If your landlord accesses a private conversation, they are guilty of violating federal (and likely state) wiretap law. It's that simple. If your landlord accesses a private conversation with Amazon's assistance, willing or unwilling, Amazon has committed tort. If Amazon's lawyers are any good at all, they have cautioned Amazon at great length as to the absolute cliff face of risks/rewards on this particular feature. If Amazon's coders are any good at all, they have made it impossible for shitty landlords to attach Amazon to a class-action civil tort violation of wiretapping law. Those first two "ifs" only come into play if lawyers can be motivated to get involved. Those second two "ifs" fall down if Amazon generally sucks at this. I give it 50/50.
Being not well versed in tort and legal shit, what about one party consent states? Could it be considered if a landlord provides an alexa device and puts something in the contract that the tenenat might be fucked legally?
Audio surveillance is a different world than recording conversations. This whole "one party consent two party consent" thing is all about a conversation that you are in. Otherwise you're fucking with the wiretap act. If the Trump era has taught us one thing, it's that it comes down to enforcement and who has the best lawyers. But fundamentally? If Amazon distributes a system to landlords that allows them to violate the law, knowingly or not, Amazon would likely get the opportunity to prove that they aren't liable for doing so. It would also be really, really shitty for their brand. This is the fun of hidden camera shows, and why every security camera you've ever seen doesn't have a microphone on it. US law has a much dimmer view of audio surveillance than they do of video surveillance (not that video surveillance via an Alexa would be hunky dory, either - reasonable expectation of privacy is pretty easily established).
Wiretap law is debatable, tort doesn't seem likely (not sure what kleinbl00 is referring to with that one). The thing is, for court to happen, the landlord has to get caught. Also, this presupposes they don't require consent as part of the lease, which muddies the waters still further. edited to add: this also assumes the tenant has the money to sue over it.
A perspective on surveillance from a guy with fifteen cameras - Thing 1: you have to monitor them. And sure, I can pull up a display with every single one of them. And I can fast-forward and I can motion-sense and I can time-lapse but fundamentally, "hey one of our dental assistant's cars got broken into" is two hours for me to grab the footage from the cameras I can see her car on. - Thing 2: having the footage doesn't make it useful. I've got a few of these smoke detector-lookin' critters because they give me lots of wide-area surveillance for not a lot of money. But they're on the ceiling and you can't see faces. Something that covers a wide area gives you shitty close-ups. - Thing 3. Having useful footage doesn't make it legally useful. Got a lease? Your landlord can't break it without paying the penalties in the lease. He says "but you smoked pot which is against my rules" and you say "prove it" and he says "look I have this awesome footage in your living room of you sparking up" and you say "what the what" and call the police and he goes to jail. Even in Canada. Note that I am not a fan of surveillance. I do not think it should be everywhere. I have it at my house to keep the neighbor kid from breaking in, and I have it at my workplace because it's useful to know what's going on there without bugging my wife for updates (and because the landlord had a shitty system that has been replaced with a less-shitty one). Even so, the surveillance that everyone freaks out about is reasonably, understandably the government overreaching because they can. Private citizens surveilling other private citizens is held very dimly by the courts. Maybe your landlord is a perv. There was a movie 'bout that. Had a great soundtrack a Baldwin and Sharon Stone masturbating. If your landlord is a businessman, then cameras in apartments is a bad investment. It comes with a lot of legal hazard and requires a lot of effort to collect evidence of misbehavior that he can't use.