While we have seen that data is shared between various organizations, this report regarding data sharing is some level of extreme. Because Gizmodo has reported that Cops in the US are sharing your 911 call data with Amazon’s Ring.
If you are unaware of Amazon’s Ring, it is a doorbell which also has a camera. Ring is a company owned by Amazon and the US Police department is granting direct access to real-time emergency dispatch data. This is due to the contracts made between US Police department and Ring.
Ring says that they are asking for this information so that they can improve the decisions made by emergency dispatch personnel. Also, this should help in cutting down the police response times according to Ring. One of the reasons Ring is taking this information is to curate “crime news” which it can feed to its “neighbourhood watch” app called Neighbors.
Here is what Ring had to say about this report: “In an effort to provide relevant and reliable crime and safety information to our neighbors, one important source we rely on is CAD,”. Now, we have seen that third-parties share information between them but this is the first time that a report regarding data shared between a government and private organization has come out.
Talking about Neighbors, it is an app designed for the security of people. Through the Neighbors app, you can post about any suspicious activity happening in the neighbourhood. People can even post their videos captured by Ring’s doorbell camera to raise suspicion.
But strangely enough, you do not need to have a Ring doorbell camera to use Neighbors app. Although it does make sense that the app does not limit Ring users only. Ring’s main point to the police department for sharing CAD data is that it will help in “community building”.