Ring has been giving out its users’ camera footage to law enforcement, even without the owners’ consent or a court-ordered warrant.
The Amazon subsidiary is apparently very friendly with law enforcement, giving out unwarranted user footage to cops at least 11 times this year.
This revelation comes from a recent report from Sam Biddle of The Intercept. The publication references a letter from Amazon in response to an interesting request from Senator Edward Markey.
Senator Markey sent a letter to Amazon CEO Andrew Jassy last month, inquiring about Ring’s relationship with law enforcement. The letter expressed concern over Ring’s policies of recording both video and audio data from users’ cameras.
Markey asked Ring to commit to “never accept financial contributions from policing agencies,” “never allow immigration enforcement agencies to request Ring recordings,” and “never participate in police sting operations.”
In response, Amazon confirmed that Ring would not commit to any of Markey’s requests. Additionally, the company says it offers up camera data to police in an “emergency situation.”
It has already shared 11 emergency requests with cops this year alone. And of course, Amazon failed to identify exactly what constitutes an emergency situation.
“Ring makes a good-faith determination whether the request meets the well-known standard,” reads the company’s statement. Sounds like a vague, blanket statement that doesn’t really say much at all.
But are we really that surprised? If we’re buying a security device from one of the largest internet companies in the world, we should probably expect them to be infringing on our rights, at least a little bit.
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