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Amazon’s partners in crime violating privacy are beginning to show just how tight the relationship is between local police and Amazon.
Govtech.com reports an interview with Fresno County Sherriff’s Public Information Officer, Tony Botti. In it, Botti makes two interesting comments:
?I would say to anybody who thinks this is another case of Big Brother watching or us trying to invade privacy, go to step one: it took the consumer to invest in the product,? he said. ?They chose to pay for a service that enables it to be viewed by either us or Ring. The consumer knows what they?re getting into…If you?re a good upstanding person who is doing things lawfully, nobody has concerns.?
I would say in response, consumers know they’re buying a camera that they can view remotely. They can choose to share the video with the Ring community. It is not clear to the consumer that it can be viewed by Ring.
Nowhere is it clear in Amazon’s packaging that it can also be viewed by police. Botti is lying: The consumer does not know what they’re getting into.
However, he noted, there is a workaround if a resident happens to reject a police request. If the community member doesn?t want to supply a Ring video that seems vital to a local law enforcement investigation, police can contact Amazon, which will then essentially ?subpoena? the video.?
?If we ask within 60 days of the recording and as long as it?s been uploaded to the cloud, then Ring can take it out of the cloud and send it to us legally so that we can use it as part of our investigation,? he said.
If people don’t want to supply their video to local law enforcement, Botti says police can contact Amazon, which will essentially “subpoena” the video. Not actually subpoena it. Because “subpoena” is in quotes, preceded by “essentially”, I suspect that it’s not a legitimate subpoena, and that Amazon is providing law enforcement with customer information that hasn’t been court-ordered, against the customer’s wishes.
Amazon, this isn’t good.
