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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."
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 23 2019, @09:47PM (9 children)
It's been a long time since I read 1984. Can someone remind me where this fits in? Because this type of shit means some of my neighbors may "accidentally" be surveilling others on our street.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 23 2019, @09:51PM (4 children)
As planned. We need privacy legislation soooo badly.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 23 2019, @09:59PM (3 children)
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)
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
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
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.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 23 2019, @10:02PM (3 children)
Well, to start out with if the cameras are on their property or in public space, generally speaking your neighbors can intentionally be surveilling whomever they please within plain view of the camera. It doesn't have to be an accident. You have no right of privacy as far as cameras placed on your neighbors property. At least some places. Other places (Illinois is one), you can video whatever you want but creating an audio recording without the other person's consent is considered eavesdropping. Yes, weird and it has an annoying way of protecting the corrupt. But that's the law.
From there, making money nothwithstanding, your neighbors may share that footage with whomever they please including the police.
That's pretty much always been the case.
The only thing that Ring adds is that *if you choose to opt-in* they will facilitate the process for you in sharing your camera's video it with the police. And also generally speaking, a business may share whatever records they want to share with the police. Their records are their records and don't belong to you, and they have the right to share them with police without a warrant. That said, prudent businesses don't share such information unless they are legally compelled to lest they be accused of being narcs. (Things like gun purchase registers and motel registers, that may be covered under law or things like your medical records which are confidential without appropriate authority to request them.)
That said, the U.S. it's not yet quite like the UK yet where the agencies themselves maintain public cameras for surveillance of the people. (Although monitoring traffic intersections is quite all right).
(Score: 0, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 23 2019, @11:24PM (1 child)
Found the Ring a/o law enforcement shill.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 24 2019, @01:29AM
Yes, oh you got me red handed! Ring goes out and hires people to scan news aggregation sites of minimal importance nationally and shill for them. The justice department has lots of personnel on hand just to promote this alliance. Wow, what amazing powers of deduction you have!
Or you could just go with the explanation as it is presented: It is disturbing that companies can make such processes easier but there is nothing illegal about what they're doing and there never was. One might question the morality but then one would question the morality of any cooperation with police whatsoever. (Which again one might do, right up to the moment that it's your house or car that's broken into and your neighbor has the identity of the intruder on camera. Then you'll change your tune.)
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 24 2019, @01:37AM
That's a problem; it contributes to mass surveillance, which necessarily threatens freedom and democracy. [gnu.org] An individual recording is much less of a problem, but it becomes a huge issue when the footage is sent to some centralized database that collects information on large segments of the population. Mass surveillance should be banned in all cases, whether it is a government or a corporation doing it. This includes mass surveillance of public places.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 23 2019, @10:10PM
That man was prescient. That man saw this coming, a modern day Orwell.
(Score: 3, Informative) by EJ on Friday August 23 2019, @10:13PM (2 children)
Here is how Ring's law enforcement backend works:
1. You don't buy Ring products
2. No data is transmitted to Amazon to share with random third-parties
3. You live your best life
The end
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Ethanol-fueled on Saturday August 24 2019, @02:03AM (1 child)
You didn't buy a Ring, but everybody else did. Let's hope you won't be charged with a hate crime objecting to religions marking your property with their eruvim.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 24 2019, @10:45PM
Can't even get your hate screed spelled right, take your anti-semitism and shove it up your butt to prove how not-homophobic you are.
(Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Friday August 23 2019, @10:46PM
What security infants most people must be that such a lame excuse flies.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 23 2019, @11:10PM (3 children)
Thank you, Jeff Bezos! Amazon's Ring camera has completely foiled Mohamed al-Jihadi's attempts to launch a terrorist attack on my street. We also caught the Smith kid sneaking out back for cigarettes, and two city cops beating up an unarmed homeless man.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 23 2019, @11:13PM (1 child)
Something tells me the latter event may have been remotely deleted by your helpful local law enforcement agency... to free up valuable storage space on your device, of course.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 24 2019, @08:17AM
They only got the first couple of dozen. But, since it happens so often there was still a couple left on the server since their last delete session.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 23 2019, @11:20PM
At least your dog is still alive.
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 24 2019, @03:30AM
Why don't LEAs focus on the dooshbaggery committed by civil-rights & pronatalist extremists, such as:
A 'stolen' American city: Montes v. City of Yakima - https://www.aclu-wa.org/cases/montes-v-city-yakima-0 [aclu-wa.org]
Embezzlement & swindling at the state level: McCleary, et al. v. State of Washington - Supreme Court Case Number 84362-7: https://www.courts.wa.gov/appellate_trial_courts/supremecourt/?fa=supremecourt.mccleary_education [wa.gov]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 24 2019, @12:39PM
That is an operational security hole big enough to drive a truck through.
A 24 hour delay would fix that and still provide Amazon with data to sell.
I'm not sure the 911 data is the police's data to give?