Isn’t technology wonderful? You’re in bed and the doorbell rings. Who could that be at this hour of the night? But instead of getting out of bed and shuffling to the front door and opening it to see who it is, you just grab your phone and look at the app connected to the camera in your doorbell button. Great, right?
Would you be as pleased with this technology if you knew the police were using it to monitor your neighborhood?
As reported by the Pew Trusts, the ties between police departments and home surveillance gadgets, especially doorbell cameras, are coming under scrutiny. From the story (which you should go read in its entirety):
Amid nationwide protests against police abuses against black people, some civil liberties advocates are calling for Amazon to stop its partnerships with law enforcement agencies through its Ring home surveillance cameras.
“These camera registries will only serve to exacerbate existing forms of discrimination that are rampant within policing and the criminal justice system,” said Evan Greer, deputy director of Fight for the Future, a civil rights advocacy nonprofit focused on technology.
“They speed up and automate police procedures in ways that mean communities that are already overpoliced will be subject to even more law enforcement repression.”
For now, police have to ask the company to share the video, and the company has to ask you. You can say no, or you can okay it.
But note that once the video is shared, it will show anyone and everyone that walked or drove in front of your doorbell camera.
In addition to the Ring networks, some law enforcement agencies are putting together their own lists of homes and businesses with video cameras and recording equipment. Which, of course, makes perfect sense in trying to solve crimes – but becomes a less sanguine prospect if the video winds up being used for general surveillance.
And in Kentucky
So, how big a deal is this in Kentucky? We don’t know about the independent efforts, but Ring provides an interactive map of all law enforcement agencies that have data-sharing agreements with the company.
But, to save you the time of having to dig through the map yourself, we made the following table. It shows the agency and location of every law enforcement agency that has an agreement with Ring for video sharing, and when that agreement went into effect.
It also shows how many requests the agency made in the first quarter of this year. Note that it only shows the first quarter, AND that some of the agencies didn’t come on line until the second quarter. Ring says the map is updated regularly, so it might be worth bookmarking it.
[wpdatatable id=14]
You can learn more about Ring’s video requests policy on their site.
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