Amazon's Alexa voice assistant may have information useful to a murder investigation in Arkansas, where authorities issued a groundbreaking warrant in a case that evokes Apple's spat with the FBI earlier this year.

Police want access to data from the Amazon Echo speaker belonging to James Bates of Bentonville, Ark., who was charged earlier this year with first-degree murder, The Information reported Tuesday. Since the Echo speaker is always listening for Alexa voice commands, the audio it recorded could provide clues about what happened inside Bates' home on Nov. 22, 2015, when a man was found dead in his hot tub.

Amazon is fairly secretive about how it handles the audio recorded from Alexa-enabled devices.