Amazon's Ring to stop letting police request doorbell video from users

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-01-24/amazon-s-ring-to-stop-letting-police-request-video-from-users

by nickthegreek • 2 years ago

87 141 2 years ago

bloomberg.com

toomuchtodo• 2 years ago

https://archive.today/bSN6Z

neom• 2 years ago

Adding in company blog post in case anyone else is interested:

https://blog.ring.com/about-ring/ring-announces-new-neighbor...

ceejayoz4• 2 years ago

This week, we are also sunsetting the Request for Assistance (RFA) tool.

This is pretty narrow wording with no explanation of why.

I'd be a lot more bullish about this if it talked about some new commitment to user privacy, but I'm a bit suspicious there's just a new tool somewhere.

tastyfreeze2• 2 years ago

Good, that is the way it should have been the whole time. The default view of government by businesses and people should be as an adversary. It is the duty of everybody to tell the government to stuff it when they aren't following the rules we have laid out for them.

ijhuygft7762• 2 years ago

They will still be able to access the data... using secret laws this time.

psunavy03• 2 years ago

Going to a judge for a warrant is not a "secret law." The intelligence community is legally barred from collecting on US persons anyway, and they also DGAF about petty crime, because they have more important national security-related fish to fry.

quirk• 2 years ago

Yes this is the weird part. Since this activity was always voluntary, I wonder about the real reason for this policy change.

paxys5• 2 years ago

We are taking about a random local cop here, not the NSA.

sandworm1014• 2 years ago

This isnt a traffic stop. Companies of size have daily relationships with law enfocement. While they certainly have obligations to customers, we cannot expect companies to be aggressively confrontational in every situation.

ddoolin• 2 years ago

I don't think it needs to be confrontational to say "no" when it's not required by law. In the US we have been led to believe that it's confrontational to stand up for your rights to police (e.g. to deny IDing yourself when asked without being detained, etc in most states).

rangestransform• 2 years ago

I would definitely pay more for an iPhone for Apple to hire more lawyers to (legally) obstruct law enforcement requests

dotnet00• 2 years ago

The current state of things with a lot of big tech interactions with law enforcement seems to be "that's great! lets work together on making this easier!", they don't come off as even questioning law enforcement requests beyond the minimum needed to cover their backs, let alone being anywhere near approaching 'aggressively confrontational'.

asveikau2• 2 years ago

That's why we have process like warrants and judicial review. For the law to set appropriate limits and procedure to demonstrate necessity. In practice even this is usually not enough, and too many warrants are court orders are approved.

nashashmi• 2 years ago

Plot twist: they want the officers to ask amazon directly (for a fee).

Cut out the person who actually owns the device. And who supposedly owns the recording.

jibe• 2 years ago

program that had allowed law enforcement to seek footage from users on a voluntary basis

This was a voluntary program though. Blocking the police from asking for help is unnecessarily adversarial. You are right about police collecting video from Ring without user involvement, but this was transparent and voluntary.

_ea1k4• 2 years ago

Yeah, if someone commits a crime at my neighbor's house, I appreciate that there's an easy way to collect data from any cameras that might be used to catch them. This kind of thing is far more useful for good things than for bad.

It isn't like they were pulling videos without consent to send tickets for rolling stops. Although if they did, they could collect enough revenue to fix every road in the country. :lol

the_other• 2 years ago

The default view of government by businesses and people should be as an adversary.

This is ridiculous. The default view in a parliamentary democracy should be that government is your employee and that its job is to watch out for you. Where your interests collide with those of your fellow citizens, government or judiciary should be mediating and managing, seeking consensus or compromise, ideally with your involvement.

Yes, this is naive. But it's the core function we should be able to rely on; it should be the measure we use to assess the efficacy of our governments. Anything else and you're replicating feudalism or dictatorship.

If you default to government being your adversary, your system is broken and you should be working to fix it rather than giving up and calling it the enemy. Frankly, this labelling of government as the enemy is exactly what allows opportunists to sieze power.

tastyfreeze2• 2 years ago

adversary - one that contends with, opposes, or resists

It is a matter of trust of other humans with power. Government can do good but is made of flawed humans. Trusting the government to always be good and stay good is a recipe for disaster. For government to stay trustworthy it requires people to oppose oversteps. It is an adversarial relationship. That isn't a bad thing. It is necessary for everything to work and stay working.

RobRivera3• 2 years ago

When the government behaves as an adverse actor, they lose this trust.

Would you like datapoints about times the government lied and subverted communities?

Bc I have data points.

Many data points.

From many cultures that were illegally infringed upon hy the government.

And practices

Just say the word.

zer00eyz• 2 years ago

> Good, that is the way it should have been the whole time.

The corpse of John Adams probably has a smirk.

government ... people ... as an adversary.

Adams had some interesting views, ones the courts dont share but he did. In his thought, the final check on power was the jury. It did not matter what the LAW said, it matters what the jury thought, that a jury at any point could just choose to nullify a law.

In many places talking about this near courts will get you held in contempt. But at lest one of the founding fathers though "telling the government to stuff it" was the right thing to do.

grow2grow• 2 years ago

Thanks for reminding us about this.

Also another reminder, for everybody throwing a lasso around everything and hating on it, you're actually upset with the bureaucracy (which contains law enforcement).

Remember folks, the U.S. gov't is split into four parts: 1. Legislative branch (makes laws for the executive branch to approve, and for the judicial branch to possibly overturn, and creates functions within the bureaucracy) 2. Judicial branch (throws away or reenforces work done by the legislative+executive branch) 3. Executive branch (controls the bureaucracy, great filter for the legislative branch) 4. Bureaucracy network (the informal branch of the gov't of employees rendering services for the citizens, most people end up complaining about: law enforcement, department workers, the postoffice and military)

So yes, tell the bureaucracy to stuff it. Telling one of the other three branches to stuff it probably doesn't fly too well.

paxys5• 2 years ago

The default view of government by businesses and people should be as an adversary

This is never ever going to be the default unless it is legislated. A business has much more to gain by aligning itself with the government than with the general population.

barbazoo3• 2 years ago

I wish those doorbell cameras would blur the background in such a way that passersby and neighbors' houses don't show up in their video. If this was the case it wouldn't matter much whether people or the manufacturer itself share the video.

pintxo3• 2 years ago

This should be a legal requirement.

anon2917• 2 years ago

You have a legal right to view your property.

A better law would simply say video that is viewing your property from the outside cannot be used as evidence or something like that.

wil421• 2 years ago

In the US, Google has streeview. My house and my neighborhood is publicly available. Including whatever or whoever is in view.

vineyardmike6• 2 years ago

Uh did I miss something? Is google street view live?

I’m much more ok with a static image of the front of my house than a continuous stream of everyone coming/going and everything that happens in the windows.

pimlottc• 2 years ago

Google Street View blurs faces.

barbazoo3• 2 years ago

When I lived in Germany you could have your entire address blurred. Is that not possible anymore?

paxys5• 2 years ago

The location, size, description, ownership details, price and in some cases even pictures of your house are all a matter of public record. Google taking a picture of it from the street once every few years isn't eroding your privacy.

sib301• 2 years ago

They blur people from view with street view so it isn’t quite the same.

indymike6• 2 years ago

I'm completely ok with the police asking me for video from my doorbell. I'm not ok with the police using the third party doctrine and asking the hosting service for my video without asking me. That video is every bit my property as the files in my desk drawer and should be subject to the same protections.

ses19843• 2 years ago

Pretty sure if you read the fine print that video is not your property, but even if it was, how can you enforce that if it’s not on your own servers?

FireBeyond2• 2 years ago

Which in itself blows my mind. Imagine if Canon told me the pictures taken with my camera were not my property.

mlyle6• 2 years ago

He's not asking about how to enforce it, I don't think.

He's wishing that things like your e-mail, videos in the cloud, etc, required a warrant for the police to search, instead of just a subpoena to a third party.

The article falsely implies that a warrant is required, but in practice police can just subpoena the information.

kansface• 2 years ago

Encryption. Anyone org than can side step it doesn't matter anyway.

smolder4• 2 years ago

It's a mistake to trust a cloud service with your data and expect no one to take advantage of the fact that they are the ones holding it.

mlyle6• 2 years ago

Yah, that's not the problem he's referencing.

He's referencing that we have early 20th and late 19th century case law about third parties holding documents, etc, that is used to make everything sitting at a cloud service subject to subpoena without a warrant (email, etc, too).

There's all kinds of precedent that was based on sane tradeoffs for the 1800's that doesn't make sense anymore with the more complicated ways we transact and interact and with the ability of technology to commit mass surveillance.

Spivak4• 2 years ago

This is true only because our laws allow such a thing. The 3rd party doctrine is something that should be heavily restricted to encapsulate people's reasonable expectation of privacy for hosted services. The least of which for our industry because as it stands it requires wasteful work to add unnecessary security just to play legal games and hurts our ability to sell products that store people's sensitive data.

goodSteveramos11• 2 years ago

If the so-called liberal Western regimes respected privacy rights they way they claim to it would be perfectly reasonable to trust a cloud provider with your data.

indymike6• 2 years ago

It's a mistake to trust a cloud service with your data

Eventually, this has to change for the better. Right now, users don't understand/don't care...

cameldrv• 2 years ago

My understanding is that even though you view it as your property, according to the patriot act, it’s a “business record” of the provider and subject to disclosure without a warrant.

indymike6• 2 years ago

This is unconstitutional and needs to stop.

2OEH8eoCRo0• 2 years ago

Could you cite a source for that claim please? This is the first that I'm hearing this.

mardifoufs• 2 years ago

Wasn't most of the patriot act left to expire by the trump administration back in 2020? Were those parts ever renewed since?

bastardoperator• 2 years ago

I agree with the sentiment, but in this case you just licensed software, you don't own the bits, the service, the components, or the video. Those files were never in your desk drawer, they've always been in amazon's desk drawer. While this is a step in the right direction, I would look to an RTSP doorbell if you're concerned.

tomwheeler• 2 years ago

I would look to an RTSP doorbell if you're concerned

The problem is that the market success of products from Ring and similar companies have obliterated the market for DIY systems, so the few RTSP doorbells that exist aren't very good.

JohnFen2• 2 years ago

I think it's important to consider any data being held on someone else's server as being effectively publicly available. That's one of the main reasons why I don't use cloud services and would never use a device that required someone else's server to hold or process sensitive data.

tlb• 2 years ago

Do you have some recommended devices that follow that rule?

_heimdall4• 2 years ago

We'd be much better off as a society if more of our governing systems were voluntary. That's no silver bullet for sure, but it would go pretty damn far.

One of the more ridiculous examples I have come across, unpasteurized milk. In the US, as well as Canada and other western countries I believe, it is illegal to sell raw milk for human consumption. Meaning that if I have a neighbor with a milk cow, I can't buy a gallon of milk from them to drink or cook with. Stores can obviously do what they want, and requiring FDA certification for example would effectively block raw milk from stores. But why can't I choose to ignore FDA guidelines meant for industrial milk production and just buy a damn gallon of milk from a local farm?

patmorgan23• 2 years ago

We have pasteurization for a reason mate. Raw milk goes bad pretty quickly, even in our modern, cleaner farm system. 3 day old raw milk, even if kept perfectly chilled can be deadly.

themaninthedark• 2 years ago

Is it even <your> video?

After reading the product description on Amazon, it looks like it is the hardware that you need to buy in order to use Amazon's doorbell and monitoring service.

See: In order to view "your" video history, you must subscribe to the Amazon Protect plan.

paxys5• 2 years ago

The title incorrectly implies that police can no longer ask users for surveillance video, while the actual change is that Amazon itself is going to stop sharing it without a warrant. You can of course do anything with your video you want, including giving it to police.

g42gregory2• 2 years ago

It looks like Bloomberg wrote this misleading article and put this title up, deliberately, on purpose. I don’t think it’s the OP’s fault. I wonder what else Bloomberg publishes on, in the same way?

paxys5• 2 years ago

You don't have to wonder. Read like 5 more lines beyond the title and figure it out for yourself.

redcobra7622• 2 years ago

Can you help me understand why the article/title is "misleading" or what their motive would be to do so "deliberately, on purpose"?

I genuinely don't get the angle here you're suggesting Bloomberg has.

IshKebab• 2 years ago

Next week, the company will disable its Request For Assistance tool, the program that had allowed law enforcement to seek footage from users on a voluntary basis,

How is this not stopping the police from asking users for surveillance video? Are you saying this statement is a lie?

I don't think anyone is stupid enough to think that Amazon are somehow physically restraining the police from knocking on people's doors and asking them face to face. It's about requests facilitated by Amazon.

FriedPickles• 2 years ago

Ring offers video end-to-end-encryption (E2EE) on at least some devices, in which case they can't access the footage even if they want to (short of sneaking it out of the app post decryption). I hope they'll find ways to support more features when E2EE is enabled over time.

https://ring.com/support/articles/7e3lk/Understanding-Video-...

notyourwork• 2 years ago

Is it stored encrypted and only decrypted with my key? If not, e2ee doesn't really prevent hosting provider from sharing your content without your consent.

smolder4• 2 years ago

If not, it's not e2ee!

MPSimmons• 2 years ago

This is literally the reason I didn't buy Ring, and instead bought Eufy.

ceejayoz4• 2 years ago

Ooof.

https://www.theverge.com/23573362/anker-eufy-security-camera...

First, Anker told us it was impossible. Then, it covered its tracks. It repeatedly deflected while utterly ignoring our emails. So shortly before Christmas, we gave the company an ultimatum: if Anker wouldn’t answer why its supposedly always-encrypted Eufy cameras were producing unencrypted streams — among other questions — we would publish a story about the company’s lack of answers.

CommanderData• 2 years ago

Do Ring doorbells allow users to connect directly to video streams via RTSP or similar?

gh02t• 2 years ago

Short answer is no. It's been a while since I last looked at it but the long answer is "kinda in a hacky way, with a lot of work, and Ring is gonna fight you the whole way because they want you to pay."

Example: https://github.com/tsightler/ring-mqtt-ha-addon

_heimdall4• 2 years ago

I wish more people that wanted cameras would invest in systems that store all recordings locally. Video recordings can be very important, personal, and/or important in criminal investigations.

If you own the camera and put it on your property, please don't allow all recordings to be sent to a emote server you have no control over. And seriously please font leave the camera accessible to the public internet 24/7, it may be convenient but its also begging for trouble.

sigwinch28• 2 years ago

Storing CCTV footage on-prem is at odds with preserving said footage. It’s usually easier for an intruder to destroy or steal the physical storage device on site compared to gaining access to an off-site storage device in an unknown or practically inaccessible location. This is especially true for residential properties.

Do you hide it in a wall or in an attic somewhere?

belthesar• 2 years ago

If we're considering the adversaries here as both a centralized provider for recording access and storage, and the intruder who might look for a DVR and destroy it, then it's reasonable to want a way to decentralize all copies of the data and also not want untrusted individuals from having access to the decentralized copies. The argument GP provided wasn't that off-site storage was bad, but that off-site storage in a SaaS platform that is easily identified as a destination to subpoena by virtue of seeing the Ring brandname on the doorbell and/or cameras is risky and in their opinion undesirable.

_heimdall4• 2 years ago

It really depends on your threat model, like anything else with privacy and security. Storing the tapes out of site would probably work, honestly on-prem is so uncommon that I'd expect any intruder to think the cameras are connected to an online service anyway.

If I wanted to get clever I'd have a dummy setup of some kind. Stash a few real enough looking and literally label it "cameras". I'm not worried about defeating Danny Ocean here, I'd be surprised if an intruder even looked for the storage system let alone would recognize it.

Amazon's Ring to stop letting police request doorbell video from users

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