So Much For The 4th: Ring Allows Cops To Acquire Recordings Of Non-Suspect’s Home And Business

Amazon’s doorbell surveillance acquisition, Ring, has spent most of its time, money, and energy courting cops. If law enforcement agencies are willing to forgo a little dignity and autonomy, the company will given them cameras free of charge, allowing cops to expand their surveillance capabilities by outfitting homes with recording devices.

The free cameras come with an implicit request: when the cops come knocking, surely you, Joe Consumer Goods, won’t reject their requests for footage from your FREE CAMERA. And, sure, Ring made it a bit more difficult for cops to acquire footage without warrants after receiving a considerable amount of backlash, but the fact remains anything stored in the cloud (the default option presented to Ring users) can be obtained without the explicit permission or knowledge of the people who supposedly own these cameras.

This fact remains true even if the person’s cameras weren’t the end result of law enforcement largesse. As Alfred Ng reports for Politico, a Ring customer found out the hard way that rejecting overbroad requests for camera footage just means cops will ask Ring to hand over what you, the camera owner, refuse to give them access to.

While investigating some drug activity, Hamilton, Ohio law enforcement officers asked resident Michael Larkin if they could have access to some of his doorbell footage. Larkin obliged.

The police said they were conducting a drug-related investigation on a neighbor, and they wanted videos of “suspicious activity” between 5 and 7 p.m. one night in October. Larkin cooperated, and sent clips of a car that drove by his Ring camera more than 12 times in that time frame.

Larkin, a local business owner, figured that would be the end of it. But the police were just getting warmed up. They asked for footage covering an entire day.

“He sent one asking for all the footage from October 25,” Larkin said. That was a far bigger ask, he said. Larkin told POLITICO that he has five cameras surrounding his house, which record in 5 to 15 second bursts whenever they’re activated. He also has three cameras inside his house, as well as 13 cameras inside the store that he owns, which is nowhere near his home. All of these cameras are connected to his Ring account.

Larkin rejected this request, mainly for logistical reasons. Every recorded clip (even if only seconds long) could take as much as a minute to download and send to the PD. And, obviously, “all footage” would include footage recording inside his house, as well as at his business — neither of which had any connection to the crime being investigated.

Rather than recognize Larkin’s rejection of this overbroad request as legitimate, the Hamilton police department decided to cut him out of the equation. Investigators secured a warrant to, in essence, search Larkin’s home and business. But it didn’t serve the warrant to him. It served the warrant to Ring.

The warrant included all five of his outdoor cameras, and also added a sixth camera that was inside his house, as well as any videos from cameras associated with his account, which would include the cameras in his store. It would include footage recorded from cameras he had in his living room and bedroom, as well as the 13 cameras he had installed at his store associated with his account.

All the cops had to show the court was that it was likely Ring had this footage on its premises. And Ring did have them, because recordings were automatically backed up to its cloud servers. It’s not clear whether or not Ring received an affidavit in support of the (pretty fucking bare bones) warrant [PDF] given the green light by a county judge Daniel Haughey.

Whatever the cops said to convince the judge that footage from inside a non-suspect’s home and business was relevant to a drug investigation involving other suspects entirely apparently was good enough for Ring. It turned everything over without a fight.

Ring’s spokesperson, Brendan Daley, says the company “reviews” all warrants served to it by law enforcement to ensure the requests are not overbroad. That being said, he also said this:

In Larkin’s case, Daley confirmed to POLITICO that Ring reviewed Larkin’s warrant, and provided a full response to the legal request: It sent all the footage police asked for.

The PD has refused to comment on the warrant or this case, citing the ever-popular “active investigation” as the reason for its refusal to discuss its overly broad request for footage it shouldn’t have ever requested. Its spokesperson, Brian Ungerbuehler, did say this, however:

He added that the department did not obtain any video footage from inside the house.

Lest anyone read this as evidence of the department’s restraint and better judgment, the only reason the department did not obtain this footage was because this footage did not exist.

Larkin said it was fortunate his indoor camera listed in the request was unplugged for the timeframe the warrant specified, while his living room and bedroom cameras are only activated when his home alarm system is active.

The department asked for it. It never thought that it shouldn’t. And the only reason it didn’t get to peek into Larkin’s home life is because the footage was never created. This absolves the PD of nothing. And it definitely doesn’t let Ring off the hook for deciding a one-page warrant that said nothing more than the PD was aware Ring runs a cloud storage service was all it needed to turn over all footage from multiple cameras.

Larkin said no when law enforcement asked for too much. The cops knew they couldn’t talk a judge into entering Larkin’s home to seize cameras and footage. But they did know Ring might help them out. So they bypassed the person whose recordings were actually being seized, making a complete mockery of the Fourth Amendment and any other privacy laws meant to protect consumers. And they did it all with the assistance of a company that has spent millions cozying up to cops and now wants to portray itself as a protector of its customers by claiming (without citing details) it performs a thorough review of law enforcement demands for recordings.

Bullshit. It’s all bullshit. No one involved in this debacle cares about Ring customers or their rights. Not the cops. Not the camera company. And, apparently, not even Judge Daniel Haughey, who was expected to be the adult in the room.