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Ring, the Amazonian company behind some of the most popular video bells, has again been criticized for confidentiality reasons. This time, a report from Vice reveals that Amazon is working with local law enforcement across the country to encourage agents to promote Ring products to citizens.
In exchange for this promotion, police services received free ring products for residents in their area and access to the Ring Law Enforcement Portal, which allows agents to apply for access to the footage of ring cameras without warrant.
While we knew that Ring was in partnership with the police, ViceThis report provides more information on how this partnership works through an agreement between Ring and a police department in Lakeland, Florida. In the contract signed between the two parties, it is noted that the department is:
[Required to] engage the Lakeland community with awareness efforts on the platform to encourage the adoption of the platform / application.
Much of the agreement deals with agents encouraging people to download Ring's "Neighbors" app. For every person in the area who downloads Neighbors, departments receive a $ 10 credit that can be used to purchase a video ringtone, but this offer is available to anyone using the Neighbors app. As a catalyst for the program, Ring badigns each department 15 free video tones to get started.
In addition to the free bells, the police also have access to the Ring Law Enforcement portal. This is a free service exclusively reserved for the police. According to Ring, he offers the police all the following:
- Access to crime and safety videos and publications on the Neighbors app.
- Ability to publish geo-specific hyper-local alerts for owners and users of the ring.
- A map of Ring devices in your community (exact locations hidden for privacy reasons).
- Ability to request videos directly from Ring users.
- Management of videos shared by users.
Ring users have no obligation to share video footage with the police when asked, although all publicly available footage is free for law enforcement.
In response to this, a spokesman for Ring said:
Through these partnerships, we are opening channels of communication between community members and local law enforcement and providing users of the application with important crime and safety information directly from the community. the official source. We have seen many positive examples of Neighbors users and law enforcement forces using the application and are convinced that open communication is an important step in creating safer and more secure communities. strong.
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