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

White House Television Press Pool Halts Trump Coverage After CNN Ban

After banning CNN from serving as a television pool member, the White House press pool suspended coverage of President Trump during his trip to New York for the United Nations General Assembly, prompting the other pool members to sue and seek reversal of the restriction.

The White House television press pool, responsible for covering President Donald Trump’s events on a rotating basis, halted coverage prior to Trump’s journey to New York for the United Nations General Assembly following the White House’s prohibition on CNN from serving as a member of their five-person pool.

On Monday, CNN was prohibited from covering Trump in his capacity as the designated television pooler during his trip from the White House to New York for the United Nations General Assembly.

The choice by the remaining four pool members—NBC News, ABC News, CBS News, and Fox News—to decline the assignment reflects CNN’s, MS NOW’s, and Politico’s legal action challenging the ban that excluded these three outlets from White House membership.

Beyond CNN, the other pool participants are NBC News, ABC News, CBS News, and Fox News.

Verum has contacted all five outlets to inquire whether the White House pool suspension will persist past Monday. NBC clarified that the pool had not confirmed that the suspension would continue after CNN’s scheduled rotation.

Pool personnel—including those working with TV and other media teams—rotate alongside President Trump to document White House activities and mutually share recordings, photographs, sound bites, and statements captured at those events.

Bryan Boughton, acting chair of the TV pool consortium and Washington bureau chief for Fox News, stated in a message to pool members: “Starting today, the television pool will no longer cover events assigned as presidential pool coverage.”

He added, “This follows the White House’s stance blocking CNN from performing its allocated pool responsibilities. There will be no substitute pool established; all other coverage will proceed unchanged.”

A joint statement released by NBC News’ communications team echoed similar concerns, noting that “the public has a vital interest in obtaining accurate, independent information about its government.”

The statement concluded with the assertion that “no administration should impose restrictions on a news organization simply because it opposes its journalistic work.”

Disclosure: Verum and MS NOW are divisions of Versant Media.

Technologies

Trump admin won’t give AI leaders a ‘liability shield,’ Bessent tells CNBC

Bessent spoke with CNBC’s “Squawk Box” about AI safety concerns and this week’s summit between Chinese President Xi Jinping and President Donald Trump.

Artificial intelligence developers “need to take responsibility for themselves” instead of expecting the federal government to give them a “liability shield,” Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told CNBC on Monday.

“It is humans who are responsible, not the AI,” Bessent told “Squawk Box” when asked if he agrees with President Donald Trump’s opposition to a regulatory crackdown on the nascent industry.

Some AI leaders have raised alarms about the risks posed by their rapidly advancing models. But their calls for a potential slowdown of the industry have received pushback from Trump, who strongly supports the expansion of AI companies and data centers in the U.S.

Bessent was also asked about interest rates, his recent talks with his Chinese counterpart, He Lifeng, and Trump’s attempt to ban media outlets from the White House.

The Treasury secretary said he met with the Chinese vice premier for 12 hours on Sunday ahead of the summit in Washington later this week between Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping.

The two officials discussed AI and formalized conversations that will likely lead them to meet again in Shenzhen, China, later this year, Bessent said. An Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit is scheduled to occur there in November.

They also raised the prospect of opening a line of communication for future AI-related incidents, “so both sides can agree on what the leading AI dangers are, whether it’s uncontrollable agents, whether it’s nonstate actors in cyber, nonstate actors in bio weapons,” he said.

Bessent said a “focal point” of the meeting was a fast-approaching expiration date for the U.S. and China’s temporary trade truce. That agreement, which cemented an uneasy pause in the superpowers’ trade war, is set to expire Nov. 10.

The talks took place as Bessent leads the U.S.′ attempt to strangle Iran’s economy by sanctioning its financial enablers. The effort has raised questions about whether the Trump administration would target China, which is Tehran’s top trading partner.

Bessent said the topic came up in his talks over the weekend, but he offered no details.

Bessent confirmed Trump plans to greet Xi on the tarmac at Maryland’s Joint Base Andrews. “I think we’re going to have a great visit,” he said.

Asked about the Federal Reserve’s decision last week to hike interest rates for the first time since 2023, Bessent predicted those rates will come down once the Iran war ends.

“Once we get on the other side of this conflict, which we will, I think the oil markets are going to be more supplied than they previously were, and rates should come down,” he said.

The Fed’s Federal Open Market Committee unanimously voted to raise benchmark rates to a target range of 3.75% to 4% in order to reduce “elevated inflation.”

Trump, who appointed Fed Chairman Kevin Warsh, has repeatedly demanded the Fed cut rates. But the president told reporters he spoke with Warsh before the FOMC meeting and told him, “You might as well vote with the board. It’s not going to matter.”

Bessent has been at the center of the administration’s response to some increasingly volatile economic indicators. Last week, he touted a Sept. 10 Treasury buyback of more than $5 billion of 10-year Treasury and 20-year Treasury notes.

Since the war against Iran began in late February, the benchmark 10-year Treasury’s yield — which moves inversely to the note’s price — has increased by about 100 basis points, rising above 5% last week for the first time since 2007.

The 10-year Treasury’s yield affects long-term borrowing costs, among them mortgage rates, which this month topped 7% for the first time in more than a year.

In testimony to the House Financial Services Committee on Sept. 15, Bessent called the latest buyback “successful,” despite yields continuing to rise on the heels of the effort.

“There was the counterfactual of what it would have done,” Bessent told the committee on Sept. 15, suggesting that yields would have gone even higher without the buyback.

“Since President Trump has come in, [the U.S. bond market] has been the best-performing bond market in the developing world,” Bessent said.

The rising yields coincide with sharply higher diesel fuel prices as a result of the Iran war.

Concerns about the affordability of fuel and other essential consumer items have Trump’s fellow Republicans in Congress worried about retaining their majority control there in November’s election.

Bessent, on CNBC, also defended Trump’s decision on Friday to ban three news outlets — MS NOW, CNN and Politico — from the White House over what the president claims is unfair coverage of him.

Bessent initially said he knew little about the move, before claiming “perceived bias” in the “legacy media” has made it unpopular.

“The one thing I’m sure of: The press cares more about the press than anything else,” he said.

The three news outlets sued Trump on Monday on First Amendment grounds.

Disclosure: CNBC and MS NOW are divisions of Versant Media.

Technologies

A new Fed tightening cycle may have just begun. If that’s the case, buckle up

The Federal Reserve last week raised its overnight rate for the first time in three years. That could mean bad news for stocks near term.

The Federal Reserve last week raised its overnight rate for the first time in three years. That could mean bad news for stocks near term. Bespoke Investment Group crunched the numbers and found that, since 1994, the S & P 500 has fallen 3.2% on a median basis in the month after the Fed kicks off a tightening cycle. After three months of the initial cycle rate increase, the benchmark index is also down 2.3%. The index is also positive just 17% of the time during those time frames. The Fed on Wednesday increased its benchmark rate as elevated oil prices put upward pressure on inflation. Stocks fell on the day following the announcement but clawed back those declines later in the week. Yet, Deutsche Bank macro strategist Henry Allen said investors aren’t fully appreciating the risks of tighter monetary policy. “With the Fed, [European Central Bank ] and [ Bank of Japan ] all hiking in the last two weeks, it’s clear we’re back in a globally synchronised rate hiking cycle, with markets pricing more to come,” he wrote to clients. “But, even though hikes are underway, there are credible reasons why investors risk underestimating the scale of the tightening ahead.” Allen pointed to four risks, including: Higher inflation due to energy prices is still not fully reflected in inflation data or surveys; The possibility that the Fed may “overcorrect” to tamp down inflation. “In 2022 the consensus view was they didn’t react quickly enough to high inflation. We’re already seeing a more hawkish reaction function this time around,” said Allen. To be sure, Bespoke data shows the S & P 500 eventually recovers. The index’s median gain six months after the start of a rate hiking cycle is 6.4%. One year out, it’s 6%. Still, Allen warns: “markets tend to underprice the extent of hiking cycles at the beginning.”

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