That's all assuming the cops understand I'm not involved or committing crimes. As indicated in your sibling comment, that may not be the case and having my own representation would be needed.
It's shitty situations all around frankly.
In TFA they mention the possibility of complying but not giving everything that is asked for. A lawyer can probably help you craft that in a way that will satisfy a judge.
Point about Ring's lawyers (which we've seemingly gotten away from this deep into the thread) is you do not pay for them or get involved if you don't want to be. You don't get to be involved in strategy either, which may not be in your interests. Getting the best thing for your interests may require paying a lot for a lawyer and a lot of stress. It would all depend on the specifics of the case.
When you own it, you can fight back to your heart's content.
And by the way, you do pay for Ring's lawyers if you use their product.
The most important point
A subpoena for Ring is an order to produce data. A warrant for Joe's CCTV at 223 Acacia Avenue is permission to take the data.
So you're happy to give away your data, but also insistent that you should pay someone to review the request for your data. Apologies if I'm misunderstanding your comments (very possible), but I think I at least understand why some folks are confused.
You can't escape the shittiness of this problem by running your own server. It's a bad situation either way.
The root of the problem as i read it is overly zealous law enforcement and a judge that is not acting as a proper check on their power. It's a political problem. It can't be escaped with purely technical solutions like who stores the data.
But it all depends on the circumstances. As you say, the whole point of ownership is that I get to make that sort of decision.
Given it's common sense to never talk to the police without a lawyer, you would want a lawyer for this situation so you know you're not unintentionally fucking yourself over.
Obligatory IANAL.
Don't generalize and don't conclude from your point-of-view to the whole world. There are enough places where you can talk to the police without even thinking about a lawyer (and never ever even require one, even in such situations). Not everyone's country is the USA (I assume).
Obligatory IANAL.
Many of these kinds of warrants are closer to the "minor traffic ticket" side than anything else. The trouble is that you may want a lawyer to tell you that.
So wouldn't the alternative where they get the footage from someone else be just as bad as you turning it over without checking, and therefore something you should prevent if consulting a lawyer first is to your advantage?
That's one of many reasons.
Even if we aren't talking about court orders, any interactions with the police beyond small talk should be guided by a lawyer for the same reason. Arrogance has no place when interacting with the law, the complexity of which is far beyond the understanding of common men.
The problem is the side of it where you abandon in advance your ability do to that by giving a third party custody of your data and then suffer whatever consequences a lawyer might have advised you to avoid when the third party hands your data over to the government.
It doesn't matter if you're going to abide or contest court orders or whatever the hell else. I'm not talking about that.
You. Need. A. Lawyer.
Mere mortals cannot and will not understand the complexity and intricacy of law.
You. Need. A. Lawyer.
Having a lawyer do the basics is really cheap. Having a lawyer fight the warrant or craft a minimally-revealing response is expensive. You don't have to break the bank if you end up getting served a warrant.