Amazon’s surveillance camera brand, Ring, has reportedly entered into partnerships with nearly 200 police and law units across the United States.
Ring never disclosed the exact number of partnerships it maintains with law enforcement agencies. However, an email received by the web portal motherboard quoted a police officer’s note revealing the number.
“We make every decision at the Ring Center regarding privacy, security and user control. Law enforcement partners can submit video requests while investigating an active case, facilitating these requests with the consent of the ring user. Law enforcement cannot see how many ring users have received the request.” , Declined to share or opt-out of all future requests, “The Verge quoted a ring spokesman as saying on Monday.
Despite civil liberties and pushback from some of its own employees, Amazon has been keen to work with law enforcement.
In addition to the ring, the company also offers a face recognition product called Recognition which it has provided to local law enforcement and even to immigration and customs enforcement.
But researchers and artificial intelligence (AI) experts have called on the company to stop selling it to police, raising doubts about the tool’s validity, The Verge reported.
In early June, the home security company was accused of selling doorbell cameras to exploit people’s fears and sharing videos of a “suspicious” thief as a post on Facebook.
Amazon recently won a patent for building a drone-based delivery that would enable surveillance and execution of property images as a “secondary task” after performing package delivery.
The e-commerce giant plans to offer “surveillance as a service” with its future unmanned aerial product delivery concept.