Will Alexa Take the Witness Stand?mrmcclanahan.weebly.com/uploads/1/0/5/0/10503784/4_nonfiction_… · Elizabeth Cline, author of Overdressed: The Shockingly High Cost of Cheap Fashion.

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Will Alexa Take the Witness Stand?Our electronic gadgets are collecting data about us that police are using to solve crimes. When does that violate our constitutional right to privacy?

Illustration by Christopher Short

SEPTEMBER 4, 2017 By Patricia Smith

It was her Fitbit that gave him away.

In December 2015, Connie Dabate was shot dead in her Connecticut home. When police questioned her husband, Richard, he said that a masked intruder had broken in and attacked her. But the Fitbit she wore on her waistband told a different story. The data it had collected showed that she’d walked 1,217 feet around the house in the hour after Richard said she’d been killed. That information called his story into question and led prosecutors to charge him with murder in April.

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Richard Dabate is still awaiting trial, but the case and others like it are raising questions about the nature of privacy in the digital age. Americans are increasingly relying on high-tech gadgets to improve their quality of life: internet-connected security systems, fitness trackers like the Fitbit, smartphones, and personal assistants like Apple’s Siri or Amazon’s Echo, which is also known as Alexa.

But police are beginning to see these devices as something else entirely: evidence gatherers and silent witnesses that continually collect and store data about us whether or not we realize it. 

“It is definitely something we are going to see more of in the future,” says police detective Christopher Jones of East Lampeter Township, Pennsylvania. “As people continue to provide more and more personal information through technology, they have to understand we are obligated to find the best evidence, and this technology has become a part of that.”

At what point, however, does good police work infringe on Americans’ right to privacy in an age when we live our lives tethered to our digital assistants?

“We let these devices into our homes and we’re not really aware of what the implications are,” says Katharina Kopp of the Center for Digital Democracy. “More and more areas of our lives that had once been considered private are now contested spaces.”

The Framers’ MotivationThe right to privacy is based on the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution, which prohibits “unreasonable searches and seizures” (see “The Fourth Amendment,” below). But the courts are still figuring out how to apply that 18th-century phrase to our 21st-century society.

When the Framers wrote the Fourth Amendment in 1789, they had in mind the British soldiers who before the Revolution could enter colonists’ homes to search and seize their belongings without permission. The Framers could never have imagined smartphones, Fitbits, or Alexa.

The most important ruling so far on the issue of privacy and technology was the Supreme Court’s 2014 decision in Riley v. California. The Court ruled that police need to ask permission or get a warrant from a judge to search someone’s cellphone—just as if they were searching inside someone’s home.

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Later this year, the justices will hear a case that could determine whether police need warrants to get tracking information from cellphone companies showing their customers’ locations. Currently, police don’t need warrants for this.

Beyond cellphones, there’s a vast amount of data that’s routinely sent over our devices, and it’s become a rich source for investigators. In many cases, police are not currently required to get a warrant to access this information.

A recent murder case in Bentonville, Arkansas, is getting attention because of the role “smart” devices, including Alexa, have played in the investigation. In November 2015, Victor Collins was found dead in a hot tub in the home of his friend James Bates. Police found signs of a struggle and quickly suspected Bates.

When police looked at the data collected by digital devices in the home, they really began to doubt his innocence. An internet-connected utility meter that automatically records water and electricity usage showed that a huge amount of water was used when Bates said he’d been asleep, suggesting that someone had hosed down the crime scene.  

Did the suspect ask Alexa how to clean up the crime scene?

Then police noticed an Amazon Echo on Bates’s kitchen counter, and they wondered what other evidence it might have collected. Echo has seven microphones and is designed to hear users in any direction up to 20 feet away. Did Bates ask Alexa how to clean up blood? When authorities charged Bates with murder, they tried to get Amazon to turn over all the recordings and electronic data captured by the Echo. The company initially refused, saying it wouldn’t release customer data without a court order.

Bates, whose case is ongoing, ended up allowing Amazon to turn the data over, avoiding what would likely have been a court battle between the police and Amazon. But experts expect such a case to wind up in court at some point.

‘Always On’ DevicesIn the meantime, privacy advocates are deeply concerned about all the data being collected by these “always on” devices. The Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) recently sent a letter to the Justice Department and the Federal Trade

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Commission, asking them to investigate whether the devices violate federal laws against warrantless electronic surveillance.  

“Americans do not expect that the devices in their homes will persistently record everything they say,” EPIC’s letter said. “It is unreasonable to expect consumers to monitor their every word in front of their home electronics. It is also genuinely creepy.”

But while the government and the courts figure out what the rules are, experts say it’s up to everyone to be aware that their devices are listening.

“Today,” says Joel Reidenberg of Fordham University’s Center on Law and Information Policy, “it’s more or less naive to expect privacy when communicating on any of these devices.”

The Fourth AmendmentA QUICK GUIDE TO YOUR RIGHTS IN THE DIGITAL WORLD

The Fourth Amendment prohibits “unreasonable searches and seizures.” How that applies to the digital world depends on the situation.

In general, if the police ask to physically search something—whether it’s your house, your car, or your phone—you have the right to say no. If you say yes to a search, you’re effectively giving up your Fourth Amendment rights. If you refuse, police need a court-issued warrant to do a search. They also need a warrant to listen in on the phone calls of suspected criminals. 

To get a warrant, police must convince a judge that there’s “probable cause” to suspect criminal activity.  

When it comes to the data that our high-tech devices transmit—anything from our activity levels to what Alexa hears—police in most cases don’t need a warrant to search, at least for now.

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Photographer: Shannon Greer; stylist: Jessica Zindren; groomer: Nicole Hernandez.

The Real Cost of Cheap FashionMany of our trendy, inexpensive clothes are made in places like Bangladesh, where workers—including children—toil under conditions that may shock youSEPTEMBER 4, 2017 By Laura Anastasia

Young women hunch over sewing machines in a windowless workroom in Bangladesh. Elbow to elbow in the stifling heat, they assemble jackets. Together, the women must sew hundreds of jackets an hour, more than 1,000 a day. Their daily wage is less than $3.

Just a week or two later, these same jackets will be labeled fall’s hottest back-to-school item, selling to teens for $14.99 each at malls across the United States.

The jackets are just one example of what is known as fast fashion: trendyclothes designed, created, and sold to consumers as quickly as possible at extremely low prices. New looks arrive in stores weekly or even daily, and they cost so little that many people can afford to fill their closets with new outfits multiple times each year—then toss them the minute they go out of style.

Chains such as H&M and Zara first popularized fast fashion in the early 2000s. It has since spread throughout the entire clothing industry. As a result, global clothing

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production has more than tripled since 2000. The industry now churns out more than 150 billion garments annually.

Long Hours & Little PayFast fashion items may not cost you much at the cash register, but they come with a serious price: Tens of millions of people in developing countries, some just children, work long hours in dangerous conditions to make them, in the kinds of factories often labeled sweatshops. Most garment workers are paid barely enough to survive. 

Fast fashion also hurts the environment. Garments are manufactured using toxic chemicals and then transported around the globe, making the fashion industry the world’s second-largest polluter, after the oil industry. And millions of tons of discarded clothing piles up in landfills each year.  

“A lot of what we’re throwing away hasn’t even been worn that many times,” says Elizabeth Cline, author of Overdressed: The Shockingly High Cost of  Cheap Fashion. “Clothing has become a cheap form of entertainment.” 

Until the 1970s, most apparel worn by Americans was made in the United States. Then clothing production, like a lot of manufacturing, began moving overseas, where labor costs were lower. As recently as 1990, half the clothes sold in the U.S. were made in the U.S. Today, it’s just 2 percent. 

Most American clothing companies now manufacture their merchandise in developing countries in Asia (see map, below). Workers there earn a fraction of what U.S. workers make—and have fewer protections. The lower labor costs translate to lower prices for shoppers (who then buy more clothing) and higher profits for retailers. That’s helped make fashion a $3 trillion global industry. 

Today, many of the world’s 75 million garment workers live in China and Bangladesh, the top-two clothing producers. Workers often earn just a few dollars a day. Many are women in their teens.

“They’re sometimes the first one in their families to have a real job, so the family is eager to get them into the factories as quickly as they can,” says Michael Posner of New York University’s Stern Center for Business and Human Rights. “It’s a very tough existence.”

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Indeed, garment workers often toil in windowless rooms thick with fumes from the chemicals used to manufacture and dye clothes. If they dare miss a day because they’re sick, they risk being fired.

For Taslima Aktar, that wasn’t an option. The 23-year-old couldn’t afford to lose her job at the Windy Apparels factory in Bangladesh, so when her manager refused last year to give her time off to see a doctor about a persistent fever she accepted it.

Weeks later, Aktar passed out at work. After she was revived, her boss sent her back to her sewing machine. Shortly after, her heart stopped and she died.

“We know the same thing can happen any day, to any of us,” says one of Aktar’s co-workers, who told her story to Slate.

G.M.B. Akash/PANOS (child worker); Andrew Biraj/LANDOV/Reuters (collapsed factory)

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A Deadly AccidentMany people didn’t give much thought to how their clothing was made until April 24, 2013, when the Rana Plaza factory building in Bangladesh collapsed. The deadliest accident in the history of the garment industry, it killed more than 1,100 workers and injured 2,500 others. The factory, overloaded with too many floors, workers, and equipment, had been making clothing for global brands such as Benetton, Joe Fresh, and Mango. 

After the accident, many big brands pledged to improve garment factory conditions. About 200 major clothing companies partnered to create factory oversight programs in Bangladesh. In recent years, these programs have trained about 2 million workers in safety procedures. The companies have also hired independent engineers to inspect their factories. 

In southern China, too, many factories now offer safer conditions and better wages than they did a decade ago. In some areas, the minimum wage for garment workers reached $312 a month last year—42 percent more than the previous year. 

Patrick Chappatte/Caglecartoons.com

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Better working conditions and wages come at a price, however. Some factories in Bangladesh have had to reduce their production capacity to afford higher employee pay and building repairs. That means the factories are less able to fill massive orders from big brands. As a result, big clothing companies may eventually shift their business to even poorer countries with fewer regulations, experts say. 

Other factories can’t afford to make the major structural upgrades that are needed for them to be safe. (Of the 2,000 Bangladeshi factories that have been inspected so far, only 79 had passed final inspection as of March 2017.) 

That’s one reason unsafe working conditions persist. Last year, a garment factory fire in India killed 13 people. Another fire this past June injured more than 20 knitwear factory workers in Bangladesh. Some jumped out of third-story windows to escape the flames. 

Environmental TollFast fashion also takes a heavy toll on the environment. The industry consumes enormous amounts of water and other natural resources. Producing enough cotton for one pair of jeans takes about 1,800 gallons of water—the equivalent of about 105 showers.

Manufacturing polyester, which is made from petroleum, releases dangerous gases into the air. And farming cotton accounts for a quarter of all pesticides used in the United States. (The U.S. sends about 70 percent of the cotton it grows overseas, where it’s turned into clothing.) Some of those pesticides can cause asthma and other health problems, and the chemicals pollute fresh water.

The damage doesn’t end once clothing is made. Americans on average trash more than 70 pounds of clothes and shoes a year. Most are burned or piled in landfills, where synthetic fibers can take hundreds of years to break down.  

“A lot of the problems in the fashion industry are things that are happening in other places: air and water pollution in China, poverty and low wages in Bangladesh,” says Cline. “The waste is happening in our own backyard.”

Many big brands pledged to improve factory conditions.As more people have become aware of the ugly side of fast fashion, the push for ethically made clothing has grown. In the U.S., hundreds of start-ups are creating clothes out of recycled or organic fabrics. These companies use materials from U.S.

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factories, where they can better monitor working conditions. Big brands are trying to be more eco-conscious, as well. H&M, for example, offers customers store credit to recycle clothes at its retail locations. 

“I think we’re going to see big fashion brands become leaders in sustainable clothes and make them accessible and more affordable,” Cline predicts.

But experts agree it will take more than just efforts by clothing companies to remedy the problems of fast fashion. Local factory owners, global retailers, and consumers must all play a role.

If teenage shoppers, to whom much of fast fashion is marketed, educate themselves about how their clothes are made and think carefully about what they buy, it can make a real difference, experts say. 

“It’s everybody’s problem,” says Posner, “and it’s everybody’s responsibility to come together and solve it.”

Where Your Clothes Were MadeIn 2016, the U.S. imported almost 27 billion articles of clothing. Here are the top 10 countries those clothes came from.

MAP: Jim McMahon | SOURCE: Department of Commerce, Office of Textiles and Apparel; percentages rounded

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iStock/Getty images

Fighting Fake News

Made-up stories are taking over the internet. Are tech companies doing enough to stop the spread?

SEPTEMBER 4, 2017 By Sarah Grossbart

The results were disturbing. Late last year, when Google users typed the phrase, “Did the Holocaust happen?” into the search engine, the first hit was a story—posted on a website run by a hate group—falsely stating that the mass murder of millions of Jews in Europe during World War II (1939-45) never occurred.

That lie—and the fact that it was the top result on the world’s most popular search engine—highlighted the growing problem of fake news. Misinformation published online often spreads faster than it can be challenged. Bogus stories shared extensively on social media are then ranked high by Google and other search engines, making them easier to find—and increasing people’s sense of their credibility.

“Just because something is in the top five of your search results doesn’t mean it’s reliable,” says Jonathan Anzalone of the Center for News Literacy at Stony Brook University in New York.

The information may be made up, but it can have real-world consequences. In December 2016, a man was arrested at a pizzeria in Washington, D.C., after firing a rifle inside the eatery. He claimed he was “self-investigating” a story that the

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restaurant had connections to a human trafficking ring linked to the Democratic Party. The story was fake.

Since then, tech companies have come under fire for not doing enough to address the phony stories. Now Google and Facebook—among the biggest distributors of fake news—are rolling out strategies to combat it.

Google & Facebook

Google recently announced plans to minimize the reach of fake news in its searches. The tech giant has assigned more than 10,000 employees to electronically flag articles containing misleading information. This ensures they’re ranked lower in Google search results and that users can see that they contain highly suspect or false information.

For example, a recent, widely shared story claimed that 300,000 pounds of rat meat were being sold as chicken wings across the U.S. That article is now tagged as false. In addition, a link directs users to a fact-check of the story by the nonpartisan site PolitiFact.com. 

Facebook is launching its own fact-check tool, and the site is working to delete phony accounts run by “bots”—or web robots—that automatically “like” and share fake news. Facebook has also experimented with a more old-fashioned approach to stop misinformation: Before recent elections in Great Britain, the site placed ads in local newspapers about how to spot fake news.

‘Attracting Eyeballs’

Many experts, however, say the tech companies aren’t doing enough.

“[Tech companies] make money by attracting and keeping eyeballs,” says Matthew A. Baum, a public policy professor at Harvard University in Massachusetts. “They talk and talk and do very little. And the stuff they are doing is, at best, marginally effective.”

One problem, he says, is that fact-checking individual articles takes too much time to slow fast-spreading fake news. Instead, internet platforms should evaluate the credibility of websites as a whole, he says. Any content from a site that consistently

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publishes false stories should rank low in results lists--—and rise only if the entire site starts producing more reliable information, says Baum.  

Making fake news sites harder to find is key, Baum says, because labeling stories as false doesn’t necessarily stop people from believing them.

“We tend to accept something as true the more we encounter it,” he says. So if you read a story that’s been labeled false, “you might forget it was declared bogus and just remember that you saw it.” If you see that story again later, you’re more likely to fall for it, Baum explains. 

Tech companies should also be more aggressive about deleting fake accounts, according to Baum. Facebook recently deleted 30,000 such accounts, but in 2013, the company estimated that it had as many as 138 million phony accounts.

How Teens Get Their NewsAmerican teens were recently asked which sources they had used in the last 24 hours to keep up with current events.

Rawpixel.com/Shutterstock.com

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Educating Readers

For now, the best tool for stopping fake news may be educating people to be more skeptical about what they read (see “What You Can Do”). Washington state passed a law last spring that would encourage public schools to offer media literacy classes. Several other states are considering similar legislation.

The classes teach students how to analyze information from websites, TV, and other forms of media. Anzalone, at the Center for News Literacy, says they also help students recognize their natural biases.

“We don’t like to receive information that may conflict with what we believe,” he says. So when we read something that affirms what we think—even if it’s wrong—we’re more likely to accept it. That’s why we need to think critically about what we’re reading, he says. The end goal is about more than being able to spot a made-up story, says Anzalone.  “It’s about valuing and seeking truth—and knowing how to find it.”

What You Can DoDIG DEEPER  Just because a story pops up first on Google doesn’t mean it’s trustworthy. Look at the descriptions of multiple results before deciding which one to click.

CHECK THE SOURCE  If a story comes from an unfamiliar website, click on the “About” page to learn more. Searching a site’s name or its founder’s name on the web can help you decide if the site is credible.

DON'T SHARE  Spotted a fake news story? Avoid sending it to your friends or reposting it. Sharing bogus stories only widens their audience—and helps them rise even higher in search results.

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Terrorists are building drones. France is destroying them with eagles.By Avi Selk February 21 

The French Air Force is training eagles from a young age to snatch drones from out of the sky. (Reuters)Under French military supervision, four golden eagle

chicks hatched last year atop drones — born into a world

of terror and machines they would be bred to destroy.

The eagles — named d'Artagnan, Athos, Porthos and

Aramis — grew up with their nemeses.

They chased drones through green grass that

summer, pecking futilely at composite shells as seen in Sky

News footage. They were rewarded with meat, which they

ate off the backs of the drones.

When the eagles were ready — this month — d'Artagnan

launched screeching from a military control tower across a

field, Agence France-Presse reported.

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The bird covered 200 meters in 20 seconds, slamming into

a drone, then diving with the wreckage into the tall grass.

"The eagles are making good progress," said the French air

force's commander of a program that adapts the ancient

art of falconry to the threats of unmanned flight.

Weeks earlier, on the other side of the world, Iraqi soldiers

fired their guns wildly into the sky after a small drone

dropped a bomb on them. Terrorists have been

modifying devices that can be bought in toy stores

into weapons and radio-controlled spies, the Associated

Press reported. 16

The French have been concerned since early 2015, when

drones flew over the presidential palace and a

restricted military site, according to Agence France-Presse.

No one was harmed. But terrorist attacks later that year,

including the November massacre in Paris, inspired

military officials to creative prevention.

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They wanted a way to take down drones without shooting

at them — a potential disaster if one went rogue in a

crowded area.

[How the Islamic State has ‘weaponized’ drones to spur

terrorism fears]

A solution presented itself in an experiment by Dutch

police, who last year used a trained eagle to pluck a DJI

Phantom drone out of the air, Peter Holley reported for

The Washington Post.

With unmatched speed and sight and bone-crushing

talons, birds of prey have been trained to hunt for

hundreds of years — for other animals, of course. But a

wild eagle demonstrated natural hostility to a drone in

Australia — as the doomed machine's final footage

revealed on CNN.

Thus, in France, four eggs "were placed before birth on top

of drones while still inside the eggshell and, after hatching,

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kept them there during their early feeding period," Reuters

reported in November.

The eagles were named after characters in "The Three

Musketeers," and by February proved capable of

intercepting drones in lightning-fast horizontal chases.

"Soon they will be casting off from peaks in the nearby

Pyrenees Mountains," Agence France-Presse reported.

The military has already ordered a second brood of eagles,

according to the outlet.

Meanwhile, d'Artagnan and his siblings will be outfitted

with high technology to carry on their war against

machines.

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"The military is designing mittens of leather and Kevlar,

an anti-blast material, to protect their talons," Agence

France-Presse reported.