Ring will require police & fire departments to make public requests for video footage

Amazon is changing how law enforcement agencies can obtain footage from Ring, with the changes making clear that the agencies are no longer allowed to contact users directly.

In a revision to guidelines, Amazon has revised previous vague guidance. Going forward, instead of emailing Ring users privately, law enforcement agencies will now be required to make public requests in the Neighbors app.

"Request for Assistance posts can only be issued from verified public safety agency profiles," Amazon said in a blog post on Thursday. "We have guidelines in place to prevent overly broad requests, and all public safety agencies must abide by our Request for Assistance Policy and Guidelines."

If an incident occurs in a user's area, law enforcement agencies have a 12-hour timeframe around an incident to request footage from users in the relevant area. Amazon defines the "relevant area" as being contained within 0.025 and 0.5 square miles around where an incident has occurred.

Amazon does not clarify when the 12-hour timeframe begins or ends, though. If an incident was suspected to occur between 9:00 PM and 12:00 AM, there's no easy way to tell precisely how Amazon determines the relevant timeframe. Users will then be able to tap a button labeled "tap here to help" to provide the videos.

If users choose, they can still directly contact law enforcement agencies. This would allow the sharing of any stored footage that they choose, likely without running it by Amazon first.

The blog also states that police departments are not allowed to intentionally gather information about lawful activities, with protests specifically labeled as prohibited. Requests may not contain hate speech, racial profiling, or "other forms of prejudice," though what those other forms are aren't defined by the company.

While this marks a significant change, civil liberties groups are still not swayed. According to Bloomberg, 35% of voters at Amazon's annual shareholder meeting last week voted for a resolution asking the company to commission a report on whether its surveillance gear spurs human rights violations.

Previously, police and fire departments could obtain Ring surveillance footage simply by asking for it. The only requirement was that Amazon would require a memo of understanding from the police. This process allowed Amazon to ghostwrite press releases from law enforcement, effectively making the security agencies an advertising venue.

In early 2020, it was discovered that the Android Ring app was loaded with third-party trackers, capable of harvesting a plethora of customer data. Data that third parties could gather included IP addresses and customer names.

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10 Comments

shamino 540 comments · 17 Years

About 3 years ago

So police are no longer allowed to ask you for footage from your own camera that you paid for?

I think this is about the clearest statement ever that when you buy a cloud-connected device, you don't actually own it. You paid for it, you installed it, you use it, but when push comes to shove, it still belongs to Amazon because they have the final say over what you are allowed to do with it.

sdw2001 17459 comments · 23 Years

My first thought was "where in the actual f*** does Amazon get off telling law enforcement how they are allowed to request information from private citizens?" Upon a second read, it would seem this applies to requests made via Amazon/Neighbors. I don't see how Amazon could or would tell law enforcement they can't contact people separately.

Apple_Bar 134 comments · 5 Years

shamino said:

So police are no longer allowed to ask you for footage from your own camera that you paid for?

I think this is about the clearest statement ever that when you buy a cloud-connected device, you don't actually own it. You paid for it, you installed it, you use it, but when push comes to shove, it still belongs to Amazon because they have the final say over what you are allowed to do with it.

Did you read the article?

If yes,

Did you understand what you read?

I already know the answer.

mike1 3432 comments · 10 Years

shamino said:

So police are no longer allowed to ask you for footage from your own camera that you paid for?

I think this is about the clearest statement ever that when you buy a cloud-connected device, you don't actually own it. You paid for it, you installed it, you use it, but when push comes to shove, it still belongs to Amazon because they have the final say over what you are allowed to do with it.

If users choose, they can still directly contact law enforcement agencies. This would allow the sharing of any stored footage that they choose, likely without running it by Amazon first.

dewme 5737 comments · 10 Years

shamino said:

So police are no longer allowed to ask you for footage from your own camera that you paid for?

I think this is about the clearest statement ever that when you buy a cloud-connected device, you don't actually own it. You paid for it, you installed it, you use it, but when push comes to shove, it still belongs to Amazon because they have the final say over what you are allowed to do with it.

This is a procedural change that in no way affects you or your Ring devices. It simply adds public transparency to how law enforcement requests access to camera data. In the past, law enforcement agencies would contact you privately to request access to your camera data. Now they have to publicly solicit access to any available camera data within a relatively small geographic location.

My community does not have any official tie-ins with Ring, but I did encounter a situation last year where a police officer knocked on my door and asked me whether my Ring doorbell camera had picked up any passing vehicles within a certain time frame because they were trying to figure out who (Warning: viewer discretion advised!) knocked over a neighbor's mailbox. The officer seemed to be somewhat aware of who in the neighborhood has security cameras just by driving around. My camera was of no use in tracking down the perp ... and no word yet on whether they caught the person responsible for the crime. Rumor has it that it may have been a delivery vehicle who cut the corner a little too close. They probably should have made casts of the tire tracks on the tree lawn and sent them to the FBI crime lab ... so justice can finally be served.