Amazon-owned home security company Ring is pursuing contracts with police departments that would grant it direct access to real-time emergency dispatch data, Gizmodo has learned
To wit, the company has positioned itself as an intermediary through which police request access to citizen-captured surveillance footage. When police make a request, they don’t know who receives it, Ring says, until a user chooses to share their video. Users are also prompted with the option to review their footage before turning it over.
One of Ring’s main selling points to police is that Neighbors can be used for “community building.”
However, Apps can fuel a vicious cycle of fear and violence
> These apps foment fear around crime, which feeds into existing biases and racism and largely reinforces stereotypes around skin color, according to David Ewoldsen, professor of media and information at Michigan State University.
> As Steven Renderos, senior campaigns director at the Center for Media Justice, put it, “These apps are not the definitive guides to crime in a neighborhood — it is merely a reflection of people’s own bias, which criminalizes people of color, the unhoused, and other marginalized communities. . . And in the digital age, as police departments shift towards ‘data-driven policing’ programs, the data generated from these interactions including 9-1-1 calls and arrests are parts of the historic crime data often used by predictive policing algorithms. So the biases baked in to the decisions around who is suspicious and who is arrested for a crime ends up informing future policing priorities and continuing the cycle of discrimination.”
Apps didn’t create bias or unfair policing, but they can exacerbate it
“To me, the danger with these apps is it puts the power in the hands of the individual to decide who does and doesn’t belong in a community,” Renderos said. “That increases the potential for communities of color to come in contact with police. Those types of interactions have wielded deadly results in the past. . .
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Amazon’s Ring Is a Perfect Storm of Privacy Threats
DEEPLINKS BLOG
Doors across the United States are now fitted with Amazon’s Ring, a combination doorbell-security camera that records and transmits video straight to users’ phones, to Amazon’s cloud—and often to the local police department. By sending photos and alerts every time the camera detects motion or someone rings the doorbell, the app can create an illusion of a household under siege. It turns what seems like a perfectly safe neighborhood into a source of anxiety and fear. This raises the question: do you really need Ring, or have Amazon and the police misled you into thinking that you do?
Go deeper > Electronic Frontier Foundation
Police partnering with Ring are encouraged to conversate with its users, who are encouraged in turn to share “tips” about activity in their neighborhoods.
Police can follow posts and receive updates via email as new tips (or complaints) roll in.
Through its police partnerships, Ring has requested access to CAD, which includes information provided voluntarily by 911 callers, among other types of data automatically collected.
CAD data is typically compromised of details such as names, phone numbers, addresses, medical conditions and potentially other types of personally identifiable information, including, in some instances, GPS coordinates.
In an email Thursday, Ring confirmed it does receive location information, including precise addresses from CAD data, which it does not publish to its app. It denied receiving other forms of personal information.
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"The California-based company is seeking police departments’ permission to tap into the computer-aided dispatch (CAD) feeds used to automate and improve decisions made by emergency dispatch personnel and cut down on police response times.
Ring has requested access to the data streams so it can curate “crime news” posts for its “neighborhood watch” app, Neighbors.
“In an effort to provide relevant and reliable crime and safety information to our neighbors, one important source we rely on is CAD,” the company told Gizmodo.
Neighbors is an app through which users can share suspicions about alleged criminal activity in their neighborhoods. They can also post video captured by their Ring doorbell cameras, if they have one. Using Neighbors does not require a Ring device, however.
An internal police email dated April 2019, obtained by Gizmodo last week via a records request, stated that more than 225 police departments have entered into partnerships with Ring. (The company has declined to confirm that, or provide the actual number.) Doing so grants the departments access to a Neighbors “law enforcement portal” through which police can request access to videos captured by Ring doorbell cameras."
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HOW TO SEE IF POLICE ARE USING RING DOORBELLS TO MONITOR YOUR NEIGHBORHOOD?
There's a map for that >
Active law enforcement agencies on the Neighbors app. Last updated 8/29/19.
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Emily Price writing on https://lifehacker.com had this to say on Sunday 02 Sept 2019
"This week, Amazon posted a blog post about its work with law enforcement agencies, specifically detailing the 405 different law enforcement agencies that currently work with the company on the Neighbors Portal.
The named law enforcement agencies might be involved as far as viewing and commenting on public posts, or they might submit a request for a video recording taken by someone’s Ring doorbell of an incident.
Along with that post, it also posted a map of all the law enforcement agencies involved. You can see a screenshot of it below, and zoom in and out on an interactive map here.
Along with that post, it also posted a map of all the law enforcement agencies involved. You can see a screenshot of it below, and zoom in and out on an interactive map here.
