Ring: Amazon subsidiary’s surveillance cameras share videos with police without consent

Well, on Amazon Prime Day 2022 at the ring surveillance cameras of the Amazon subsidiary, such as the Ring Floodlight Cam Wired Plus or the Ring Spotlight Cam struck? Then this news should not please you at all. The camera give their recordings in urgent cases also unsolicited to the police, as Amazon has since confirmed.

Ring surveillance cameras are watching

Surveillance cameras from Amazon subsidiary Ring pass on their recordings to the police in urgent cases. And that even without being asked and without you having to give consent.

U.S. Senator Ed Markey of Massachusetts already knocked on Amazon’s door at the end of June 2022 to inquire whether Ring Doorbell cameras could listen in on conversations in this specific case, according to the British newspaper The Independent.

Previously, a study was published that proved that cameras from the manufacturer, after their motion detectors were triggered, could listen in and record audio up to 25 feet (7.6 meters) away.

Amazon’s response to Markey’s inquiry is clear, according to Yahoo. Brian Huseman, Amazon vice president of public policy, had this to say about the questions:

“Ring reserves the right to respond without delay to urgent requests from law enforcement, for cases where there is an imminent threat of death or serious bodily injury to a person. Urgent requests must be submitted with an emergency disclosure request,” Huseman said.

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Ring: “No customer data will be shared”

Ring, meanwhile, confirms that it treats customer and user data confidentially and does not share it with police and other authorities without prior consent, a power of attorney or an “urgent or emergency circumstance”.

In the total of eleven identified cases underlying the letter, Ring had provided videos to police. “In each of these cases, Ring made a good faith determination that there was imminent danger to an individual and decided to disclose the data to law enforcement without delay,” Huseman continues.

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“End-to-end encryption not right for all customers”

While Ring surveillance cameras offer end-to-end encryption, it is not right for all customers without exception, Huseman added. He said that while this is fundamentally built into Ring devices, initially this feature is disabled at the factory.

The manufacturer rejects the demand on the part of Senator Ed Markey to activate the encryption by default. Ring has been criticized for years for the security aspects of its surveillance cameras.

In the USA, Ring now cooperates with 2,161 law enforcement agencies in its own Neighbors Public Safety Service, which gives the police access to the information from the cameras.