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{"id":9978,"date":"2022-07-15T14:48:07","date_gmt":"2022-07-15T14:48:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/scienceandnerds.com\/2022\/07\/15\/today-i-learned-amazon-has-a-form-so-police-can-get-my-data-without-permission-or-a-warrant\/"},"modified":"2022-07-15T14:48:08","modified_gmt":"2022-07-15T14:48:08","slug":"today-i-learned-amazon-has-a-form-so-police-can-get-my-data-without-permission-or-a-warrant","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/scienceandnerds.com\/2022\/07\/15\/today-i-learned-amazon-has-a-form-so-police-can-get-my-data-without-permission-or-a-warrant\/","title":{"rendered":"Today I learned Amazon has a form so police can get my data without permission or a warrant"},"content":{"rendered":"

Source: https:\/\/www.theverge.com\/2022\/7\/14\/23219419\/amazon-ring-law-enforcement-no-warrant-no-consent<\/a>
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Here is something I didn\u2019t know when I purchased Amazon Ring cameras and Amazon Echo Dots: there is a webpage<\/a> where law enforcement can fill out a form, say there\u2019s a life-threatening emergency, and get access to your data without your consent, a court order, or any kind of warrant. There\u2019s nothing in the Terms of Service about this, and the company has maintained for years that it helps police get consent first, but it\u2019s happening anyhow. <\/p>\n

Over the past seven months alone, Amazon has provided private Ring videos to law enforcement 11 times, the company told Senator Ed Markey (D-MA) in a letter dated July 1st and provided to press this week. <\/p>\n

Here are Markey\u2019s questions and Amazon\u2019s answers about that specifically:<\/p>\n

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(Markey is focused on Ring, which has its own specific form (pdf)<\/a> that law enforcement can fill out, but we discovered parent company Amazon has the same policy<\/a> and a request site<\/a> of its own. While Ring\u2019s best-known products are cameras that face the outside of your home, both Ring and Amazon sell gadgets that can see and hear inside your home.)<\/p>\n

Maybe Amazon\u2019s answers seem totally reasonable to you? It\u2019s possible that each of these 11 times in 2022 (and however many times in 2021 and earlier) was a legitimate life-threatening emergency, the police knew it, Amazon knew it, and perhaps the company may have even saved lives by doing so. <\/p>\n

But that requires you to trust that both the police and some unknown department within Amazon have everyone\u2019s best interests in mind. Trust in police<\/a> and their surveillance tools<\/a> isn\u2019t high these days for obvious reasons \u2014 and Markey suggested to The Intercept<\/em><\/a> that Amazon has also lost the benefit of the doubt. <\/p>\n

\u201cThis revelation is particularly troubling given that the company has previously admitted to having no policies that restrict how law enforcement can use Ring users\u2019 footage, no data security requirements for law enforcement entities that have users\u2019 footage, and no policies that prohibit law enforcement officers from keeping Ring users\u2019 footage forever,\u201d he told The Intercept.<\/em> <\/p>\n

It does seem to be true that federal law lets Amazon give this kind of information to a government agency \u2014 \u201cif the provider, in good faith, believes that an emergency involving danger of death or serious physical injury to any person requires disclosure without delay.\u201d That\u2019s a direct quote from 18 US \u00a7 2702 (b) (8).<\/a> But it says that providers \u201cmay\u201d do so, not that they must do so, and it\u2019s not clear if anything would keep bad actors at Amazon or in law enforcement from abusing a system which has no obvious oversight. <\/p>\n

As of today, it\u2019s not clear whether owners would ever know that their Ring camera footage, as one example, was accessed by police and potentially saved for months or years afterward. Do they get told afterwards? It\u2019s not clear who at Amazon would make these good faith determinations, or whether Amazon employees watch the footage or just trust law enforcement to do so. <\/p>\n

We asked these questions, but Amazon spokesperson Mai Nguyen said they couldn\u2019t answer them, instead writing that \u201cIt\u2019s simply untrue that Ring gives anyone unfettered access to customer data or video\u201d \u2014 something we didn\u2019t suggest \u2014 while repeating the company\u2019s belief that it\u2019s authorized to provide this information if it believes there\u2019s a life-threatening emergency or the threat of serious injury.<\/p>\n

Amazon has been increasingly cozying up to law enforcement across the United States with its Ring doorbell cameras, at one time using law enforcement as a marketing tool<\/a> to help sell more of them. It\u2019s partnered with 2,161 law enforcement agencies to date, in addition to fire departments. It is not at all clear that obtaining Ring footage has actually helped law enforcement with cases: in 2020, an NBC News<\/em> investigation suggested they largely hadn\u2019t<\/a>.<\/p>\n

If you have a wired Ring camera, you can turn on the company\u2019s end-to-end encryption for your video streams<\/a>, but Amazon does not offer that feature on its popular battery powered models. Amazon also refuses to make end-to-end encryption the default for its Ring cameras. \u201cWe are committed to giving customers options so they can choose the Ring experience that is right for them,\u201d Brian Huseman, Amazon\u2019s VP of public policy, writes, as if making encryption opt-out instead of opt-in would somehow give people fewer options.<\/p>\n

On the Echo \/ Alexa side of things, you also have to opt-in to delete your recordings<\/a> if you\u2019re being cautious. Apple, meanwhile, committed in 2019 to no longer keeping Siri recordings by default<\/a>. <\/p>\n