Free legal advice: don't ask Siri where to hide a body
"Siri, read him his rights..."
If you happen to murder someone, it's just common sense: do not ask Siri for help on where you can hide a body. Early on, Apple's intelligent assistant used to come back with locations like quarries, swamps, and dumps. Well, according to various news sources, a man accused of killing his roommate allegedly asked Siri "I need to hide my roommate" and of course got those responses. Police in Gainesville, FL produced Siri's response to his question as evidence in the trial of 20-year-old Pedro Bravo.
Something's a bit fishy with this story, however. It turns out that Bravo has an iPhone 4 -- which, of course, cannot run Siri -- but he did have a screenshot with that Siri query stored on his device. There's more iPhone data that is also being used as evidence in the trial: On September 20, 2012, the flashlight function of Bravo's iPhone was on 9 times for a total of over 48 minutes (which is an odd forensic tidbit, unless he was using a standalone flashlight app). Police also note that the locations tracked by the iPhone on that date don't match where the suspect says he was.
In case you're wondering, Siri now answers the question about where to hide a body with slightly different answers -- like "I used to know the answer to this," and "What, again?"
The trial should wrap up later this week. There's no word on whether Siri will be offered a job as a prosecutor or expert witness in other cases. To keep up with the trial, you can follow TV reporter Stephanie Bachara on Twitter.
