Ring’s collaborations with the police did not wane in 2020, despite controversies – if anything, they did. The Financial Times reports that Amazon’s proprietary smart home security brand now has 2,014 partnerships with police and firefighters in the U.S., with 1,189 of them added in 2020. Montana and Wyoming are the only two states where Ring has no type of alliance.
These departments are also using the teams. Ring said departments had requested videos for more than 22,335 incidents in 2020. There was no comparable data for 2019, but some rescuers were busier than others. Milwaukee police, for example, requested videos for 431 incidents only in the second half of 2020 due to the high homicide rate.
While users gained more control over ring video sharing in 2020 and recently obtained end-to-end encryption, some of the privacy issues with these partnerships have remained the same. Just because you’re comfortable sharing videos doesn’t mean you’re free – said the Electronic Frontier Foundation FT that neighbors and passers-by can be captured by the camera without authorization. This amounted to a “massive and undisputed” surveillance network, according to the EFF.
If there is a consolation, it is that the Ring is not simply delivering data without question. The company delivered data only 57 percent of the time versus 68 percent in 2019. That proportion is likely to fluctuate due to the very nature of the incidents, but it is clear that Ring will say “no” if he thinks a request is too vague or does not go too far. .