The revelation came in a letter from the company released Wednesday by Sen. Edward Markey and is expected to raise more privacy and civil liberty concerns about video-sharing agreements with police departments across the US. In such cases, Huseman wrote, Ring “reserves the right to promptly respond to urgent law enforcement requests for information,” adding that the company decides when to share video without a user’s consent based on information provided to it in a emergency request form and circumstances described by law enforcement authorities. Some previous requests from law enforcement have raised concerns about how police might attempt to use Ring’s material. Last year, the nonprofit digital rights group Electronic Frontier Foundation reported that the Los Angeles Police Department had asked Ring for footage from Black Lives Matter protests in 2020. In a statement, Markey’s office said the findings show a close relationship between Ring and law enforcement and the proliferation of police using the platform. The senator also criticized the company for not specifying the distance that Ring products can record audio. The company said in its response letter that what Ring records “depends on many conditions, including device placement and environmental conditions.”
