Modernize: Electronic Frontier Foundation senior policy analyst Matthew Guariglia offered TechCrunch the following statement:
Today, Amazon Ring announced that it will no longer facilitate warrantless police requests for video from Ring users. Years ago, after public outcry and much criticism from the EFF and other organizations, Ring ended its practice of allowing police to automatically send video requests to users’ email inboxes, opting instead for a system where police had to to post public requests on Ring’s Neighbors Application; Now, hopefully Ring will be completely out of the business of platforming casual and warrantless police video requests of its users. This is a step in the right direction, but it came after years comfortable relations with the police and irresponsible data management (for which settled with the FTC). Ring has been forced to make some major concessions — but we still think devices can enable end-to-end encryption by default and disable the default audio collection, which Reports have shown that they can pick up sound from greater distances than originally thought. We also remain deeply wary of the ability of law enforcement and Ring to determine what is or is not an emergency that requires the company to deliver material without a warrant or user consent;.
Amazon today announced it’s Request for Assistance (RFA), a controversial tool that allowed police and fire departments to request doorbell video through Ring’s Neighbors app.
“Public safety agencies such as fire and police departments can still use the Neighbors app to share helpful safety tips, updates and community events,” Neighbors app chief Eric Kuhn noted in the a blog post. “They will no longer be able to use the RFA tool to request and receive videos in the app. Public safety service posts are still public and will be available for users to view in the Neighbors app feed and service profile.”
The feature has been a major concern for privacy advocates for many years. In 2021, Amazon made the police requests public as part of its semi-annual transparency report. That year, it received 3,147 legal requests from agencies representing a 65% increase over the previous year.
Public officials have also raised concerns about the practice. In 2019, for example, Massachusetts Senator Ed Markey wrote an open letter to then-CEO Jeff Bezos, noting:
Although Amazon markets the Ring as America’s “new neighborhood watch,” the technology captures and stores video from millions of households and scans footage of countless bystanders who may not know they’re being filmed. I am particularly concerned to learn that Ring is pursuing facial recognition technology with the ability to flag certain individuals as suspicious based on their biometric information.
Markey also cited biases in facial recognition software as a major issue, expressing concern about a disproportionate misidentification among people of color.
“As stated in Ring’s law enforcement guidelines, Ring reserves the right to respond promptly to urgent law enforcement requests for information in situations involving an immediate risk of death or serious bodily injury to any person. Emergency disclosure requests must be accompanied by a completed emergency request form,” the company wrote in its own letter. “Based on the information provided on the emergency request form and the circumstances described by the officer, Ring makes a good faith determination whether the request meets the well-known standard, based on federal law, that there is an imminent danger of death or serious bodily injury.” injury to any person requiring the disclosure of information without delay.”
Today’s news marks a key change in policy that is likely to be heralded as a victory for privacy advocates.
