{"id":55164,"date":"2024-01-25T15:04:18","date_gmt":"2024-01-25T15:04:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/packetstormsecurity.com\/news\/view\/35446\/Amazon-Ring-Says-US-Police-Will-Now-Need-Warrant-To-Access-Footage.html"},"modified":"2024-01-25T15:04:18","modified_gmt":"2024-01-25T15:04:18","slug":"amazon-ring-says-us-police-will-now-need-warrant-to-access-footage","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.threatshub.org\/blog\/amazon-ring-says-us-police-will-now-need-warrant-to-access-footage\/","title":{"rendered":"Amazon Ring Says US Police Will Now Need Warrant To Access Footage"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Amazon Ring will now require US law enforcement to obtain a warrant to access doorbell footage from individual users. The company announced in a blog post that it would no longer allow law enforcement to request doorbell footage directly from users in the company\u2019s social networking app, Neighbors. The move is an about-face from Ring\u2019s long-held and controversial policy<\/a> that drew the ire of civil liberties and privacy advocates.<\/p>\n

At the bottom of a blog post<\/a> about new features that make it easier for Ring users to share \u201cheartwarming or silly\u201d videos in the Neighbors app, Amazon announced that it was doing away with its \u201crequest for assistance\u201d (RFA) feature. Up until this announcement, public safety agencies including police were able to ask users to voluntarily share video footage from their Ring cameras rather than seeking warrants to obtain that user data from Amazon.<\/p>\n

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\u201cPublic safety agencies like fire and police departments can still use the Neighbors app to share helpful safety tips, updates, and community events,\u201d the blog post reads. \u201cThey will no longer be able to use the RFA tool to request and receive video in the app.\u201d<\/p>\n

Civil liberties experts have long criticized Amazon\u2019s close relationship with law enforcement<\/a> and the company\u2019s willingness to facilitate warrantless police investigations by allowing easy access to private security footage from people\u2019s homes. In response to criticism, the company previously did away with the practice that allowed police to privately send requests for video footage to Ring users. Instead, police were only allowed to publicly post these requests on the the app. Now they can only obtain footage from Ring using a warrant. Matthew Guariglia, a senior policy analyst at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, said \u201cthis is a step in the right direction\u201d but that much more can be done.<\/p>\n

\u201cNow, Ring hopefully will altogether be out of the business of platforming casual and warrantless police requests for footage to its users,\u201d Guariglia said in a statement. \u201cRing has been forced to make some important concessions \u2013 but we still believe the devices can enable end-to-end encryption by default and turn off default audio collection, which reports have shown collect audio from greater distances than initially assumed<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

The company has previously come under fire for its broader privacy policies around access to users\u2019 footage. In May 2023, Amazon entered into a 20-year $5.8m settlement with the Federal Trade Commission that required the company to disclose to its customers how much access it has to their data. According to the FTC filing, Amazon\u2019s lax privacy policies allowed employees and contractors to \u201cview, download, and transfer customers\u2019 sensitive video data for their own purposes\u201d. Amazon also admitted<\/a> in 2022 that it had handed police video footage without the customers\u2019 consent or a warrant 11 times that year in cases it deemed an \u201cemergency\u201d.<\/p>\n

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