Transcription
The word of a growing partnership between police and the popular doorbell company Ring is raising privacy concerns nationwide.
Amazon-owned Ring sells low-cost home security systems. Ring said yesterday more than 400 law enforcement agencies use its Neighborhood Watch program that gives police potential access to customers' videos. Jamie Yuccas shows us how guarding your home could compromise your privacy.
"Somebody is there and they're breaking into my house." Ring's home surveillance cameras have captured crooks in the act, everything from home break-ins to stolen packages. You can stay informed with alerts from your community. Ring also offers the Neighbors app, which lets customers know when and where a crime happens in their area. It works in conjunction with the so-called Neighbors portal, now used by some 400 law enforcement agencies to request customer video that might help their investigations.
Ring CEO Jamie Siminoff: "My goal would be to have every law-enforcement agency on the police portal. It helps all communities come together to make things safer."
"We're gonna see a growing sense of people sort of becoming kind of informants on our neighbors and our neighborhoods." Andrew Ferguson is author of "The Rise of Big Data Policing." "There's obviously going to be potential problems with who gets targeted in those neighborhood apps, and that can be very troubling because what can happen, of course, is that there could be a police response, and that could impact someone's liberties, someone's lives."
Ring says its customers have complete control over their videos and can choose to give consent to a law enforcement request for access. "The Ring customer will see a request come up. They can either accept the request or they can opt out of that request and all future requests, and the police will never see if they have done that."
But privacy advocates worry that customers might not always have the final say. "Yes, we have a choice sometimes, but it's very easy for police to get a search warrant for that same footage if they believe a crime has occurred."
"I can tell you we'll always follow the laws, but we will always fight for our customers' rights, their control, and their privacy."
You know, for CBS This Morning, Jamie Yuccas, Los Angeles.