Smart speaker dials 911 during alleged attack

Jul. 07, 2017 05:00AM EST

Smart save Police in Bernalillo County, NM are crediting a smart home speaker with dialing 911 as a husband allegedly threatened and attacked his girlfriend. ABC News reports that the device heard the man ask, "Did you call the sheriffs?," which caused the smart speaker to call the authorities, who arrived and were able to remove the injured woman and her child. The man was taken into custody after a SWAT team intervened.

The Bernalillo County Sheriff Manual Gonzales III has credited the smart speaker with saving the woman and her child, calling the technology "amazing," in a statement to ABC News.

Smart speakers, like Amazon Echo, operate by being in a paused or standby state until they hear a wake or command word. In at least one case, data collected by a smart speaker has been turned over to law enforcement. Amazon released information collected by its Amazon Echo to a court in March, where a defendant in Arkansas has been accused of murdering someone in his home, where the speaker was installed.

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