Amazon’s Relationship with Police Causes Privacy Nightmare for Honest Citizen – IOTW Report

Amazon’s Relationship with Police Causes Privacy Nightmare for Honest Citizen

Breitbart: The Amazon-owned Ring home security camera system has developed a “symbiotic” relationship with police, and creates a privacy nightmare for honest citizens by handing over private video footage to law enforcement without much pushback.

Late last year, when Ohio business owner Michael Larkin cooperated with police who were investigating his neighbor by handing over video footage from his front door Ring camera, the situation spiraled out of control due to the actions of the Amazon-owned company, according to events in a report by Politico.

Larkin initially cooperated by giving police the footage from his Ring video doorbell — which more than 10 million Americans reportedly have installed at their front doors — thinking that was all they’d need. But as time went on, authorities kept asking for more footage, which the Ohio business owner found burdensome, so he stopped complying.

After that, Larkin no longer heard from the detective, but then later received an email from Ring, informing him that his account was the subject of a warrant from the Hamilton Police Department.

A judge had signed off on a warrant giving local police access to all of Larkin’s security camera footage — including footage from inside his home — for an investigation that had nothing to do with him. MORE

16 Comments on Amazon’s Relationship with Police Causes Privacy Nightmare for Honest Citizen

  1. We have not activated them but we have Ring doorbells and an in-house camera (I think the battery is dead in the camera).

    Before we bought our house the agent and Lester the home inspection guy warned us not to say anything in front of the camera.

    I would like to get some cameras around the outside but I don’t want anything wireless unless I can be sure they are secure.

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  2. Amazon’s Relationship with Police Causes Privacy Nightmare for Honest Citizen
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    Amazon is no nightmare for me, I don’t order anything from them ever.

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  3. Run your own Certificate Authority on a USB thumb drive. Install your own security DVR using Linux and Zoneminder, encrypt the disks yourself with LKMS/Geli/Etc… Use COTS POE IP-Cameras that use rstp:// protocol not retail cloud stuff.

    If you get served a warrant, the CA got lost in the boating accident with all your guns.

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  4. ^^ Now to get someone nerdier than me to decipher and implement Kali’s suggestions for me. o.0

    Best I’ve done is build my own pc with a decent 16 channel (25fps?) video recording card. Ran it on a 486 back then. Some pretty informative stuff turned up. Some funny. Wouldn’t mind doing that again, but the pre-made ones look like a good deal. Just get enough terabytes to cover a week-month of recordings.

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  5. They’re even putting Alexa into cars now, there’s already microphones in there for hands free phone – and I hear the govt wants to mandate cameras on the inside of the vehicle. No privacy anywhere.

  6. @Wild Bill: When I bought my new car last year, it came with the computer and all the bells and whistles. I never signed up on any of it. My sister is always bugging me to get GPS. I tell her if I don’t know where I’m going and how to get there, I don’t need to go.

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