Internal documents reveal Los Angeles police requested home surveillance footage of Black Lives Matter protests

The Los Angeles Police Department requested footage from Amazon Ring home security cameras in order to identify participants in Black Lives Matter protests during the summer of 2020, according to internal emails obtained by a nonprofit. The requests stirred concern that broad police access to private surveillance could chill free expression and violate the right to engage in First Amendment-protected activity.

Key Players

Ring is a home-security and smart-home company owned by Amazon. The subsidiary has partnerships with over 2,000 public safety agencies across the United States that allow officials to canvass local residents for footage related to ongoing investigations. Requests for video recordings come in the form of emails from the Ring team and typically contain details like an investigator’s name, the incident being investigated, and the time of interest. According to the company, footage requests from police departments must be related to a specific criminal investigation and are limited to 12-hour periods and half-square-mile areas or smaller. 

On June 16, 2020, a detective with the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) asked Ring owners to submit footage taped during a redacted time period  to the department’s Safe LA Task Force, established two weeks earlier to monitor protests and demonstrations against police violence. The request read: “The LAPD ‘Safe L.A. Task Force’ is asking for your help. During the recent protests, individuals were injured and property was looted, damaged, and destroyed. In an effort to identify those responsible, we are asking you to submit any video(s) you may have for [redacted].”

Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is a nonprofit organization that defends “civil liberties in the digital world.” On Feb. 16, 2021, EFF published a copy of the footage request sent to Ring customers by LAPD, one of several messages in a 316-page document obtained by the organization through a public records request. EFF expressed concern that LAPD had redacted the dates and times sought for the requested videos, “because if police request hours of footage on either side of a specific incident, they may receive hours of people engaging in First Amendment-protected activities with a vague hope that a camera may have captured illegal activity at some point.”

Further Details

While police across the country monitored Black Lives Matter protests in numerous ways, including aerial surveillance and semiprivate camera networks, this was the first documented evidence that police tried to use Ring footage to surveil demonstrations, according to EFF. 

Detectives sent video requests to Ring owners on several occasions coinciding with large street protests in Los Angeles, though redactions made it impossible to determine the scope of the footage requested. On June 1, 2020, the day after one of the largest Black Lives Matter protests in Los Angeles, LAPD sent Ring owners a request for footage. Within two hours, the department received a submission from at least one user. 

EFF said it asked LAPD to clarify “the specific context under which the department sent requests concerning the protests.” In its response, LAPD did not cite a particular crime subject to investigation.

“The SAFE LA Task Force used several methods in an attempt to identify those involved in criminal behavior. One of the methods was surveillance footage,” LAPD told EFF. “It is not uncommon for investigators to ask businesses or residents if they will voluntarily share their footage with them.”

Police Chief Michel Moore told the Los Angeles Times that working with private camera owners to gather footage of crimes was “an important and lawful tactic” that helps police track down offenders. He said LAPD had “no interest in identifying or tracking or warehousing imagery” of protesters exercising their First Amendment rights.

Ring told Vice that police can’t request surveillance video to monitor lawful demonstrations, per company policy, and defended the department’s solicitation.

“Ring’s policy expressly prohibits Video Requests for lawful activities, such as protests, and requires that all Requests include a valid case number for an active investigation and incident details,” the company said in a statement. “This LAPD Video Request meets our guidelines, as it includes a case number and specifically states that the public safety enforcement user is requesting video to only identify individuals responsible for theft, property damage, and physical injury.”

However, EFF expressed concern that law enforcement access to “video footage covering nearly every inch of an entire neighborhood” could stifle free expression. 

“This poses an incredible risk to First Amendment rights,” EFF said. “People are less likely to exercise their right to political speech, protest, and assembly if they know that police can acquire and retain footage of them. This creates risks of retribution or reprisal, especially at protests against police violence.”

Outcome 

EFF calls for stronger legal limits on government access to data collected by private companies

EFF urged lawmakers “to impose strict regulations governing ‘Internet of Things’ consent search requests” to prevent private home security devices from becoming “political surveillance machines.” 

Matthew Guariglia, an EFF policy analyst, told the Los Angeles Times that Ring’s camera networks have “kind of become de facto CCTV networks for police departments,” without the public oversight required of city-owned closed-circuit TV systems. A 2019 Vice investigation revealed that Ring had been teaching police departments across the United States how to best persuade its customers to share their surveillance video.

“One of EFF’s chief concerns is the ease with which Ring-police partnerships allow police to make bulk requests to Ring users for their footage, although a new feature does allow users to opt out of requests,” the organization said in a report. According to EFF, “such ‘consent searches’ pose the greatest problems in high-coercion settings, like police ‘asking’ to search your phone during a traffic stop, but they are also highly problematic in less-coercive settings, like bulk email requests for Ring footage from many residents.”

The organization urged policymakers to regulate and limit access to electronic surveillance data by requiring police to tailor requests strictly to a particular crime, publish statistics about their data collection, narrowly construe a person’s consent to having their device searched, and inform Ring owners of their right to refuse access to footage.