Amazon’s Ring home surveillance products have helped millions of Americans secure their homes. One of Ring’s latest innovations, the Neighbors app, gives consumers an additional security tool. However, some are concerned with the company partnering with law enforcement agencies, providing them with information generated by Neighbors and Ring hardware.
While the technology can be a powerful security mechanism, some are concerned by potential privacy and civil liberties violations. Below is an explanation of Ring, its products, its partnership with police agencies, and what it could mean for criminal defense.
What Is Ring?
Ring is a consumer electronics company that was founded in 2013 under the name Doorbot. You may be familiar with Doorbot from the Shark Tank television show, where it unsuccessfully pitched a video doorbell. While the company received great exposure from Shark Tank, it struggled financially, until it rebranded as Ring.
Sales skyrocketed after the rebrand and concurrent strategy shift. Several high-profile and lucrative events followed. In 2016, NBA legend Shaquille O’Neal partnered with Ring and became a company spokesman, boosting the company’s profile. Investments from Kleiner Perkins Caufield Byers, Qualcomm Ventures, Goldman Sachs, and Virgin founder Sir Richard Branson helped Ring achieve astronomical growth. In 2018, Amazon acquired Ring for a whopping $1-billion, giving the company immense marketing and R&D budgets.
After a rocky start, Ring home surveillance products and services dominate the market.
What Products Does Ring Sell?
While it started with a novel video doorbell that allowed homeowners to see who was at the front door, the company has expanded its offerings to a full suite of Amazon Ring home surveillance products. Ring has a number of Internet-connected video doorbells, security cameras, lighting, motion sensors, and more.
In 2018, the company launched the Neighbors app and service. Touted as a modern and technologically-advanced “neighborhood watch,” Neighbors combines home security, crowdsourcing, and social media features. It amalgamates the information from an individual Ring household with crowdsourced data and discussion of local activities. Here’s an excerpt from the official description:
Get real-time crime and safety alerts from your neighbors and local law enforcement. Always know when and where crime happens in your area, and share updates to keep you and your community safe. Together we can create stronger communities, just like the neighbors below.
Neighbors users laud the service as a crime deterrent and a valuable source of information. While it’s clearly a beneficial service for consumers and communities, Ring had more ambitious plans for Neighbors.
Ring Home Surveillance and Law Enforcement
In March 2018, Ring entered into a partnership with the Greenfield Police Department (GPD) in Wisconsin. Ring provided the GPD with discounted hardware (with a free initial batch), which was then given to citizens for no charge. The cameras weren’t quite “free” to consumers, though; through the Neighbors app, GPD and Ring received data about its users and activity in their communities. Additionally, the GPD had the right to request video clips from the people given “free” hardware.
Since then, Ring has partnered with more than 400 police and sheriff’s departments. In Arizona, the following cities and towns have entered into a partnership with Ring: Buckeye, Chandler, El Mirage, Gilbert, Glendale, Maricopa (city), Mesa, Paradise Valley, Peoria, Phoenix, Scottsdale, and Surprise. The collaborations work similarly. Citizens get no-cost or subsidized hardware, law enforcement and Ring get data, and law enforcement have the right to request video clips from users.
On paper, this sounds like a win for everyone involved. However, if you dig beneath the surface, there are several potential privacy and civil liberty concerns.
Ring Home Surveillance Privacy Issues
Ring security and doorbell cameras record video footage of the properties they’re on. The video clips can be stored in the cloud by their owners or publicly shared through the Neighbors app.
While this is great for identifying potential criminals, the majority of people filmed by Ring products are innocent and quite possibly unaware that they’re being filmed. Furthermore, most are likely ignorant that video clips of them can be shared on the Neighbors app or requested by law enforcement.
Ring is also working on implementing facial recognition technology into its goods and services. Again, this is potentially fantastic for deterring and identifying actual criminals, but there is concern about how the tech would work in practice and possible abuse. Some privacy experts are worried about facial recognition being used to identify their activity and whereabouts. Some are concerned that facial recognition will be used for racial profiling.
In a letter to Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, Senator Ed Markey wrote:
The nature of Ring’s products and its partnerships with police departments raise serious privacy and civil liberties concerns. Although Amazon markets Ring as America’s “new neighborhood watch,” the technology captures and stores video from millions of households and sweeps up footage of countless bystanders who may be unaware that they are being filmed. I am particularly alarmed to learn that Ring is pursuing facial-recognition technology with the potential to flag certain individuals as suspicious based on their biometric information.
Privacy issues also have ramifications in criminal cases. If a Ring camera happens to take videos of an assault or theft taking place, there are questions of whether the videos were obtained lawfully and whether they are admissible in court. Admissibility criteria differ from state to state, but it may be difficult to prove a video’s authenticity, originality, and relevance. Furthermore, and depending on the state, homeowners that do not have a warning sign that states that visitors are being recorded may have their videos thrown out of court because they violated a reasonable expectation of privacy. There are also potential constitutional issues with police obtaining this information without a search warrant.
As with any technology, things can go wrong. A faulty security system could lead to incorrect timestamps, falsely linking someone to a property at the time of a crime. Similarly, bad geolocation data could link someone to place they weren’t actually near. While modern technology is a tremendous asset in determining who, where, when, and what, a glitch can make video data incorrect and inadmissible in court.
Contact a Criminal Defense Lawyer
If you’re concerned about Ring home surveillance footage being used against you unlawfully, please contact Lerner and Rowe Law Group immediately. Our criminal attorneys have extensive experience and thorough knowledge of legal issues related to modern technology. Most importantly, our team will treat you with care and professionalism that you deserve.
You can visit us for a free consultation Monday through Friday between the hours of 8:00 a.m. and 5:00 p.m. You can call us 24/7 at 602-667-7777 . We are also available through the Internet, using our online contact form and LiveChat feature. Lerner and Rowe Law Group is ready to serve you.