer, who spent 16 years on the beat, predicts the public will be using smart machines to fill out crime reports by the end of 2018. The force will start by launching the first police publicfacing app this month to deliver daily news through Amazon Echo. Information such as images of missing people, murder appeals and even the number of officers on duty in the area will also be sent to user’s smart phones which automatically synch with the device.
He told the College of Policing conference: ‘If we can reduce demand into our call centres via the use of voice recognition or voice enabled technology and actually give the community the information they need without them needing to ring in to police then that’s massive.… I would like to be the first force to use this for crime reporting.’
The Echo works by constantly listening for the ‘wake word’ – ‘Alexa’ or ‘Amazon’ by default – and then records your voice and transfers it to a processor for analysis so that it can fulfil requests or answer questions. The recordings are streamed and stored remotely which means any call through the device would be the property of Amazon raising privacy concerns.
Millie Graham Wood, legal officer at Privacy International, said: ‘Police want to improve communication with the public but is this really the most appropriate mechanism? If you are asking people to report crime via Amazon and give personal details it would raise a whole raft of problems.’