Amazon is distancing itself from a pilot program launched by police in Jackson, Miss., that will use residents’ doorbell cameras to monitor potential crime scenes.
“This is not a Ring program and Ring is not working with any of the companies or the city in connection with this program,” a spokesperson for the Amazon-owned security device company told GeekWire in a statement Friday.
Police in Jackson recently enlisted two smaller technology companies to build a platform that uses footage from Ring and other home security systems to surveil possible crime scenes, the Jackson Free Press reported this week. Home and business owners can opt in to the program and give Jackson police access to their cameras, according to local news reports. The Jackson Police Department did not respond to GeekWire’s questions about the program.
Footage from residents who opt in to the pilot will be accessible through a Real Time Crime Center built by PILEUM and Fusus, two tech companies Jackson tapped for the project. When a crime is reported, Jackson police will be able to access footage from nearby cameras using the portal. The pilot is slotted to run for 45 days.
Digital privacy groups are up in arms about the pilot, claiming it creates a surveillance dragnet without the consent of residents who might be caught on film.
“We have long warned that the proliferation of privately owned cameras would enable this type of surveillance, something Ring spokespeople consistently denied would be possible,” said Evan Greer, deputy director of Fight for the Future, in a statement. She called on Jackson to “act quickly to shut down this Orwellian experiment before programs like this spread across the country.”
Ring has partnerships with hundreds of law enforcement departments across the country that make it easier for police to request footage from camera owners when they believe it could help with an investigation. Sharing the videos is voluntary for camera owners, and they can opt out of receiving the requests entirely. Activists have been sounding the alarm about those partnerships for more than a year but the program in Jackson raises the stakes because it allows real-time surveillance, according to Electronic Frontier Foundation.
“In Jackson, this footage can now be live streamed directly onto a dozen monitors scrutinized by police around the clock,” wrote EFF policy analyst Matthew Guariglia in a blog post. “Even if you refuse to allow your footage to be used that way, your neighbor’s camera pointed at your house may still be transmitting directly to the police.”
Amazon says it had no knowledge of the Jackson pilot and no relationship with the companies enlisted to build the real-time monitoring dashboard.
