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Cato Podcast

Cops Partner with Ring to Deliver Doorbell Surveillance

Cato Podcast

Cato Institute

Immigration, News, News Commentary, Peace, 424708, Markets, Government, Libertarian, Policy, Politics, Cato, Defense

4.5979 Ratings

🗓️ 26 February 2020

⏱️ 10 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Amazon’s Ring provides handy surveillance of the front porches of many Americans. What happens when localities partner with the company to make it easier for cops to get the footage?

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Transcript

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0:00.0

This is the Cator Daily Podcast for Wednesday, February 26, 2020.

0:06.4

I'm Caleb Brown.

0:07.6

Would you give footage from your doorbell camera to the cops?

0:10.4

Would you let the cops simply have access to that information without a warrant?

0:15.0

Police departments across the country are partnering with providers of some home surveillance

0:19.3

systems to get that information.

0:21.5

What rules govern? Cato's Matthew Feeney comments. get that would be familiar with the cameras that are on the front are attached to doorbells where people

0:35.8

can look on their phone and see who's at the door. And now a lot of individuals with

0:41.5

in neighborhoods with many ring customers, are doing partnerships

0:47.1

with the police.

0:49.0

So what exactly is involved?

0:51.8

As you said, this is a widely used product that people get a lot of

0:55.4

utility out of it's not hard to see why people are interested in having cameras

1:01.1

on their front door especially if you're someone who's been the victim of someone

1:06.9

who's stolen your Amazon packages or you live in a high crime area or you have a lot of people

1:11.7

coming to your home, it's not hard to see why you might be interested in a product like this.

1:16.0

Of course, the controversy that we've had, that we've heard more about in recent months, is the fact that police seem rather keen on

1:24.9

getting some of some of the footage that's captured by these devices. Recent

1:29.4

reporting reveals however that it doesn't seem as if the footage gathered by these doorbells

1:36.7

is particularly useful in solving crimes although that could be part of some kind

1:41.1

of deterrent effect that in neighborhoods where criminals know that there are a lot of these cameras they've moved elsewhere.

1:47.0

But even if it was the case that these devices are deterring a certain degree of crime, we should also be wary of the long-term

...

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