Mozilla letter to Amazon Ring: stop sharing information with police

I get that people don’t love surveillance. But the evidence is not here that a homeowner or renter’s decision to install a cloud-connected security camera on private property makes them or their community less safe. Unless you make a slew of assumptions that go undefended here, namely: cops are natural aggressors, having these cameras will attract cops, and the harm which these aggressive cops are likely to cause when attracted is greater than the combined deterrent effect of the camera’s presence against other crime + their value for genuine investigative work on crimes which were not deterred. Again, I’m open to the argument, but you need to present really good evidence, not just virtue signal. Because I don’t like getting packages stolen off my porch, and Ring seems like a straightforward way to prevent that.

I have Nest cameras and have shared footage with the police on numerous occasions.

Unless these camera companies deny me access to my footage, they can't do anything to prevent me from choosing to share it.

I can see not sharing the videos to the public, who are notorious for bad and racist judgement, but if the police are racist, that's a police problem, not an evidence problem.

But making it easy to push a button to submit video to police does enable casual racism.

"Oh, there's a suspicious person, I'll submit this video to the police. Click" That person has made a judgement based on looks alone. If it were harder to submit the video (download, attach to email, look up police email address, etc) then there'd be a lot less of that.

And for people who are serious about sharing video with the police, those extra steps aren't really an impediment.

In short, I think their hearts were in the right places, but the ramifications weren't fully thought out here.