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Privacy Technology

Ring Refuses To Say How Many Users Had Video Footage Obtained By Police (techcrunch.com) 49

Ring gets a lot of criticism, not just for its massive surveillance network of home video doorbells and its problematic privacy and security practices, but also for giving that doorbell footage to law enforcement. While Ring is making moves towards transparency, the company refuses to disclose how many users had their data given to police. From a report: The video doorbell maker, acquired by Amazon in 2018, has partnerships with at least 1,800 U.S. police departments (and growing) that can request camera footage from Ring doorbells. Prior to a change this week, any police department that Ring partnered with could privately request doorbell camera footage from Ring customers for an active investigation. Ring will now let its police partners publicly request video footage from users through its Neighbors app. The change ostensibly gives Ring users more control when police can access their doorbell footage, but ignores privacy concerns that police can access users' footage without a warrant. [...] Ring received over 1,800 legal demands during 2020, more than double from the year earlier, according to a transparency report that Ring published quietly in January. Ring does not disclose sales figures but says it has "millions" of customers. But the report leaves out context that most transparency reports include: how many users or accounts had footage given to police when Ring was served with a legal demand? When reached, Ring declined to say how many users had footage obtained by police.
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Ring Refuses To Say How Many Users Had Video Footage Obtained By Police

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  • Privacy Shmivacy (Score:4, Insightful)

    by ElizabethGreene ( 1185405 ) on Wednesday June 09, 2021 @04:35PM (#61471288)

    Why don't I have cloud based cameras when they are so much cheaper and less hassle than my gaggle of Raspberry Pi?

    This.
    Right.
    Here.

  • by jordan314 ( 1052648 ) on Wednesday June 09, 2021 @04:47PM (#61471330)
    If amazon has been this problematic with sharing video with police with ring, imagine what they'll do with the video feeds from delivery drones.
    • If amazon has been this problematic with sharing video with police with ring, imagine what they'll do with the video feeds from delivery drones.

      Who do you think is helping approve that flying box of surveillance...

  • Can they tell us how much footage total there is and how much footage hasn't been obtained by police?

  • Why would they give out that info?

  • by timholman ( 71886 ) on Wednesday June 09, 2021 @05:28PM (#61471520)

    Based on several conversations I've had with the local police, the reason why Ring won't reveal the numbers is probably because they're so low.

    One officer I spoke to was particularly critical: he considers the "partnership" between Amazon and the police to be nothing more than an advertising gimmick to sell Ring cameras. According to him:

    (1) The police have to request access from Ring for every criminal incident. There is no blanket access. The police provide Ring with the time and location of the crime.

    (2) Ring does not supply the police with the names or the addresses of any camera owners in that area. All they will do is confirm if there are Ring cameras nearby, and then Ring contacts the owners to request their permission to forward any relevant video clips to the police.

    (3) Any Ring owners contacted must grant permission for this access, and guess what? Very few Ring owners respond to the requests. And if they do respond, the video obtained is generally worthless.

    The officer told me that he obtains video footage the old fashioned way: he looks at the homes nearby, sees if any of them have cameras, and knocks on doors to ask the owners for help. That way he's not limited to any single manufacturer or brand, nor does he have to go through Amazon to do it.

    In his opinion, the Amazon / police "partnership" is a carefully cultivated advertising strategy to make potential Ring buyers believe that their cameras will be effective and valuable crime-fighting tools, when in fact the exact opposite is true. And when you consider the quality and type of video that Ring cameras typically provide, I think he's right.

    Ring makes decent video doorbells. They do not make good security cameras.

  • While Ring is making moves towards transparency, the company refuses to disclose how many users had their data given to police.

    Amazon is big and powerful enough that THEY will define transparency now. Not you.

    And consumers are ignorant sheep that they will literally defend it in the end.

    Too many morons always thinking of the children. Maybe you should fucking ask the children about that. They're the ones who are going to live with these idiotic decisions to "protect" them.

  • Eh, why should they care? The money makes up for it, by a pretty good margin. Cost/benefit ratio is the only thing that matters

  • To say "All of them" Ya never know when a fishing expedition can yield results. Anyone who has a web facing camera is almost certainly having their video looked at.
  • ... a little old lady down the street who spends her life looking out her front window and calling the cops when she sees someone suspicious.

  • The best thing you can do for you children is to not have any.
  • Knowing cops, and Amazon; I suspect every Ring device was accessed.
  • "...any police department that Ring partnered with could privately request doorbell camera footage FROM RING CUSTOMERS."

    As long as it's up to the customer whether to give the video to the police, that's none of anyone else's business, just like it would be if I gave them a polaroid print, or told them what I saw on Tuesday.

    That's as it should be, as opposed to literally millions of cameras operated by the police, like in that police state formerly known as "UK," or the one that was falsely accused of invent

Business is a good game -- lots of competition and minimum of rules. You keep score with money. -- Nolan Bushnell, founder of Atari

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