Cops: No major effect from Ring video access change
Ring, the popular doorbell camera maker owned by Amazon, says it will stop allowing police departments to request doorbell camera footage from users.
In a blog post Wednesday, Ring said it will sunset the “Request for Assistance” tool, which allows police departments and
other public safety agencies to request and receive video captured by the doorbell cameras through Ring’s Neighbors app.
Police departments say the move could make it slightly more difficult to obtain footage during investigations, but doesn’t stop them from knocking on doors and asking people for their footage.
The company did not provide a reason for the change, which will be effective starting this week.
A spokesperson for the South Windsor Police Department said the feature wasn’t something the department necessarily used, even though the department is on the app.
“I think we found that a lot of the times when we’re looking to obtain surveillance footage from a residence for any sort of criminal investigation, that we would usually end up canvassing houses and then just doing a simple knock and talk,” said Sgt. Mark Cleverdon, the department spokesperson.
He said that, overwhelmingly, when police have asked residents for surveillance footage, people have been happy to provide it, or at least check their footage to see whether it picked up anything of use to the police.
Chief Alaric Fox of the Enfield Police Department said the change to Ring’s system potentially has an impact on officers’ ability to solve crimes. “Certainly it’s a limitation to some extent,” he said.
But in Enfield, he noted the department has a registration through which owners of surveillance cameras can let the police
know ahead of time whether they’re willing to share footage in the future.
Eric Kuhn, the head of Neighbors, said in the announcement that law enforcement agencies still will be able to make public posts in the Neighbors app. Police and other agencies also still can use the app to “share helpful safety tips, updates, and community events,” Kuhn said.
The update is the latest restriction Ring has made to police activity on the Neighbors app following concerns raised by privacy watchdogs about the company’s relationship with police departments across the country.
Critics have stressed the proliferation of these relationships – and users’ ability to report what they see as suspicious behavior – can change neighborhoods into a place of constant surveillance and lead to more instances of racial profiling.
In a bid to increase transparency, Ring changed its policy in 2021 to make police requests publicly visible through its Neighbors app. Previously, law enforcement agencies were able to send Ring owners who lived near an area of an active investigation private emails requesting video footage.
“Now, Ring hopefully will altogether be out of the business of platforming casual and warrantless police requests for footage to its users,” Matthew Guariglia, a senior policy analyst at the digital rights group Electronic Frontier Foundation,
said in a statement on Wednesday.
Cleverdon said he could understand people’s concerns about privacy. “We certainly have no interest in invading people’s privacy,” he added.
He noted that if someone didn’t want to provide footage that was pertinant to an investigation voluntarily, the department’s investigators would have to seek a search warrant, which would focus on a specific date and time of the footage.
Cleverdon cited the 2021 case of a husband accused of killing his wife, Jessica Edwards, as one instance in which video evidence helped lead to an arrest. The husband, Tahj Hutchinson, has pleaded not guilty to murder, risk of injury to a child and evidence tampering charges. The case remains ongoing.
In that investigation, Cleverdon said Ring camera footage showed the suspect driving in a certain area, which helped them narrow down where Edwards’ body eventually was found.
All of that “was obtained through knockand-talks at residences saying, ‘Hey, do you have any camera footage of this vehicle, this person,’ ” Cleverdon said.
Ring also maintains the right to share footage without user consent in limited circumstances.
In mid-2022, Ring disclosed it handed over 11 videos to police without notifying users that year due to “exigent or emergency” circumstances, one of the categories that allow it to share videos without permission from owners. However, Guariglia, of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, said the group remains skeptical about the ability of police and the company to determine what is or is not an emergency.
Last summer, Ring agreed to pay $5.8 million to settle with the Federal Trade Commission over allegations that the company let employees and contractors access user videos. Furthermore, the agency said Ring had inadequate security practices, which allowed hackers to control consumer accounts and cameras. The company disagrees with those claims.
John DeCarlo, a professor in the University of New Haven’s department of criminal justice, echoed that the change doesn’t prevent police from just asking residents for footage.
“The police could still request the footage from private individuals who have been victimized if of course that person has an account and they’re saving their footage,” he said.
He noted that, as with the evolution of most technology, surveillance cameras were introduced without much research. However, he said, cameras are known to be a deterrent to crime.
“It’s like a cop standing in front of a drugstore — the person that’s gonna rob the drugstore’s just going to go to the next one,” he said.