By Chris Jones*
I. Introduction
As technology continues to evolve, private companies are weaponizing consumers with surveillance tools ultimately utilized for purposes far beyond the average user’s expectation. Ring doorbells are effectively turning neighborhoods into “surveillance hotbeds” while allowing the government to track neighbors’ movements on the curtilage of their own property.[1] Amazon provides police access to Ring’s footage without obtaining a warrant. This footage can be used to continuously track ones movement in both private and public spaces by connecting footage from multiple Ring doorbells. As a result, individuals are subjected to unwanted surveillance from neighbors acting as conduits for law enforcement, without probable cause or judicial oversight.
This article argues the utilization of Ring doorbells—as a neighborhood surveillance tool—have become a considerable threat to ones privacy in their own home. In October, 2021, an Oxford County Court determined that a neighbor’s Ring video and audio recording doorbell violated the UK General Data Protection Regulation (“GDPR”). Thus, in order to integrate the benefits of technology with the sanctity Americans expect in their own homes, Congress should require informed consent for recording from all entities that own property within the range of a surveillance doorbell.
II. Overview of Ring Doorbell Surveillance
In 2018, Amazon acquired Ring and partnered with local law enforcement agencies in the U.S. to expand neighborhood surveillance.[2] Amazon’s partnerships provide police departments with access to an online portal where officers can view footage from local Ring users without obtaining a warrant.[3] Cities promote Ring doorbells to local residents and purchase subsidized Ring devices with taxpayer funding.[4] In turn, these partnerships benefit Amazon by expanding Ring’s nationwide surveillance network and promoting its devices.[5]
Ring doorbells are essentially surveillance cameras that replace a traditional doorbell.[6] A video doorbell detects motion ranging from people approaching the door, to cars driving by, to neighbors entering their homes on property within the camera’s range.[7] The software is synchronized with an online application that allows the owner to “see, hear, and speak to visitors in real time from anywhere.”[8] Ring doorbells have the capacity to record audio from as far as 40 feet away.[9] While Ring includes a Privacy Zone option to block the taping of a neighbor’s property, it requires the user take affirmative action to utilize this setting.[10]
Ring uses the data to access, use, preserve, or disclose content to law enforcement, government, or third parties for various purposes.[11] By utilizing footage from Ring, law enforcement can essentially track an individual’s movements through private and public spaces by linking together one camera after another. Deleted content and user recordings may still be retained by Ring in order to comply with certain legal obligations.[12] Therefore, once footage is recorded, the user does not control their personal content.[13]
Additionally, Amazon has been found to utilize footage of consumer doorbell cameras for its own advertising purposes, further violating the privacy of unsuspecting neighbors.[14] Recent reports believe that Ring is implementing facial recognition into its surveillance devices, adding an entirely new spectrum of surveillance.[15] Thus, Ring doorbells endanger the privacy of all individuals, even those who do not have an Amazon account.[16]
III. Legal Background
An individual’s reasonable expectation of privacy is often measured by the standard established in Katz v. United States.[17] In Katz, the court moved away from constitutionally protecting ones privacy in physical spaces to protecting the privacy of an individual themselves.[18] The court implemented the Reasonable Expectation of Privacy Test where an individual’s expectation is measured by whether it is one that society is prepared to recognize as reasonable.[19]
In United States v. Antoine Jones, the court determined that law enforcement should not have immediate access to every move a person makes over an extended period of time without consent or a warrant.[20] The court held that the warrantless placement of a GPS tracking device on a person’s vehicle—in order to track all of the movements of a person on public streets—was considered an unlawful search, violating the “effects” portion of the Fourth Amendment.[21]
In Jones, Justice Sotomayor’s dissent contemplated the mosaic theory of privacy where individuals have a reasonable expectation that their movements will not be recorded and aggregated “in the sum” to infer one’s personal beliefs, habits, and potentially sensitive information.[22] While substantial privacy indicators, Katz and Jones only apply to the government leaving individuals vulnerable to exploitation from private entities.[23]
Minimal federal statutes currently exist to regulate the use of private surveillance cameras. The Wiretap Act allows for silent video recording through a network; however, places restrictions on the recording of aural communications.[24] Some states allow audio recording for conversations in which one participating party has provided consent.[25]
In October, 2021, Oxford County Court Judge Melissa Clarke determined a neighbor’s Ring video and audio recording doorbell violated the UK Data Protection Act 2018 and the GDPR.[26] According to Clarke, “the video images and audio files that the Ring doorbell and cameras captured of the neighbor” were property belonging to the neighbor.[27] While the United States relies on a patchwork of federal and state statutes, private tort claims, sectoral laws, and FTC rules to enforce privacy regulation, it lacks a comprehensive federal privacy law, comparable to the GDPR.[28]
IV. Ring Doorbell Owners Lack Consent to Publicize Neighbor’s Footage
In the United States, there is a gap in legal protection for recording ones movements on the curtilage of their own home, something the public considers private. For example, Google recognized this need for privacy and instituted a policy to blur the data that appears in Google Street View photos.[29] This data includes license plate numbers, people’s faces, and other indentifying marks of a person or place—especially those with sensitive ramifications.[30]
“Persistent and targeted surveillance collapses individual moments of interaction, spread out over time and mitigated through human forgetfulness, into one long story of an individual’s life.”[31] This type of surveillance can lead to inferences about highly sensitive areas of a person’s life, such as addictions, health, religion, or sexual activities.[32] When one is under surveillance for a long period of time—as a Ring camera does—the nature of the harm changes with the scope of the protectable right of privacy.[33] For example “one photograph of a person in public may offend his dignity. Twenty-eight days of targeted tracking meaningfully disrupts his environment and his behavior.”[34]
Ring intrudes on ones right to privacy while on the curtilage of their home.[35] As the Court determined, “the curtilage of the home is considered as ‘part of the home itself for Fourth Amendment’ purposes and, thus, afforded the same protections.”[36] The curtilage “consists of the area immediately surrounding a home where the private details of the home naturally extend, and it is ‘intimately linked to the home, both physically and psychologically.’”[37] Thus, the reasonable expectation of privacy afforded to individuals in their home should be extended to the curtilage and should apply to private parties—like Ring.
Moreover, concerns exist over what technology companies actually do with the footage once they collect it, potentially aggregate it, and retain it.[38] Mission creep occurs when parties gather data for one reason; however, end up using it in bad faith or find other uses for it, even when not explicitly authorized.[39] Here, Ring is owned by Amazon—one of the world’s largest retailers—known for its excessive marketing efforts.[40] If Amazon and Ring were to exchange data revealing a consumer’s every movement near their own home, it would likely benefit Amazon’s marketing division,
In response to the Oxford County Court’s ruling, Amazon issued a statement encouraging users to respect their neighbor’s privacy and comply with applicable laws.[41] Ring’s violation of wiretapping laws is discussed in a forum on Amazon’s website. Here, various individuals focus on obtaining consent from those standing on the user’s front porch—not from neighbors who happen to live nearby.[42]
Critics argue that The Wiretap Act allows general surveillance footage to be obtained without informed consent from those in the video, provided there is no aural component. However, Ring’s video doorbells have the ability to record audio from 40 feet away. Thus, a property owner’s conversation in their own yard could very well be captured by a neighbor’s doorbell. While some states allow recording aural conversations with consent from one party, the consenting party must participate in the conversation. Therefore, the recording of neighbor’s aural conversations—in which the recording party is not participating—likely violates The Wiretap Act.
Other critics argue the owners are lawfully on their own property and possess rights to the footage recorded. Thus, the owners can provide informed consent to viewing and sharing of the recordings to others. This position may lead to high privacy walls constructed around individual properties. Even then, Ring would still track the comings and goings of cars entering the property.
As the Supreme Court has exemplified the principles recognizing an individual’s right to privacy in their own autonomy,[43] the same concept should apply to private entities. If state actors are prohibited from tracking ones every movement, private parties should be prohibited as well. Therefore, Ring’s recording of residents on the curtilage of their private homes should be viewed as unauthorized access and property of the subject being recorded. Ring is a private party and the footage subjects have not consented to the recording or publishing of their movements or conversations.
V. Solution
While many bills have been proposed, there are still no comprehensive privacy laws at the federal level, let alone any statutes to specifically regulate neighborhood doorbell surveillance.[44] The Supreme Court has implied that Congress is the “best-situated body to protect privacy interests in the face of burgeoning technological advances.”[45] In Jones, the Supreme Court has “shown a willingness to uphold legislation providing for appropriate uses of and safeguards against the sort of technology whose abuse may result in substantial encroachments by the government into private life.”[46]
Absent a comprehensive federal privacy law, this article proposes Congress should enact legislation to require informed consent for recording from all entities that own property within the range of a surveillance doorbell’s camera. This statute should include a private right of action that allows ordinary citizens to bring suit against neighbors who record surveillance footage of their property without consent. The private right of action is necessary for increased compliance as a doorbell owner would be far more likely to honor a neighbor’s refusal to consent if they knew that individual could bring a private lawsuit against them. Without a private right of action, it would be incredibly costly and onerous for a regulatory agency—such as the FTC—to enforce. This right would minimize the role and expenses required for enforcement of this law and increase the likelihood that neighbors would police themselves.
Compliance with this statue would be simple as Ring doorbells have the ability for a property owner to block out areas of footage through Privacy Zone settings. This would only necessitate companies, like Ring, to provide doorbell owners with a standard consent form that complies with the statute. Prior to activating the Ring device, users would be required to sign a contract stating they would obtain a signed consent form from any property owners within the camera’s range. Therefore, the responsibility for compliance would fall entirely on the owner, relieving Ring of any burdensome enforcement.
Thus, while an individual’s movements in public spaces may be subject to taping and publicity, ones movements and conversations while on the curtilage of their own home should be sacred. An individual’s personal space requires special consideration to end this substantial encroachment into ones private life.
VI. Conclusion
Congress is well positioned to deal with the new surveillance issues resulting from Ring doorbells and similar technological devices. Action must be taken at the federal level in order to curtail this significant invasion of privacy occurring from neighbors’ recording. By providing sweeping protection for all U.S. residents from unwanted doorbell surveillance, Congress can help to balance the benefits of technology with the sanctity we have all come to expect in the privacy of our own homes.
* J.D., Gonzaga University School of Law. Acknowledgments and gratitude to Noelle Green and Professor Drew Simshaw for their invaluable insights and continuing support.
[1] See Dan Milmo, Amazon asks Ring Owners to Respect Privacy after Court Rules Usage Broke Law, Guardian, (Oct. 14, 2021), https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/oct/14/amazon-asks-ring-owners-to-respect-privacy-after-court-rules-usage-broke-law (Hannah Hart, a digital privacy expert at ProPrivacy, explains that Ring’s doorbells enable “a small number of residents [to] effectively transform public spaces into surveillance hotbeds, and even share their recordings with police”).
[2] Grace Egger, Ring, Amazon Calling: The State Action Doctrine & the Fourth Amendment, 95 Wash. L. Rev. Online 245, 245-46 (2020).
[3] Id. at 253.
[4] Id. at 251.
[5] Id. at 254.
[6] See Ring Video Doorbells, Ring, https://ring.com/doorbell-cameras/ (last visited May 6, 2021).
[7] See generally id.
[8] Ring Terms of Service, Ring, https://ring.com/terms (last updated Dec. 8, 2020).
[9] See Ring, supra note 6.
[10] Understanding Privacy Zones, Ring, https://support.ring.com/hc/en-us/articles/360027979331-Understanding-Privacy-Zones (last visited May 3, 2021).
[11] Ring, supra note 8.
[12] Ring, supra note 8.
[13] See Ring, supra note 8.
[14] See Ariana Aboulafia, Greg Fritzius, Tessa Mears, & Macy Nix. The Price of Prime: Consumer Privacy in the Age of Amazon. 42 Mitchell Hamline L. J. Pub. Pol’y & Prac. 138, 149 (2021).
[15] Hannah Bloch Wehba, Visible Policing: Technology, Transparency, & Democratic Control, SSRN 1, 39 (Mar. 10, 2020), https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3552240.
[16] See Aboulafia, Fritzius, Mears, & Nix, supra note 14, at 140.
[17] See Katz. V. United States, 389 U.S. 347, 358 (1967).
[18] See id.
[19] Id.
[20] See United States v. Jones, 132 U.S. 945, 955-57 (2012).
[21] Id. at 946-47.
[22] See Orin S. Kerr, The Mosaic Theory of the Fourth Amendment, 111 Mich. L. Rev. 311, 328 (2012).
[23] See Wayne Unger, Katz and COVID-19: How a Pandemic Changed the Reasonable Expectation of Privacy, SSRN 1, 24 (Sept. 14, 2020), https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3692652.
[24] The Electronic Communications Privacy Act of 1986, Title 1. 18 U/S.C. §§2511.
[25] See id.
[26] See Milmo, supra note 1.
[27] See Milmo, supra note 1.
[28] See Chris Jones, The iOS 14.5 Update: A Game Changer for Federal Privacy Law, 28 Rich. J. L. & Tech., no.1, (2021).
[29] Patrick Gallo & Houssain Kettani, On Privacy Issues with Google Street View, 65 S.D. L. Rev. 608, 610 (2020).
[30] Id.
[31] Margot E. Kaminsky, Privacy and the Right to Record, 97 Boston U. L. Rev. 167, 215 (2015).
[32] Id.
[33] See id. at 217.
[34] Id.
[35] See generally Matthew R. Koerner, Drones and the Fourth Amendment: Redefining Expectations of Privacy, 64 Duke L. J. 1129, 1139-40 (2015).
[36] Id. at 1139.
[37] Id.
[38] Richard M. Thompson II, Domestic Drones and Privacy: A Primer, Cong. Research Serv. 1, 8-9 (Mar. 30, 2015), https://fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/R43965.pdf.
[39] Benjamin White, Clipped Wings: Domestic Drone Surveillance and the Limits of Due Process Protection, 86 U. Cin. L. Rev. 357, 360 (2018).
[40] Lauren Debter, The World’s Largest Retailers 2020, Forbes (May 13, 2020), https://www.forbes.com/sites/laurendebter/2020/05/13/the-worlds-largest-retailers-2020-walmart-amazon-increase-lead-ahead-of-the-pack/?sh=56601dd18d35.
[41] See Milmo, supra note 1
[42] See Can you disable audio recording to avoid violating wiretapping law requiring 2 party consent in states like ma, ca, pa, il, wa, ct, etc?, Amazon (Jan. 21, 2018), https://www.amazon.com/ask/questions/Tx1OXUJ8ZWUHROA/?.
[43] See Katz, 389 U.S. at 358; See Jones 132 U.S. at 955-57.
[44] White, supra note 39, at 373.
[45] White, supra note 39, at 373.
[46] White, supra note 39, at 389.
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