Use this map to see if your local police department has access to Amazon Ring's unofficial surveillance network of video doorbells
- Amazon's Ring video-doorbell company has partnerships with dozens of local police departments giving them access to the locations of Ring doorbells in nearby neighborhoods.
- An incoming college senior has created an interactive map showing the local police departments that are partnering with Amazon in an effort to gain access to Ring camera recordings.
- The close relationship between Ring and police to create surveillance networks around the US raises many concerns about privacy.
- Check out the map to see if your local police department is among the over 200 law enforcement agencies that have publicly acknowledged a partnership with Ring.
- Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.
There are more than 225 police departments across the US that have quietly been working with Amazon to more easily access footage from local resident's Ring video doorbells.
You can now check to see if your local law enforcement agency is one of the partnered police departments, thanks to an interactive map from an incoming college senior. The map, first reported on by Gizmodo, displays hundreds of blips indicating towns and cities where police have reportedly engaged in partnerships with Ring, the Amazon-owned home security firm that sells smart home doorbells with video surveillance cameras.
Recent investigations into Ring have found that law enforcement agencies across the US have partnered with Amazon to gain access to an online portal showing a map of Ring video doorbells in their neighborhood. The portal allows police to figure out which cameras may have captured surveillance footage, for which authorities need to request permission from homeowners to access.
Some police departments have also offered local residents discounts on Ring cameras, and encouraged them to download the crime-reporting app Neighbors, in exchange for getting free Ring cameras from Amazon. For recipients of free Ring cameras, they are reportedly required to give police access to their doorbell security footage.
Ring has said that users have a choice when police request their footage, and that it doesn't support programs where recipients ae required to shared surveillance footage in exchange for a free device.
All in all, over 225 police agencies have partnered with Ring, Gizmodo reported last month, but that list of partnering authorities is not readily available online. The person behind the interactive map - an incoming senior at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign named Shreyas Gandlur - compiled the list of departments using an existing facial-recognition map from Fight for the Future, as well as searching online for agencies that had advertised on social media their partnership with with Ring.
"I added a bunch of agencies I found by literally searching 'excited to join neighbors by ring' on Twitter and searching similar phrases on Google," Gandlur told Gizmodo. "Nothing too complicated and it's pretty funny that Ring controlling the content of police press releases came to my aid since basically every agency releases the same statement."
It's likely that the list of towns on the interactive map is not complete, given it doesn't include police agencies who haven't shared their partnerships on social media or who haven't been reported on by news outlets.
Roam your mouse over the interactive map below to see which police departments have partnerships with Ring:
