The Regensburg Regional Court recently sentenced a 54-year-old man to many years in prison for manslaughter and coercion. As the Bavarian Radio reports, the court used recordings of a smart speaker as evidence for the first time in Germany. The two sound recordings were made by a Amazon Echo speaker, which was in the bedroom of the killed woman, recorded during the night of the crime. Listening, besides the victim, is also the voice of the now convicted perpetrator.
Case-by-case decision allows evaluation of records
The in § 100c Criminal Procedure Code (StPO) actually covers recordings made by the police when bugging a home on suspicion of a serious crime. An evaluation of already existing voice recordings, as in the now terminated proceedings, on the other hand, is not actually regulated in § 100c StPO. However, an individual case decision of the Regional Court of Regensburg came to the conclusion that in the specific case the interest of prosecution outweighed the protection of personality of the persons recorded.
"Whether this Data The question of whether the voice recordings are then evaluated in criminal proceedings and admitted as evidence is, however, usually a matter for consideration in each individual case. If a murder has to be solved and the voice recording of a smart home device is decisive, the interest of prosecution has to be weighted particularly.
Christian Solmecke, specialist lawyer for Internet law told BR24
Amazon transmits data voluntarily
In the current proceedings, Amazon voluntarily provided the voice recordings following a request by the Regensburg public prosecutor's office to the European contact for authorities. If Amazon had refused to hand over the recordings, access would only have been possible if the US judicial authorities had complied with a request for legal assistance from the Regensburg public prosecutor's office.
Whether German investigating authorities will be able to find Cloud access to stored data depends mainly on the server location. For servers located in Germany, access is usually possible without any problems. As Solmecke explains, law enforcement agencies can also evaluate data from publicly accessible servers within the scope of the Council of Europe Convention on Cybercrime. In the case of non-European servers, on the other hand, investigators need the help of foreign authorities or the voluntary cooperation of the server operators.
In 2017, Amazon refused to release the records in a similar case tried in the US state of Arkansas. Only when the suspect allowed the data to be handed over did Amazon transfer it to the prosecution.
