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posted by janrinok on Friday August 23 2019, @09:26PM   Printer-friendly
from the don't-say-surveillance dept.

Submitted via IRC for SoyCow1984

Ring asks police not to tell public how its law enforcement backend works

Amazon's Ring line of consumer home surveillance products enjoys an extensive partnership with local police departments all over the country. Cops receive free product, extensive coaching, and pre-approved marketing lines, and Amazon gets access to your 911 data and gets to spread its network of security cameras all over the nation. According to a trio of new reports, though, the benefits to police go even further than was previously known—as long as they don't use the word "surveillance," that is.

Gizmodo on Monday published an email exchange between the chief of police in one New Jersey town and Ring showing that Ring edited out certain key terms of a draft press release before the town published it, as the company frequently does.

The town of Ewing, New Jersey, in March said it would be using Ring's Neighbors app. Neighbors does not require a Ring device to use; consumers who don't have footage to share can still view certain categories of crime reports in their area and contribute reports of their own, sort of like a Nextdoor on steroids.

Law enforcement has access to a companion portal that allows police to see an approximate map of active Ring cameras in a given area and request footage from them in the course of an investigation. The town also launched a subsidy program, giving up to 200 residents a $100 discount on the purchase of Ring security products. Members of the police department also received $50 discount vouchers for their own use.

The original draft press release, obtained by Gizmodo, showed that the town used one of Ring's pre-written press release templates and inserted a quote from the chief of police that read, in part, "Security cameras have been proven to be essential in deterring crime, and surveillance systems have assisted in closing cases that may have otherwise gone unsolved."

Ring approved a version with that sentence edited out, telling Ewing police the company avoids using the terms "surveillance" or "security cameras" because that might "confuse residents into thinking this program requires a Ring device or other system to participate or that it provides any sort of direct access to user devices and information."

Police may not be allowed to use the words "surveillance" or "security cameras" in their marketing copy, but another pair of new reports highlights the significant surveillance capabilities Ring-branded security cameras can provide to law enforcement.

Local police departments have asked Ring to share "names, home addresses, and email addresses" of everyone who purchases a subsidized Ring device, Vice Motherboard reported yesterday, with some apparent success.

Email exchanges and other documents Motherboard obtained from several localities show that in at least three cities, Ring had the capability to share a list of everyone who used a city subsidy to purchase a camera, theoretically to prevent homeowners from double-dipping.

In Arcadia, California, the company told city government that it would "provide the City with an address report for the products purchased in order to help the Arcadia Police Department track the location of Ring Video Doorbells and other Ring security camera equipment, and assess the level of community interest."

"We have names of all the people who purchased if you want to block these people," a Ring employee added in an email exchange with an Arcadia government employee. "We will match against names and emails of everyone who purchased at the event and prevent people from doubling up."

A spokesperson for Arcadia told Motherboard that the city did not request a registry, nor have one in its possession. Ring also told Motherboard it "does not provide, and has never provided, resident information to law enforcement or cities participating in Ring's subsidy match program" and said the statements Motherboard read were a "misrepresentation."


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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 23 2019, @09:51PM (4 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 23 2019, @09:51PM (#884375)

    As planned. We need privacy legislation soooo badly.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 23 2019, @09:59PM (3 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 23 2019, @09:59PM (#884379)

    Unclear. Do you want to restrict the ability to record people out in public and anything seen from one's property, or restrict the ability of the police to get user data from Ring?

    • (Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 23 2019, @11:13PM (1 child)

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 23 2019, @11:13PM (#884404)

      Definitely the latter, warrants for everything and none of this back-end fast-tracking for access. Warrant for the users, NOT the company!

      Now restricting public recording, obviously not that drastic. However posting videos of people online is a modern day problem, I've seen so many videos of people being surreptitiously filmed during private moments. I don't think as a society we should be constantly worried that someone will be filming us and posting the video to popular sites.

      I don't have an answer, but I see it as an issue we'll have to figure out. Maybe not, perhaps we'll just culturally adapt and it will simply be taboo to violate someone's privacy.

      • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 24 2019, @01:33AM

        by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 24 2019, @01:33AM (#884477)

        So, to be clear, no citizen can share any video of anything with any governmental agency until the police present them with a warrant. The citizen who did the recording has no choice in the matter?

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 24 2019, @01:32AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 24 2019, @01:32AM (#884476)

      What we need to ban is mass surveillance. Corporations and governments should simply not be allowed to collect and store this data to begin with. Individual people who record aren't much of a threat, but it becomes a threat when their device sends the footage or tracking data to a company which has massive amounts of information about people, their habits, and their whereabouts.