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TLDR: > Although Ring publicizes its policy of handing over camera footage only if the owner agrees — or if judge signs a search warrant — the company says it
by helen___keller 4y ago
TLDR:
> Although Ring publicizes its policy of handing over camera footage only if the owner agrees — or if judge signs a search warrant — the company says it also reserves the right to supply police with footage in “emergencies,” defined broadly as “cases involving imminent danger of death or serious physical injury to any person.”
(…)
> it has provided police with user footage 11 times this year alone.
I would actually be okay with this if it was more public when the standard was met. For example, there’s an armed shooter at the local elementary school in front of my house? Sure, scoop up my Ring footage.
But without more info I have to assume it’s whenever the police say it’s an emergency, which can be anytime they want.
- BurningFrog 4y ago11 emergencies a year across the US sounds perfectly reasonable.
- AlwaysRock 4y agoSure. What were the emergencies though? Police knew a ring cam had evidence of a murder on it? Or police knew ring cam had some footage of where they dropped their keys last night? Who defines emergency? If its the police then anything they need it for is an emergency.
- NegativeLatency 4y agoAlso if it’s really an “emergency” then they should be able to use the existing warrant process
- BurningFrog 4y agoGetting a warrant from a judge typically takes a few hours. It can be faster in emergencies, but in the “cases involving imminent danger of death or serious physical injury to any person” this is about, I don't know that it's practical.
- AlwaysRock 4y agoIn what situation does previously recorded footage on a ring camera need to be accessed as evidence in sooner than a few hours? This footage isnt being used in crime prevention.
- fotta 4y agoIn your situation, the police should be asking YOU not Amazon for the footage. I don’t have a problem with turning over footage, but not without my consent. I want to be able to decide when to give it to police.
- BurningFrog 4y agoIn an emergency, you might not be home, or you might be shot.
- cronix 4y agoNone of which precludes them from asking first, or attempting to.
- gjm11 4y agoYou might be off on holiday, or asleep, or in hospital under anaesthesia, and the police might not be able to get in touch with you quickly.
- helen___keller 4y agoI’m saying that if the “emergency” standard was well described and followed consistently (and I agree with it), then I would OK granting amazon the power to manage this permission on my behalf. Similarly, as a citizen of the country, I’m OK that judges can sign a warrant and manage permission on my behalf as well.
- delecti 4y agoAnother big distinction would be whether they told people when they sent police their camera's footage. Nothing suggest they're doing that, which makes it harder to trust their judgement.
- anigbrowl 4y agoI would actually be okay with this if it was more public when the standard was met. For example, there’s an armed shooter at the local elementary school in front of my house? Sure, scoop up my Ring footage. As we saw recently, police/local government will often fight against the release of surveillance footage to the public in cases where it makes them look bad. The Austin Statesman had to fight in court for a month to get the footage from the school in Uvalde which showed police just loitering in a hallway for an hour, in the full knowledge that a gunman who had just massacred a bunch of young children was holed up in a room nearby. I'm not using the term 'loitering' casually. There's one bit of footage showing an officer idly checking his phone, which has 'Punisher' wallpaper.
- int_19h 4y agoPolice will fight the release of basically any information that sheds a light on their activities. In many states, there are no publicly available statistics on things like how much SWAT teams are used, and what for. When some states tried passing laws to require PDs to capture such stats, police unions pushed back hard.
- jcranberry 4y agoI think there was also similar reports with Apple recently. There was some kind of emergency hotline contact or something like that where authorities could request information where it was extremely time sensitive (I think the example given was human trafficking? although my memory was hazy), and they would be provided information without a warrant.