Amazon’s home security company Ring is reportedly pursuing partnerships with police departments that would give the company access to real-time emergency dispatch data.
Gizmodo reports that Amazon-owned security company Ring is seeking contracts with police departments to gain access to real-time emergency dispatch data.
Ring has reportedly requested access to the CAD data streams in order to curate “crime news” posts for Neighbors, the company’s neighborhood watch app. The company told Gizmodo in a statement: “In an effort to provide relevant and reliable crime and safety information to our neighbors, one important source we rely on is CAD.”
According to internal police emails dated April 2019, more than 225 police departments have partnered with Ring, granting the departments access to the “law enforcement portal” in Rings Neighbors app. Through this portal, police can also request access to videos captured via Ring doorbell cameras. Ring claims that it does not provide the personal information of its customer to authorities without consent.
Amazon’s Ring has also successfully become an intermediary through which police departments can request access to footage captured through Ring devices. Ring claims that when police make a request, they don’t know who receives it until the user chooses to share the video from their Ring device.
Ring is attempting to push out alerts about criminal activity nearby to Ring users in real-time according to company documents. But this is no small task and hiring workers to monitor crime alerts and devices in the area is too costly, which is why Ring wants access to raw police dispatch data. Ring is also seeking a managing editor to oversee a “team of news editors” that could “deliver breaking crime news alerts” according to a job posting on Amazon.
Read the full report from Gizmodo here.
Lucas Nolan is a reporter for Breitbart News covering issues of free speech and online censorship. Follow him on Twitter @LucasNolan or email him at lnolan@breitbart.com