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Did you know that this handy video that Your Ring Doorbell takes of anyone coming to your door isn’t private? If you have a Ring Protection Plan, not only are your videos kept in the Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud, but your videos can still be viewed by outside people. A sufficiently motivated hacker, or your local police department, can easily monitor who walks by your door. So far. Starting today in the United States (and soon worldwide), you will be able to encrypt your video stream to keep it private.
This is done with Amazon’s End-to-End Video Encryption (E2EE). If you decide to install this optional privacy feature, you will need to install a new version of the Ring app on your smartphone. Once installed, it uses a public key infrastructure (PKI) security system based on a 2048-bit RSA asymmetric account signing key pair. In English, the foundation is pretty darn secure.
Previously, Ring already encrypted videos when uploaded to the cloud (in transit) and stored on Ring’s servers (at rest). Law enforcement does not automatically have access to customers’ devices or videos. You choose whether or not to share the images with the police. With E2EE, customer videos are more secure with an additional lock, which can only be unlocked by a key stored on the customer’s enrolled mobile device, designed so that only the customer can decrypt and view recordings on their enrolled device. .
Additionally, you will need to choose to use E2EE. It does not turn on automatically with the software update. You will also need to set a passphrase that you need to remember. AWS does not keep a copy. If you lose it, you’re out of luck.
Before using E2EE, you should be aware that AWS has not fully integrated E2EE into Ring’s feature set. In other words, there are plenty of features – such as sharing your videos, the ability to view encrypted videos on Ring.com, the Windows desktop app, the Mac desktop app, or the Rapid app. Ring, and the Timeline of Events – which you won’t be able to use.
E2EE will also not work with many Ring devices. In particular, E2EE will not work on Ring’s most popular and inexpensive battery operated Ring bells.
Even with E2EE security, police can demand or demand your video and audio content. As Matthew Guariglia, policy analyst for the Electronic Freedom Foundation (EFF), pointed out, “If your city’s police department has a partnership with Ring, you can also expect to receive inquiries via email. from them requesting footage from your camera at any time a suspected crime is occurring nearby. “
According to a Ring representative, Ring’s E2EE is designed so that even the company cannot decrypt your end-to-end encrypted video. This includes law enforcement officers, as the private keys needed to decrypt the videos are only stored on the customer’s enrolled mobile devices.
Until recently, by default, police could send automatic bulk email requests to individual Ring users in an area of interest up to half a square mile. Now the police can publicly post their demands on the Ring’s Neighbors app.
Guariglia also observed, “The default Ring setup is ready to instill paranoia: Ring doorbells send you an alert whenever motion activation is triggered, meaning your phone will ring whenever a squirrel, a snowfall, a dog walker or a delivery guy set off the Ring. “For example, many people now believe that violent crime is worse than ever in the US This just isn’t true.
Privacy, on the other hand, is under siege. If you value your privacy and still love the convenience of Ring, I encourage you to use E2EE. I will be.
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