FBI Horrified To Discover Ring Doorbells Can Tip Off Citizens To The Presence Of Federal Officers At Their Door
from the those-bastards-and-their-surreptitious-cameras dept
Ring's camera/doorbells may as well be branded with local law enforcement agency logos. Since Amazon acquired the company, Ring has cornered the law enforcement-adjacent market for home security products, partnering with hundreds of agencies to get Ring's products into the hands of residents. A lot of this flows directly through police departments, which can get them almost for free as long as they push citizens towards using Ring's snitch app, Neighbors, and allow Ring to handle the PR work.
So, it's hilarious to find out the FBI is concerned about Ring cameras, considering the company's unabashed love for all things law enforcement. The Intercept -- diving back into the "Blue Leaks" stash of exfiltrated law enforcement documents -- has posted an FBI "Technical Analysis Bulletin" [PDF] warning cops about the threat Ring cameras pose to cops. After celebrating the golden age of surveillance the Internet of Things has ushered in, the FBI notes that doorbell cameras see everyone who comes to someone's door -- even if it's people who'd rather the absent resident remained unaware of.
The document describes a 2017 incident in which FBI agents approached a New Orleans home to serve a search warrant and were caught on video. “Through the Wi-Fi doorbell system, the subject of the warrant remotely viewed the activity at his residence from another location and contacted his neighbor and landlord regarding the FBI’s presence there,” it states.
Ratted out by home security tech -- the kind often pushed on residents by law enforcement officers hoping to expand their surveillance networks by deputizing doorbells. Ring's cameras aren't just mute witnesses. Owners receive notifications when someone comes to their door and, depending on model, are able to hold conversations with them using built-in mics and speakers.
This means the sneak-and-peek feds might have been overhead discussing their tactical plans or specifics about the investigation. Hilarious. And this is how another FBI document on the subject of doorbells puts it, turning a normal home security device into a devious tool to be wielded against law enforcement:
“[S]ubject was able to see and hear everything happening at his residence” and possibly “covertly monitor law enforcement activity while law enforcement was on the premises…"
Covert monitoring is the best monitoring, as these FBI agents are well-aware. Sucks when it's the alleged perps doing the covert monitoring, I guess. And it sucks when the FBI decides now is the time to be hot and bothered when security cameras have been catching cops visiting/raiding properties for years. Audio recording isn't some new technology either, so if cops haven't been clued into this possibility already, they have no one to blame but themselves.
The documents are fascinating, and not just because they appear to turn Ring into a co-conspirator in crimes after so many years of being besties with law enforcement. It also shows how much goes unnoticed by people who routinely cite their years of training and experience when applying for search warrants. This should have been obvious from day one.
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Filed Under: doorbells, fbi, ring, surveillance, warrants
Companies: amazon, ring
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The best idea
Would have been to keep quiet. Now it will be streisand time.
And now lawyers can argue that cops and feds doing coverrt is not best practice, bad. By pointing to this. After all, of bad.for the servants of people, has to be bad for the people.....m
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Cue Bill Barr’s angry call for tech companies to nerd harder and come up with a secure back door that lets the Ring camera see and hear everybody but law enforcement. But only real law enforcement. Not bad guys pretending to be law enforcement.
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FBI seems to hate recordings
They prefer if all meetings with them are verbal only with their version of what happened being the only one used to determine if you lied or not. Having actual footage means that their account has to fit what actually happened.
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Hmmm too bad the tech simply doesn't exist to have on-premise hw "bug" unwanted guest (especially those that should be constrained by things like the constitution).
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Re:
I thought the line was "everyone who looks like law enforcement", meaning that fake police should be just as coddled (lets give them QI too) as real police.
/s
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Technology is objective ,it can be used to catch burglars or watch the cops fbi breaking into a home.
It can be used to spy on innocent citizens or else used to record extreme police brutality towards innocent black people .
It sounds like the fbi were trying to look for documents or evidence but did not expect the criminal to have acess to a ring camera.
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Any law enforcement officer than needed to get a technical analysis bulletin of this particular situation should be dismissed immediately.
Great use of tax payer money writing up this analysis guys.
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Re: Re:hmmm
So if someone tells out police during a raid, does that mean that everyone, including other police, have to check fire? As in the moment, they would have told police. And if firing without looking, or checking, won't police hate crime laws effect them too?
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Re: well
Could they not always ask to ring to turn off the thing going in? I mean if they are checking out they know what people have so should be able to use all writs act or a warrant to have ring turn off or disable alert feature?
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Oh, no
"We thought this technology was going to be the one that finally gives us the edge in law enforcement, but those dogon damn crooks found a way to use technology against us......again! Now, how do we ban them?"
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"Hang on"
"Does this mean we might have to start actually knocking and announcing from now on"
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And... when has this sort of thing ever stopped trigger-happy enforcers? Next time they'll just nuke the location from orbit just to make sure...
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Cops don't get it both ways...
On the one hand, they want everyone with Ring-or-similar to volunteer them to LE to avoid them actually having to do boots-on-the-ground patrolling. On the other hand, it creates an offsite copy of any cases of their overstepping (dang, can't just seize and "lose" someone's cell phone to cover up), which I'm sure any lawyers looking to have QI overturned will find soooo useful.
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Re: "Hang on"
Of course not. That's what no-knock warrants are for.
Or you can just spy the camera and consider that sufficient evidence of malfeasance to justify armed intrusion.
The use civil forfeiture law to rip the whole Ring setup straight out of the wall and cart it off as "probably guilty of something".
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That old joke...
This reminds me of an old joke:
I guess now we can shorten it down to:
Damn Ring, destroying jokes like that...
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Re:
We can compare tech to humans. It tends to start out neutral but with development comes biases.
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Re: Re: "Hang on"
The eavesdropping laws. it listened in to private police matters when they talked shop to each other. i mean, they arrested people for videoing police on those laws. and given its property and not a person, well...
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'No fair, that's our thing!'
Wow, sucks when someone records what you're saying and doing without your knowledge, doesn't it?
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Time for some spy vs spy
Since there's an option to let local law enforcement monitor your Ring cameras, the next step could be for them to ask Ring to give them the ability to block motion detection and recording for a region around the house in question.
Then users will will get a 3rd party app that monitors the realtime feed and notify them if it goes dark. Optionally starting up an an alternate camera.
Then law enforcement encourages Ring to disable the 3rd party app access due to "security concerns"
On a related note, a friend had me install a Ring doorbell ( against my better judgement) and when it asked for the address as part of the setup we gave it a non-existant address between two house numbers on the other side the street. No sense making it too easy for a potential hacker to know which house has people coming or going or packages on the porch.
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Re: 'No fair, that's our thing!'
Just wait till they start filing charges against the resident for "illegaly" recording cops.
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Re: That old joke...
... And during the day, the police showed up.
How did you know it was the police?
Well, they were wearing uniforms.
Could have been the postman...
Naw, the Ring always postmans twice.
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Re: Re: 'No fair, that's our thing!'
I'd like to mark that as funny/too absurd to be real, but sadly these days I'm going to have to go with a insightful/'sad but almost certainly to end up true' vote.
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When you don't live in the real world, it's hard to see the obvious.
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Re:
Then there would be no body to use the backdoors, so no sense even making them.
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Re: Re: well
What an excellent idea.
Make it Standard Operating Procedure to deactivate a security/surveillance system -- without the owner's consent or knowledge -- whenever some unrelated party would find it convenient to subvert the owners security...
What could possibly go wrong?
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Re:
But, but..
I call it an easy solution.
Take your pick.
PAINTBALL GUN..
Frequency scrambler, for any network, 2.5/5g on your wifi is pretty simple to block. But you would also block 1/2 the neighbors..
Or just disconnect his CABLE/Digital lines. Unless someone was REALLY paranoid and setup the modem to use the wireless system/Cellphone, IT wont be going anywhere.
This is getting strange, where are the basic thinkers in any of this. It was an old way to Climb a nearby pole or call the Phone corp, and get it disconnected for a few minutes. Easy/peasy.
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Re: Re:
Why, unless you want the cops carry out illegal and non constitutional acts.
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Re: secure backdoor
"secure back door that lets the Ring camera see and hear everybody but law enforcement."
Simples. Law enforcement just has to go to the location's BACKDOOR instead of the front door. They're only installing the cameras up front. Besides it won't be long before wearable technology allows the FBI to wear special clothing with flexible LCD screens and cameras that make them appear invisible to people by showing the image behind the feds on the "screens" in front. That way the ring cameras won't see them.
Either that, or wear a shrub.
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Re: Time for some spy vs spy
"block motion detection"
See this BBC show https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Capture_(TV_series)
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Windows: Enemy of law enforcement.
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Illegally recording law enforcement
It's all right. We're arrested for who we are not what we did. That comes later and justifies the arrest, but it's really because someone didn't like our skin color, our religion, our lifestyle, our choice of partners, whatever. They don't arrest the good ones.
It won't matter much once we're uncitizened and incarcerated.
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Re: Re: Re: well
They are probably working put the details as we type.
I recall a while back, some leo wanted tech companies to incorporate a kill switch in all recording devices and give them the controls. Whatever happened to that, hope it died.
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Re: Re: secure backdoor
We request more shrubbery.
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Re: Re: Re: "Hang on"
"and given its property and not a person, well..."
Yup. Civil Forfeiture for teh win. It's not as if whatever object is "arrested" will be claiming its legal counsel and day in court...
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Re: Illegally recording law enforcement
"We're arrested for who we are not what we did."
Well...some arguments heard by LEO's would, by extension, have "Being Born Brown" be a deliberate act of willful malice in itself.
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Ring is buddy-buddy with the cops. What will happen now is, the police will simply request that any Ring devices nearby - not just at the warrant address - be blocked from the system or remotely turned off while the police are there. And Ring will happily comply.
If they'd been smart, they would have used the Ring video to make sure their targets were, you know, actually home, before armoring up and charging out of the station...
Cops don't like to be watched; that's why so many of them strongly oppose bodycams. And that's why I wear a bodycam, and my homebuilt home security system spools video to an off-site server.
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Re: Re: Re:hmmm
Many home invasion type robbers will yell "police, police" as they break into a house. They know it will make residents hesitate long enough that by the time they realize it's not the police it's too late to resist.
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As to why it took the FBI so long to figure this out, they're notoriously tech-averse. Computers get in the way of policing, after all....
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Atom blaster points both ways equally well. News at eleven.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: well
It's called Cinavia. Surprised it's not used much by law enforcement.
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Cinavia
Looks like DRM based on antagonistic interoperability. The end result is grey market devices that are not Cinavia compliant. Also pirates will eventually learn to detect and strip the watermarks.
When speeding is so easy, everyone on the freeway ignores the speed limits, until it becomes dangerous to follow them.
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Ring will now turn you camera off when feds vist, they wont tell it is being done.
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Re:
True what you say, im dumping ring
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Re: Re: secure backdoor
Well I believe they are already doing just EXACTLY THAT! AND they are using mind reading technology. It sounds crazy. I'm far from crazy. I have tried to warn and tell everyone but, no one will listen. I was standing smoking a cigarette about to go walking with my cousin. She doesn't like cig smoke, so that's why I was at the window, with it open.
I heard some people talking but didn't see anyone. The voices were getting closer. I thought it was my neighbor, he had told me earlier in the month his son was staying with temporarily to save money.
I hadn't seen his son, so I wanted to see if his son looked like him or his wife. So I continued to look. I didn't see my neighbor or anyone but the voices were close, all of a sudden I saw this gas like wave in the air at the beginning of my yard. I thought wtf, I have lived hire for 13 years and never saw that before. I continued to watch. All of a sudden I saw 3 outline of bodies, walking towards the tree I had been telling my boyfriend someone(s) are hiding in, it wasn't a big, big tree but big enough ,Not to tall.
These 3 people had on some sort of aluminum, cellophane, like (the only way I can describe it). I could only see the outline as they got close enough maybe like a few feet 7 feet I would say.
I could see behind, which made it seem as I was seeing right through them. I was blown away. I had never heard or saw anything like this before. They looked up at me, they stopped talking,they stood still. We were staring at each other. I could see no color but facial description. I could tell one was afro American, the other two were white.
I dropped the cigarette, grabbed the window edge and slammed it shut and as I was closing it I yelled " Coronavirus", the first thing that came to mind because I could not believe what I just saw.
I have been telling my family that the trees, people are camouflaged in the trees. I was messing around with binoculars one day when me and my boyfriend were out on a drive. I saw in almost every single tree people either wearing black tight ninja like clothing or tree like leaves with greenish paint and brownish like net or both.
I have been being stalked, harassed, threatened and touched sexually by these whoever's . I have called the police with no help only to be told to STOP calling. I believe this is some type of enforcement officers. I'm threatened and called bitches all day. I had one officer tell me why don't you just move. No, why can't you do your job. I have audio , I have pictures they won't even look at them. It's strange. One day there was a loud noise going on , over and over all day. I barricaded myself in my room and called the police a couple of times, only to be told " you live by the freeway , it's probably the noise from that" I've been living in this house 13 or more years never heard anything close to that. After hours and hours of being confined to my room , I was hungry and frustrated. I grabbed a weapon, a kitchen knife I had to help secure the door. And opened my bedroom door, proceeded down the hall towards the kitchen and looked back and saw a man in my bedroom ,on his knees, reaching up under the couch in my room. I was so terrified, I just kept walking. Got to the kitchen gathered myself ,got food and proceeded back to my room and saw no one. I called my sister as I was on the phone a police officer was at my front door. Short chubby guy at least that's who he said he was. He said you called the police ?, I said " yes hours ago. He said oh yeah we were busy. I said well officer, it's the same o same o , thanks for coming. Close the door, went back to my room and I am sitting on my bed and my curtains on my slider are open and I see that person who knocked on my door run across my backyard , holding a flashlight into some trees. I said to my sister " why did the officer just run across my backyard?" I thought maybe they caught someone, hopefully the person's that have been harassing me. I got up ,looked out there and saw the same strange camouflaged weirdos, that harass me DAILY. Then later another officer came. Said the same . He was acting a little weird, he kept looking around. He tall and slim and wore dark brownish framed sunglasses and it was night out.. I told him another officer had came already , he acted surprised. I told him about the noise , he said well it is windy out it's probably the trees.. it wasn't windy.. he said" look at the trees , You see how the branches are moving". I looked briefly bc I wanted to watch his every move. The branches were moving slightly but it was the weirdos I'm sure. I looked up the suits and he were wearing bc I told my boyfriend and he said there is no such thing find what your describing on the net and then I will believe you. I couldn't find it at first , it took about a month then I found it and it explained EVERYTHING it's a STEALTH SUIT, they sell at JOES Surplus I believe for 13,000 , it's supposed to be for military use only , it charges , the charge last for about four hours. And if this isn't the police , bad guys have gotten their hands on them and they are DANGEROUS
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