If you have a smart Amazon Ring ringtone, you need to know something. A growing number of fire and police departments are interested in your doorbell, or to be frank, in camera images, especially if they feel it can help them in their investigations. In fact, there are now 2,014 departments on the program in every state in the United States except Montana and Wyoming.
According to a recent report published in the Financial Times, the number of departments in Amazon’s Ring program has doubled in the past year, when the company added 1,189 departments. The program allows law enforcement to contact Ring users in a particular area and ask them to provide images from their cameras that may be relevant to local investigations.
The Times reported that in 2020, departments collectively requested videos related to more than 22,335 incidents.
The police don’t you need a warrant to request videos and owners may refuse to provide images of their Ring. However, the scenario changes when there are subpoenas, court orders and search warrants, according to the Times, because Amazon may be forced to comply with these legal rules. requests and provides images and “identifying data” even if the ringtone owner has denied access.
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Gizmodo contacted Ring to ask for confirmation of the number of police and firefighters in the Ring program, as well as to comment on the report. We have not received any specific answers to our questions. A Ring spokesman pointed to Gizmodo towards Ring’s Map of active agencies, which the company updates quarterly with video request numbers “so that Ring device owners, Neighbors users, and the general public have a better understanding of how public safety agencies use Neighbors to relate to their communities “
As for requests for information from police users, a Ring spokesman has pointed to Gizmodo a blog on the subject that the company posted earlier this month.
“Like many other companies, Ring receives and responds to mandatory law enforcement requests for user information that is not overly broad or inappropriate. At Ring, we are committed to being transparent about our practices. of privacy and security, “the Ring spokesman said.
A la blog post, Ring detailed requests for information on law enforcement that he processed in 2020, which included subpoenas, court orders, search warrants, applications outside the U.S. and requests for national security. Of the 2,149 requests made, Ring provided a “complete response,” meaning that it provided all the requested information, to 919 requests, 830 of which were search orders. Search commands were also the most frequently received request, worth 1,610 applications in 2020.
Ring also provided a “partial response” or provided only some of the requested information to 171 requests. He did not provide “any response,” meaning he did not provide any of the information requested in 810 cases.
According to the report, one of the departments that used the Ring program the most was the Milwaukee, Wisconsin Police Department. It made 431 applications in the second half of 2020, which was more than any other department in the country. Police officials interviewed by the dam cited the high number of homicides in the city: Milwaukee broke up annual homicide record last November with at least 184 murders“And the hundreds of.” shots.
Milwaukee police are “analyzing” videos to investigate many of these types of incidents, officials said.
While Ring has maintained critics accuse him of his program providing law enforcement with more resources to solve crimes the construction of a “Private for-profit surveillance network”. Meanwhile, lequal experts and advocates of privacy concern that the network and the program could threaten civil liberties and turn Ring users into police informants. It can also make innocent people unnecessary surveillance.
[Financial Times]