Why We Don’t Recommend Ring Cameras
Why We Don’t Recommend Ring Cameras
They’re affordable and ubiquitous, but homeowners shouldn’t be able to act as vigilantes.
They’re affordable and ubiquitous, but homeowners shouldn’t be able to act as vigilantes.
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But it also allows Ring owners to send videos they've captured with their Ring video doorbell cameras and outdoor security cameras to law enforcement. (...) If a crime has been committed, law enforcement should obtain a warrant to access civilian video footage.
This is utter nonsense... Anyone is free to voluntarily provide their own pictures and video to the police. A warrant is so that police can come and take it from you against your will.
That's great, right up until Ring unilaterally decides to give the police access to your videos without a warrant, or when the police use a warrant to grab video from ALL of your cameras, even if you've already complied with their request, and the video is not relevant to their investigation.
That’s great, right up until Ring unilaterally decides to...
Which is a completely different topic than the one I quoted. The article said that equipment owners shouldn't be able to provide their videos to the police without the police first getting a warrant, which is an utterly ridiculous position to take.
OBVIOUSLY the police should have a warrant to get the video without the equipment owner's permission, but that's not what the author said.
Absolutely fair response. I'm sorry that I came across as attacking your point. I just meant to provide another reason why the cameras shouldn't be recommended, using the context of your quote from the article. I'm sorry that I wasn't clear about that.
Got it, my misunderstanding...
And I do agree with your added concern.
Exactly. There are legitimate concerns about whether law enforcement should be able to subpoena "third party" records (including video recordings) with a process less than a full blown warrant supported by probable cause, as determined by a neutral judge, or whether government should be able to compel the retention of records for a later after-the-fact search. That's a discussion worth having.
But voluntarily recording and retaining video means that the person who controls those records can choose to do what they want with it. Imagine if some homeowner had these cameras, and had their own home burglarized, and tried to turn over the video evidence of the crime, but the courts were like "whoa wait did you get a warrant for that?" It doesn't really change anything to have it be cloud hosted, or easily shared with a button, because that "share" functionality works for non-police recipients, too. Doorbell camera footage gets shared all the time on social media, sometimes because it's funny or interesting or otherwise worth viewing.