Law enforcement and fire departments will need warrants or subpoenas to access Amazon Ring surveillance footage starting Jan. 31.
The change was announced in a Wednesday Ring blog post by Eric Kuhn, the head of the Neighbors app, Ring’s community watch app. Previously, agencies like police and fire departments were able to use the app’s “Request for Assistance” tool to publicly ask users for their camera footage beginning in 2021. While it’s unclear what prompted the change, the company announced that it will also be adding a Ring Moments category and a Best of Ring tile to the app.
“Public safety agencies like fire and police departments can still use the Neighbors app to share helpful safety tips, updates, and community events,” Kuhn said in the blog post.
Amazon bought Ring for more than $800 million in April 2018, according to financial filings. It has since garnered hundreds of law enforcement partners, according to a tracker maintained by the advocacy group Fight for the Future. Ring, despite settling in multiple privacy lapse cases, has said it can share surveillance footage with the authorities in the case of an emergency.
“The mission has always been making the neighborhood safer,” said Kuhn, according to The Washington Post in 2019. “We’ve had a lot of success in terms of deterring crime and solving crimes that would otherwise not be solved as quickly.”
The brand, dubbed the “new neighborhood watch,” has been criticized for its close relationship with the authorities. Critics have argued that the app and the company’s relationship with the authorities can create hyper-surveilled communities and can lead to racial profiling.
In July 2022, Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) criticized Ring’s video-sharing practices with authorities in a statement.
Markey argued that “it has become increasingly difficult for the public to move, assemble, and converse in public without being tracked and recorded.”
“We cannot accept this as inevitable in our country. Increasing law enforcement reliance on private surveillance creates a crisis of accountability, and I am particularly concerned that biometric surveillance could become central to the growing web of surveillance systems that Amazon and other powerful tech companies are responsible for,” he added.
The director of Fight for the Future, Evan Greer, said that Ring’s decision to shut down the app’s “Request for Assistance” tool was a good move, but that it wasn’t enough, according to CNN.
“Ring shutting down the ‘red carpet’ surveillance portal they offered to police is unquestionably a victory for the coalition of racial justice and human rights advocates that have been calling to end these partnerships for years,” Greer said. “That said, this move only scratches the surface of addressing the harm done by Ring’s dystopian business model.”