Posted on 08/21/2019 8:29:38 PM PDT by ransomnote
In documents sent to police in Illinois, Ring informed officers what “should not be shared with the public.”
Police might be able to see throughout neighborhoods using Ring's video doorbells, but that transparency doesn't go both ways. In documents sent to police in Illinois, Amazon's Ring unit instructs officers on exactly what law enforcement shouldn't share with the public.
But through public documents and interviews with police, we're able to explain exactly what those features are.
Ring has partnered with scores of police departments across the country, though the details of those relationships are often limited. For example, Ring still declines to provide the full number of police partnerships, leaving privacy advocates to figure out those numbers through public data requests. Privacy researcher Shreyas Gandlur released a map showing every Ring police partnership he could find, totaling 250 as of Aug. 19.
That's not the only detail Ring and police are keeping secret. In email exchanges between Ring and the Bensenville, Illinois, police department in July, the Amazon-owned company -- Amazon purchased Ring in 2018 for $839 million -- detailed what tools should be kept confidential.
"Neighbors Portal back-end features should not be shared with the public, including the law enforcement portal on desktop view, the heat map, sample video request emails or the video request process itself as they often contain sensitive investigative information," a Ring associate wrote to police, according to FOIA documents sent to Gandlur.
This sucks. We have had a ring doorbell for several years and love it. I had no idea Amazon bought them. It has been very useful as a doorbell and seeing who is in front of our house.
I may have to rethink this as I don’t like the idea of the police and others tapping into my doorbell.
Other companies make Ring style doorbells. We don’t have either. We have our own video surveillance with its own hard drive. Stores round the clock for 90 days then starts over.
I understand the confusion, and sadly for many Constitution is optional.
I am not a fan of Ring or the surveillance state. However, my concern is that post read as statement of fact. People not reading the article will think Ring has actual heat source monitoring capability when it does not.
We all do it—comment on the headlines w/o reading the article, but posts would be far more accurate if people took time to read...
Freegards.
You can do that with your own WiFi camera setup...
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