14 DAY TRIAL // It has been claimed that Amazon's Ring doorbell camera is building the largest corporate-owned private surveillance network that the United States has ever seen.
Lauren Bridges, a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Pennsylvania, gave The Guardian a stark warning. Since partnering with over 1,800 local law enforcement agencies, one out of every ten policemen in the country already has access to footage from civilian cameras.
Bridges express serious concern that police officers can obtain Ring videos from members of the public without a warrant. She continues that it is a deliberate violation of the Fourth Amendment - the right not to be searched or have items seized without a legal warrant.
It has been claimed that customers who buy Amazon's Ring home surveillance cameras have no way to revoke access to law enforcement once permission has been granted.
Ring videos were used by the police last year
According to Bridges reports, law enforcement agencies submitted 22,337 individual requests for Ring videos last year.
A report in the California Law Review claimed that Amazon also helped and coached law enforcement about how to avoid legal provisions such as the Fourth Amendment's warrant requirement.
The allegations are backed up by scripts obtained by Vice in 2019 from the Topeka, Kansas police department that instruct officers on how to encourage users to share camera footage with police and encourage friends to download the Neighbors app.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation, a non-profit group dedicated to defending civil rights in the digital world, has also started petitions urging Ring to end its collaboration with law enforcement agencies.
According to data collected by Bridges, the Milwaukee Police Department appears to have submitted the most petitions for video from Ring cameras, with a total of 782 requests made in 2020.
The Tampa Police Department came in second with 606 requests, followed by the Denver Police Department (433), Broward County Sheriff's Office (347), and the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department (317). The Hillsborough County Sheriff's Office also filed 314 requests for Ring videos in Tampa.
Jumpshot, a data analytics firm states that Ring sold nearly 400,000 devices in December 2019 alone, according to Vox's RECODE, giving the company unprecedented surveillance abilities.
Amazon states that Ring clients have complete control over their device and data
Amazon insists that Ring owners have complete control over their video and whether they want to share it.
They also deny Bridges' arguments that if police have permission to view the camera, they have perpetual access. They say that police officers can only receive the videos that have been exchanged for the particular time window - a maximum of 12 hours - requested, as well as contact details for the Ring device's owner.
According to an Amazon spokesperson "We built Neighbors for our customers, not law enforcement, and users must opt-in to share videos on a per request basis. Law enforcement do not have access to customer devices or livestreams, and customers are in total control of the information they share".
Sharing your video recordings in response to a video request is entirely voluntary and you can choose which videos you want to submit if any, based on the same report.
Ring's Terms of Service have provisions that allow the company to "access, use, preserve and/or disclose your content to law enforcement authorities, government officials, and/or third parties, if legally required to do so or if we have a good faith belief that such access, use, preservation or disclosure is reasonably necessary".
According to the business, deleted content "may be stored by Ring in order to comply with certain legal obligations and are not retrievable without a valid court order".