Amazon’s Ring to discontinue police’s ability to request doorbell video from users.
Ring, the home doorbell unit of Amazon.com Inc., has announced that it will no longer allow police departments to request footage from users’ video doorbells and surveillance cameras. This decision comes after facing backlash from civil liberties groups and certain elected officials.
Next week, the company will disable the Request For Assistance tool, a program that allows law enforcement to voluntarily request material from users, Eric Kuhn, who runs the Ring’s Neighbors app, said in a blog post Wednesday. Police and fire departments must seek permission to request footage from users or show the company evidence of an ongoing emergency.
Kuhn did not say why Ring retired the tool. Spokesman Yassi Yarger said Ring had decided to focus its resources on new Neighbors app products and experiences that better fit the company’s vision. The goal is to make Naapur, which is focused on crime and safety, more of a community center, he said. New features announced Wednesday — one called Ring Moments, which lets users post clips, and a company-produced Best of Ring — highlight that push.
The move marks a change of course for Ring, which from its early days during its tenure at Amazon framed its mission almost exclusively as an effort to improve public safety through surveillance. “Our mission to reduce crime in neighborhoods has been at the core of everything we do at Ring,” co-founder Jamie Siminoff said when Amazon sealed the company’s purchase in 2018.
Amazon joins Google in reducing law enforcement access to its users. The Alphabet Inc-owned company announced last month that it was changing its location history feature on Google Maps, removing the ability for police to request information from anyone near a crime. According to a Bloomberg investigation, grabbing user data from Google had become an increasingly popular method for police agencies.
Civil liberties groups such as the Electronic Frontier Foundation have long criticized Ring, accusing it of building a residential surveillance network available to law enforcement on demand and highlighting a history of biased policing in the United States.
Initially, when police departments sought footage from Ring doorbell owners in a certain area during an investigation, the company emailed users and asked them to voluntarily share clips. Ring in 2021 began requiring police and fire departments to make these requests publicly through the Neighbors app. It’s a Nextdoor-like hub that allows people to upload material and share information. That didn’t dispel criticism, including that of Sen. Ed Marky, who slammed the “growing web of surveillance systems” built by Amazon and other tech companies.
Siminoff left Ring last year. He was replaced as CEO by Liz Hamren, who had worked at Discord Inc., Microsoft Corp. and Meta Platforms Inc. Hamren told Bloomberg last year that Ring was rethinking its operations, in part because of its expanded line of devices. , which includes indoor and backyard home monitoring and business services.
