There’s nothing in the terms of service about this, and the company has maintained that it helps police get consent first, but it’s happening anyhow. There is a webpage where law enforcement can fill out a form, say there’s a life-threatening emergency, and get access to your data without your consent, a court order, or any kind of warrant.

Over the past seven months alone, Amazon has provided private ring videos to law enforcement 11 times. The company told Senator Ed Markey (D-MA) in a letter dated July 1st and provided to press this week.

Markey’s questions and Amazon’s answers are consistent with Markey’s answers. The answers are from Markey, Markey, Amazon’s Markey and Markey.

Parent company Amazon has the same policy and a request site of its own. Both ring and Amazon sell gadgets that can see and hear inside your home.

Each of these 11 times in 2022 was a life-threatening emergency. The company may have even saved lives by doing so.

Markey says Amazon has lost the benefit of the doubt. He says police and surveillance tools have all their best interests in mind.

The company has previously admitted to having no policies that restrict how law enforcement can use ring users’ footage.’this revelation is particularly troubling,’ he said.

It’s not clear whether owners would ever know that their ring camera footage, as one example, was accessed by police and potentially saved for months or years. Amazon employees would make these good faith determinations, or whether employees watch the footage or just trust law enforcement to do so.

Amazon spokesperson:’it’s simply untrue that ring gives anyone unfettered access to customer data or video’.

Amazon has partnered with 2,161 law enforcement agencies to date, in addition to fire departments. It’s not at all clear that obtaining ring footage has actually helped law enforcement with cases.

If you have a wired ring camera, you can turn on the company’s end-to-end encryption for your video streams. Amazon does not offer that feature on its battery powered models.