Technologies

Amazon’s Ring Cameras Push Deeper Into Police and Government Surveillance

Ring has partnered with Flock Safety, making it easier for law enforcement to reach out to Ring doorbell and security camera owners to request footage.

Less than two years after removing a feature that made it easier for law enforcement agencies to request footage from owners of Ring doorbells and other security products, Amazon has partnered with two companies that will help facilitate the same kinds of requests.

Two weeks after rolling out a new product line for 2025, Ring, owned by Amazon, announced a partnership with Flock Safety, as part of its expansion of the Community Requests feature in the Ring Neighbors app. Atlanta-based Flock is a police technology company that sells surveillance technology, including drones, license-plate reading systems and other tools. The announcement follows a partnership Ring entered into with Axon, previously Taser International, which also builds tools for police and military applications.

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Taken together, the two partnerships point to Amazon’s Ring division not only reintroducing tools for police to request images or video from Ring customers without a warrant but also to a closer alignment with companies that have ties to police departments, ICE, the Secret Service and branches of the military.

Ring described the process for Community Requests in one of its blog posts. It said an agency that is verified with Axon Evidence, which Axon owns, could submit a community request that includes a specific location and timeframe of an incident and details about what’s being investigated.

The request would appear publicly in the Neighbors feed for people in that area, notifying them with the option to provide footage for that incident.

«If you ignore the request, the agency will not know; your anonymity and videos are protected. The choice is entirely yours,» Ring said in the post.

According to the post, video footage submitted goes directly to Axon Evidence, where it is verified for authenticity.

Community Requests are ‘local,’ according to Ring

In an email responding to our questions, a representative for Ring reiterated the process for Community Requests, adding that «only local public safety agencies can initiate Community Requests.»

The localized area submitted is limited to half a square mile, and those agencies don’t have access to information on who will receive a request to share footage or how many Ring users are in a given area, according to Ring. The company says those requesting information must follow community guidelines.

According to Ring’s website, only local and county entities — whether they’re law enforcement, nonprofits, or local government — can set up a Neighbors Verified account. While federal agencies or local branches of federal agencies might be customers of Axon or Flock, they wouldn’t be eligible for a Neighbors Verified account and would not be eligible to file a Community Request, even if it were done on their behalf by a third party such as Axon or Flock, the Ring representative confirmed to CNET.

The partnerships would give those agencies more entry points for creating these requests. Amazon hinted in one of its blog posts that it may add partnerships with other companies. Community Requests can only come from agencies that have been verified by a third party, such as Flock or Axon, and by Ring as well.

Back in 2018, when Flock Safety was a nascent startup, it set up its own cameras in neighborhoods to provide surveillance to fight crime.

Surveillance bystanders

While the footage from Ring devices is only given to local organizations by permission of the footage’s owner, that doesn’t mean other people — such as someone walking their dog or children playing in a neighborhood — are free from potential privacy issues if they’re captured on camera.

«This arrangement creates a tricky problem from a privacy standpoint for consumers because the people who never signed up for surveillance in the first place could be watched, and they never agreed to that,» said Erik Avakian, a technical counselor at Info-Tech Research Group and the former chief information security officer for the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.

Avakian said that making Ring footage availability opt-in still doesn’t address the issue of what happens to footage once it’s in the hands of law enforcement or other groups.

«It could be used for other investigations, shared with others, or perhaps even used to capture biometrics and personal information like facial recognition features,» he said. «The videos might also end up revealing more about neighbors, visitors, or passersby than about the actual incident itself.»

He said one solution would be to blur out any individuals or identifiable artifacts from footage if it’s not part of the investigation. Regardless of whether that’s possible or not, Avakian said that companies such as Ring and those requesting footage should be transparent about how videos or images will be used, how long data will be stored, and if it’s shared with anyone else.

Mesh policing

What Ring and local law enforcement are doing with Community Requests may create some efficiencies for agencies that are stretched thin and don’t have the resources to gather as much evidence as what doorbell and security camera owners may be able to provide.

«Crime isn’t slowing down, but police resources are stretched thinner than ever,» said Ryan Schonfeld, co-founder and CEO of HiveWatch, which uses AI technology to create security ecosystems.

«Technology integration gives a single officer access to necessary data that was previously unavailable, doing the work that would have required an entire team,» Schonfeld said. «If we want crimes solved and public safety maintained, we need to embrace the interoperability that makes it possible with the resources we actually have.»

Technologies

Google races to put Gemini at the center of Android before Apple’s AI reboot

Google is using its latest Android rollout to position Gemini as the AI layer across phones, Chrome, laptops and cars.

Google is using its latest Android rollout to make Gemini less of a chatbot and more of an operating layer across the phone, browser, car and laptop, just weeks before Apple is expected to show its own Gemini-powered Apple Intelligence reboot at WWDC.
Ahead of its Google I/O developer conference next week, the company previewed a number of Android updates, including AI-powered app automation, a smarter version of Chrome on Android, new tools for creators, a redesigned Android Auto experience, and a sweeping set of new security features.
Alphabet is counting on Gemini to help Google compete directly with OpenAI and Anthropic in the market for artificial intelligence models and services, while also serving as the AI backbone across its expansive portfolio of products, including Android. Meanwhile, Gemini is powering part of Apple’s new AI strategy, giving Google a role in the iPhone maker’s reset even as it races to prove its own version of personal AI on the phone is further along.
Sameer Samat, who oversees Google’s Android ecosystem, told CNBC that Google is rebuilding parts of Android around Gemini Intelligence to help users complete everyday tasks more easily.
“We’re transitioning from an operating system to an intelligence system,” he said.
As part of Tuesday’s announcements. Google said Gemini Intelligence will be able to move across apps, understand what’s on the screen and complete tasks that would normally require a user to jump between multiple services. That means Android is moving beyond the traditional assistant model, where users ask a question and get an answer, and acting more like an agent.
For instance, Google says Gemini can pull relevant information from Gmail, build shopping carts and book reservations. Samat gave the example of asking Gemini to look at the guest list for a barbecue, build a menu, add ingredients to an Instacart list and return for approval before checkout.
A big concern surrounding agentic AI involves software taking action on a user’s behalf without permissions. Samat said Gemini will come back to the user before completing a transaction, adding, “the human is always in the loop.”
Four months after announcing its Gemini deal with Google, Apple is under pressure to show a more capable version of Apple Intelligence, which has been a relative laggard on the market. Apple has long framed privacy, hardware integration and control of the user experience as its advantages.
Google’s Android push is designed to show it can bring AI deeper into the device experience while still giving users control over what Gemini can see, where it can act and when it needs confirmation.
The app automation features will roll out in waves, starting with the latest Samsung Galaxy and Google Pixel phones this summer, before expanding across more Android devices, including watches, cars, glasses and laptops later this year.
The company is also redesigning Android Auto around Gemini, turning the car into another major surface for its assistant. Android Auto is in more than 250 million cars, and Google says the new release includes its biggest maps update in a decade and Gemini-powered help with tasks like ordering dinner while driving.
Alphabet’s AI strategy has been embraced by Wall Street, which has pushed the company’s stock price up more than 140% in the past year, compared to Apple’s roughly 40% gain. Investors now want to see how Gemini can become more central to the products people use every day.
WATCH: Alphabet briefly tops Nvidia after report of $200 billion Anthropic cloud deal

Technologies

Waymo recalls 3,800 robotaxis after glitch allowed some vehicles to ‘drive into standing water’

Waymo issued a voluntary recall of about 3,800 of its robotaxis to fix software issues that could allow them to drive into flooded roadways.

Waymo is recalling about 3,800 robotaxis in the U.S. to fix software issues that could allow them to “drive onto a flooded roadway,” according to a letter on the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s website.
The voluntary recall is for Waymo vehicles that use the company’s fifth and sixth generation automated driving systems (or ADS), the U.S. auto safety regulator said in the letter posted Tuesday.
Waymo autonomous vehicles in Austin, Texas, were seen on camera driving onto a flooded street and stalling, requiring other drivers to navigate around them. It’s the latest example of a safety-related issue for the Alphabet-owned AV unit that’s rapidly bolstering its fleet of vehicles and entering new U.S. markets.
Waymo has drawn criticism for its vehicles failing to yield to school buses in Austin, and for the performance of its vehicles during widespread power outages in San Francisco in December, when robotaxis halted in traffic, causing gridlock.
The company said in a statement on Tuesday that it’s “identified an area of improvement regarding untraversable flooded lanes specific to higher-speed roadways,” and opted to file a “voluntary software recall” with the NHTSA.
“Waymo provides over half a million trips every week in some of the most challenging driving environments across the U.S., and safety is our primary priority,” the company said.
Waymo added that it’s working on “additional software safeguards” and has put “mitigations” in place, limiting where its robotaxis operate during extreme weather, so that they avoid “areas where flash flooding might occur” in periods of intense rain.
WATCH: Waymo launches new autonomous system in Chinese-made vehicle

Technologies

Qualcomm tumbles 13% as semiconductor stocks retreat from historic AI-fueled surge

Semiconductor equities reversed sharply after a broad AI-driven advance, with Qualcomm suffering its worst day since 2020 amid inflation concerns and rising oil prices.

Semiconductor stocks fell sharply on Tuesday, reversing course after an extensive rally that had expanded the artificial intelligence investment theme well past Nvidia and driven the industry to unprecedented levels.

Qualcomm plunged 13% and was on track for its steepest single-day decline since 2020. Intel shed 8%, while On Semiconductor and Skyworks Solutions each lost more than 6%. The iShares Semiconductor ETF, which benchmarks the overall sector, fell 5%.

The sell-off came after a key gauge of consumer prices came in above forecasts, and as conflict in Iran pushed crude oil higher—prompting investors to shift away from riskier assets.

The preceding advance had widened the AI opportunity set beyond longtime industry leader Nvidia, which for much of the past several years had largely carried the market to new peaks on its own.

Explosive appetite for central processing units, along with the graphics processing units that power large language models, has sent chipmakers to all-time highs.

Market participants are wagering that the shift from AI model training to autonomous agents will lift demand for additional AI hardware. Among the beneficiaries are memory chip producers, which are raising prices as supply remains tight.

Micron Technology slid 6%, and Sandisk cratered 8%. Sandisk’s stock has surged more than six times over since January.