The suspect shown above in a Ring video was arrested by police less than one day after allegedly trying to break into a home. The homeowner later said “[police] were stunned by how clear the video quality was and how a tool like this led to the arrest of a perpetrator.” (Video courtesy of Ring.com)
Pasadena police say concerns raised in national media about law enforcement agencies deliberately circumnavigating the Fourth Amendment — the right not to be searched or have items seized without a legal warrant — by improperly gaining access to home security camera videos are unfounded here in Pasadena.
The issue entered the national spotlight after Lauren Bridges, a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Pennsylvania, told The Guardian that one in 10 police departments around the country has access to video from civilian cameras after Amazon Ring reportedly partnered with more than 1,800 local law enforcement agencies.
“Ring video doorbells, Amazon’s signature home security product, pose a serious threat to a free and democratic society,” Bridges wrote in an opinion piece published in The Guardian. “Not only is Ring’s surveillance network spreading rapidly, it is extending the reach of law enforcement into private property and expanding the surveillance of everyday life.”
But a Pasadena police spokesperson said the Pasadena Police Department does not participate in the Amazon Law Enforcement video-sharing program.
“In order for detectives to legally obtain the video, it requires either a court order (i.e., a search warrant) or the resident can voluntarily provide the video to detectives,” Lt. William Grisafe said.
Grisafe said community members’ Ring cameras and other similar home security camera systems have captured video which is pertinent to cases of criminal activity being investigated by Pasadena detectives.
Bridges said even if a Ring user gives consent to local police, the videos are, in essence, “a form of warrantless surveillance.”
The issue, Bridges told Pasadena Now, is that “the Ring user isn’t the only person being recorded on those video recordings.”
“There’ll be your neighbors, anyone passing by, anyone that moves through the purview of the camera — anyone in the residential space will then be captured and recorded,” Bridges said. “And that could potentially be handed over to law enforcement without that person’s consent.”
Community activists expressed concerns about the data collection being used against communities of color.
“This sounds like another mechanism for the profiling and targeting of Black people and communities of color,” said local activist Patrice Marshall McKenzie. “I am very concerned about consistent collection of data and evidence as well as the parameters for which this information can be used adversely against people.”
The Neighbors App uses addresses to create a radius around homes. If anyone shares an alert on the app about crime or safety within that radius, Ring owners get a notification. Subscribers can then comment on the alerts to provide additional information about local issues, give tips to avoid affected areas, and share photos or videos to help neighbors stay on the lookout.
But according to Mohammad Tajsar, senior staff attorney at the ACLU of Southern California and a Pasadena resident, the technology poses a big threat to privacy.
“The Ring is one of the most popular of an increasing crop of private sector companies that are exploiting people’s fears about crime and criminality and making a huge amounts of money, pedaling surveillance products to everyday people, but also to police departments across the country. And our fear is that what it’s doing is creating a widespread, massive sort of privately owned, but publicly accessible surveillance network in our communities and our neighborhoods.”
According to Neighbors App General Manager Eric Kuhn, by default Ring encrypts videos when they are uploaded to the cloud (in transit) and stored on AWS servers (at rest).
Video recording is optional, and available if the customer wants to save their videos to view at a later time.
“Ring automatically deletes user videos in accordance with our subscription plans. Customers can choose how long they want their Ring videos to be stored in the cloud right from the Control Center in the Ring app. Customers can always delete their videos (individual videos or their entire footage history) at any time by logging into their account on the Ring app or at Ring.com. For customers who do not have a subscription plan, no video is recorded or stored by Ring.”
Amazon now lets customers opt out of receiving notifications from police departments who might be seeking Ring doorbell video footage to help solve a crime that happened near your home.
According to a January report in the Verge, every state except Montana and Wyoming have police or fire departments participating in Amazon’s Ring network.
According to that report, figures from Ring show more than 1,189 departments joined the program in 2020 for a total of 2,014. That’s up sharply from 703 departments in 2019 and just 40 in 2018.
Bridges said she believes Ring is a deviation from previous surveillance technologies.
“The fact that it is now entering into residential space. So, you know, a lot of people talk about having our phones in our pockets as surveillance devices or ubiquitous cameras on light posts. But the difference with the Amazon Ring program is that they’re installed by civilians, civilians own the cameras. So just everyday people. And then, through the program, through the partnership that ring has with law enforcement, law enforcement are then able to place requests to the users to access recorded content. Now the users maintain the rights, they maintain the right to consent, to give, to grant access to law enforcement, to those recordings.”
Surveillance cameras on businesses have long captured people entering businesses, and local transit also records passengers.
In 2016, Ring footage led to the arrest of a suspect who tried to break into a home in Olympia, Washington. In that case, at around 4 a.m, a man walked up to the porch and attempted to gain entry into DJ McDonell’s home while he slept inside and was being filmed by the video doorbell.
After calling the police and posting the information online, the suspect was arrested within a day.
After news of the incident spread, people began asking McDonell about the Ring doorbell.
In Wilmington, North Carolina police successfully arrested a 53-year-old suspect in 2019 on suspicion of felony breaking and entering, larceny after breaking and entering, and bicycle theft after a Ring customer posted video of the suspect on the Neighbors App wandering around his property. Within an hour, officers were able to identify, locate the suspect and arrest him.
The day after the arrest the Wilmington Police Department announced they were partnering with the Neighbors App, according to WWAY News.
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