Amazon Is Coaching Cops On How To Obtain Surveillance Footage Without a Warrant

[DamianTV]

https://yro.slashdot.org/story/19/08...hout-a-warrant

When police partner with Ring, Amazon's home surveillance camera company, they get access to the "Law Enforcement Neighborhood Portal," an interactive map that allows officers to request footage directly from camera owners. Police don't need a warrant to request this footage, but they do need permission from camera owners. Emails and documents obtained by Motherboard reveal that people aren't always willing to provide police with their Ring camera footage. However, Ring works with law enforcement and gives them advice on how to persuade people to give them footage. Emails obtained from police department in Maywood, NJ -- and emails from the police department of Bloomfield, NJ, which were also posted by Wired -- show that Ring coaches police on how to obtain footage. The company provides cops with templates for requesting footage, which they do not need a court warrant to do. Ring suggests cops post often on Neighbors, Ring's free "neighborhood watch" app, where Ring camera owners have the option of sharing their camera footage. As reported by GovTech on Friday, police can request Ring camera footage directly from Amazon, even if a Ring customer denies to provide police with the footage. It's a workaround that allows police to essentially "subpoena" anything captured on Ring cameras.

Last week, Motherboard also found that at least 200 law enforcement agencies around the country have entered into partnerships with Amazon's home surveillance company Ring.

[Origanalist]

Ring asks police not to tell public how its law enforcement backend works

Ring asks cops not to call its security cameras "security cameras" in public

Amazon's Ring line of consumer home surveillance products enjoys an extensive partnership with local police departments all over the country. Cops receive free product, extensive coaching, and pre-approved marketing lines, and Amazon gets access to your 911 data and gets to spread its network of security cameras all over the nation. According to a trio of new reports, though, the benefits to police go even further than was previously known—as long as they don't use the word "surveillance," that is.

Gizmodo on Monday published an email exchange between the chief of police in one New Jersey town and Ring showing that Ring edited out certain key terms of a draft press release before the town published it, as the company frequently does.

The town of Ewing, New Jersey, in March said it would be using Ring's Neighbors app. Neighbors does not require a Ring device to use; consumers who don't have footage to share can still view certain categories of crime reports in their area and contribute reports of their own, sort of like a Nextdoor on steroids.

Law enforcement has access to a companion portal that allows police to see an approximate map of active Ring cameras in a given area and request footage from them in the course of an investigation. The town also launched a subsidy program, giving up to 200 residents a $100 discount on the purchase of Ring security products. Members of the police department also received $50 discount vouchers for their own use.

The original draft press release, obtained by Gizmodo, showed that the town used one of Ring's pre-written press release templates and inserted a quote from the chief of police that read, in part, "Security cameras have been proven to be essential in deterring crime, and surveillance systems have assisted in closing cases that may have otherwise gone unsolved."

Ring approved a version with that sentence edited out, telling Ewing police the company avoids using the terms "surveillance" or "security cameras" because that might "confuse residents into thinking this program requires a Ring device or other system to participate or that it provides any sort of direct access to user devices and information."

If it quacks like a duck...
Police may not be allowed to use the words "surveillance" or "security cameras" in their marketing copy, but another pair of new reports highlights the significant surveillance capabilities Ring-branded security cameras can provide to law enforcement.

Local police departments have asked Ring to share "names, home addresses, and email addresses" of everyone who purchases a subsidized Ring device, Vice Motherboard reported yesterday, with some apparent success.

Email exchanges and other documents Motherboard obtained from several localities show that in at least three cities, Ring had the capability to share a list of everyone who used a city subsidy to purchase a camera, theoretically to prevent homeowners from double-dipping.

more..https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/...-tells-police/

[Occam's Banana]

[Occam's Banana]

Ring approved a version with that sentence edited out, telling Ewing police the company avoids using the terms "surveillance" or "security cameras" because that might "confuse residents into thinking this program requires a Ring device or other system to participate or that it provides any sort of direct access to user devices and information."

LOL. Yeah, that's why ...

(As is said for sacrificial animals, "Don't show them the knife" ...)

[devil21]

The reason for the name "Ring":

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rings_of_Saturn

https://www.nicholson1968.com/nichol...the-black-cube


All of the various surveillance and monitoring products from various companies like Amazon and Apple are cleverly named to sound innocuous but are actually homages to TPTB's "gods" or a slick nod to the purpose of the device. Every time one of these products is released, think about the name, ditch preconceived "exoteric" ideas about what the name of the product means and look for a more "esoteric" meaning. None of these products are named innocuously.

Got an Apple "Watch"? Guess what it does? Just one example.

[Occam's Banana]

Police Now Need a Warrant to Access Ring Footage
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pscHQXCx-lM
{Steve Lehto | 27 January 2024}