Amazon Shared Ring Security Camera and Video Doorbell Footage With Police Without a Warrant

Ring’s privacy page states it may share video with police if “there is an emergency involving imminent danger of death or serious physical injury to a person and there is insufficient time to obtain a court order.”

A Ring spokesperson said that the 11 incidents referenced in the letter to Sen. Markey were emergencies “involving danger of death such as a kidnapping or an attempted murder.” The letter stated that Ring “made a good-faith determination” that there was “imminent danger of death or serious physical injury to a person requiring disclosure of information without delay.” 

“We know how many times they’ve given up data under these exigent circumstances, but we have no idea how many requests they receive and if they reject any requests,” said Matthew Guariglia, policy analyst at the Electronic Frontier Foundation. “Ring, which is an unelected private company with a profit motive, gets to be the people who decide whether or not the police request is in good faith or not . . . Their threshold for exigence and emergency might not be the same as mine.”

Advocacy groups have long had concerns about Amazon and Ring’s relationships with law enforcement agencies and their use of the Neighbors by Ring social network, which Ring owners use to post and share videos from their cameras. Ring currently has 2,161 law enforcement agencies enrolled on its Neighbors Public Safety Service platform, through which participating agencies can request footage from Ring users.

In regard to these emergency requests, Ring declined to comment on whether users were notified that their video was shared, when the emergency request process was implemented, how many emergency requests were made and granted in 2021, and whether there are other methods by which Ring shares footage without a legally binding order or user consent.

Instead, the company provided this statement:

“It’s simply untrue that Ring gives anyone unfettered access to customer data or video, as we have repeatedly made clear to our customers and others. The law authorizes companies like Ring to provide information to government entities if the company believes that an emergency involving danger of death or serious physical injury to any person, such as a kidnapping or an attempted murder, requires disclosure without delay. Ring faithfully applies that legal standard.”

“If these were security cameras of a generation ago and they backed up to a VCR in your garage, police could not just call some company far away and ask for that footage. They would have to come and knock on your door. Ring has the option of creating a device like that, that is less accessible to people other than the user, and they choose not to,” Guariglia said.

Some security camera manufacturers, such as Eufy and Wyze, make cameras that can store footage locally on the device itself, but Ring and other companies store camera footage in the cloud and charge a recurring fee to generate more revenue from their users. In fact, the only way you can store Ring camera footage locally is to buy a Ring Alarm Pro security system, which can store camera footage in its memory in exchange for a monthly fee.