Amazon Ring mandates a warrant for police footage access

In a reversal, the company deactivates the feature enabling law enforcement to directly request user footage

Amazon Ring has changed its policy, now demanding a warrant for US law enforcement to access doorbell footage from users. The company, in a blog post, stated it would no longer permit law enforcement to directly request footage through the Neighbors app. This shift is a departure from Ring’s previous and contentious policy, which faced criticism from civil liberties and privacy advocates.

In a blog post detailing enhancements for sharing videos on the Neighbors app, Amazon disclosed the removal of the “request for assistance” (RFA) feature. This change eliminates the ability of public safety agencies, including the police, to ask users to voluntarily share Ring camera footage. Previously, this approach bypassed the need for obtaining warrants to access user data from Amazon.

Fire and police departments, along with other public safety agencies, can continue utilizing the Neighbors app to disseminate safety tips, updates, and community events,” states the blog post. However, the RFA tool is no longer available for these agencies to request and receive videos within the app.

For an extended period, civil liberties experts have raised concerns about Amazon’s close ties with law enforcement, particularly its facilitation of warrantless police investigations through convenient access to private security footage. In response to criticism, the company discontinued the practice of allowing police to privately request video footage from Ring users, shifting to public posting of such requests on the app. The recent change mandates that police can only access Ring footage through a warrant. While Matthew Guariglia, a senior policy analyst at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, sees this as a positive step, he emphasizes that there is still much room for improvement.

Now, Ring is expected to completely cease enabling casual and warrantless police requests for footage to its users,” Guariglia stated. “While Ring has made significant concessions, we maintain the belief that the devices should implement end-to-end encryption by default and disable default audio collection, as reports indicate audio is collected from greater distances than initially assumed.

The company faced criticism previously for its broader privacy policies related to user footage access. In May 2023, Amazon reached a $5.8 million, 20-year settlement with the Federal Trade Commission, mandating the disclosure of the extent of its data access to customers. As per the FTC filing, Amazon’s lenient privacy policies enabled employees and contractors to “view, download, and transfer customers’ sensitive video data for their own purposes.” Additionally, in 2022, Amazon acknowledged providing police with video footage without customer consent or a warrant in 11 cases it deemed emergencies.

We maintain significant skepticism regarding law enforcement’s and Ring’s capacity to accurately discern what constitutes an emergency warranting the surrender of footage without a warrant or user consent,” Guariglia expressed.