Ring will no longer facilitate police requests for camera footage without a warrant. At least, not officially.
The Amazon-owned company announced Wednesday that it is discontinuing Request for Assistance (RFA), a tool in the Neighbors app. RFA, introduced in 2021, was designed to allow police to publicly request information from Ring users, such as doorbell camera footage. Such a request could not be deleted. In other words, there was a public record that police had requested footage of a specific area.
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While RFA wasn’t enough to allay concerns about Ring’s close ties to law enforcement, it did at least provide some element of transparency and accountability. If Ring is going to hand over your camera footage to the police, you’ll at least want to know about it. Unfortunately, that transparency now appears to be a thing of the past.
“Public safety agencies like fire departments and police departments can continue to use the Neighbors app to share helpful safety tips, updates, and community events.” The Ring’s Eric Kuhn wrote in a blog post Wednesday. “You will no longer be able to request or receive videos using the RFA tool within the app. Public safety posts will remain public and visible to users in their Neighbors app feed and on their public safety profile. It will be like this.”
To be clear, the end of RFA does not prevent police from continuing to request Ring camera footage without a warrant — a request the company has previously shown itself willing to comply with. There will be no public record of their interest.
in a statement to The Verge, an Amazon spokesperson confirmed that Ring will continue to comply with police requests to provide footage without a warrant in “emergency” situations, such as when there is a threat of physical harm or death. . These requests will be “reviewed by trained professionals and information will only be released if legal standards are met.”
Essentially, it’s Ring’s decision whether or not your private surveillance camera footage is passed on to the police, and you may not even know it was handed over. In 2022, Amazon admitted that it had provided private Ring surveillance camera footage to law enforcement multiple times since the RFA went into effect, without a warrant or the camera’s owner’s knowledge or consent. Ta.
Mashable has reached out to Ring for comment.
Ring had previously come under fire for its relationships with law enforcement after the incident. 2019 Report by Motherboard It was revealed that he had secret agreements with dozens of US police departments. In exchange for police promoting Ring to local communities, the company agreed to provide free product and a private portal where law enforcement could request footage from specific users without a warrant.