Ring cameras are about to get increasingly chummy with law enforcement

Law enforcement agencies will soon have easier access to footage captured by Amazon’s Ring smart cameras. In a partnership announced this week, Amazon will allow approximately 5,000 local law enforcement agencies to request access to Ring camera footage via surveillance platforms from Flock Safety. Ring’s cooperation with law enforcement and the reported use of Flock technologies by federal agencies, including US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), has resurfaced privacy concerns that have followed the devices for years.

According to Flock’s announcement, its Ring partnership allows local law enforcement members to use Flock software “to send a direct post in the Ring Neighbors app with details about the investigation and request voluntary assistance.” Requests must include “specific location and timeframe of the incident, a unique investigation code, and details about what is being investigated,” and users can look at the requests anonymously, Flock said.

“Any footage a Ring customer chooses to submit will be securely packaged by Flock and shared directly with the requesting local public safety agency through the FlockOS or Flock Nova platform,” the announcement reads.

Flock said its local law enforcement users will gain access to Ring Community Requests in “the coming months.”

A flock of privacy concerns

Outside its software platforms, Flock is known for license plate recognition cameras. Flock customers can also search footage from Flock cameras using descriptors to find people, such as “man in blue shirt and cowboy hat.” Besides law enforcement agencies, Flock says 6,000 communities and 1,000 businesses use their products.

For years, privacy advocates have warned against companies like Flock.

This week, US Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) sent a letter [PDF] to Flock CEO Garrett Langley saying that ICE’s Homeland Security Investigations (HSI), the Secret Service, and the US Navy’s Criminal Investigative Service have had access to footage from Flock’s license plate cameras.