"yan Calo, a professor at the UW School of Law who specializes in privacy, robotics and cyberlaw issues, says the Bentonville Police Department’s fishing expedition is “unlikely to yield anything.” The reason is that the Echo sends information up to Amazon’s cloud only when it hears a wake word, usually “Alexa” or “Echo.”
Even though the device can turn on accidentally by mistaking another sound for its wake word, it would be a huge coincidence that it managed to have recorded something pertinent to the alleged crime. “That’s so unlikely, it seems to me a big waste of time,” Calo says."