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 through Flock Safety surveillance platforms. Ring's collaboration with law enforcement agencies and reported use of Flock technologies by federal agencies, including U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), have resurfaced privacy concerns that have followed the devices for years.
According to Flock's announcement, the Ring partnership will offer local law enforcement members the ability to use Flock software “to send a direct post in the Ring Neighbors app with details about the investigation and to request volunteer assistance.” Requests must include “a specific location and time frame of the incident, a unique investigation code, and details about what is being investigated,” and users can view 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 via the FlockOS or Flock Nova platform,” the announcement reads.
Flock said its local law enforcement users will have access to Ring Community Requests “in the coming months.”
A lot of privacy issues
Outside of 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.” In addition to law enforcement agencies, 6,000 communities and 1,000 companies use their products, according to Flock.
Privacy advocates have been warning about companies like Flock for years.
This week, U.S. Senator Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) sent a letter [PDF] to Flock CEO Garrett Langley, who says ICE's Homeland Security Investigations (HSI), the Secret Service and the U.S. Navy's Criminal Investigative Service had access to footage from Flock's license plate cameras.
