This is a victory in a long fight, not just against blanket police surveillance, but also against a culture in which private, for-profit companies build special tools to allow law enforcement to more easily access companies’ users and their data—all of which ultimately undermine their customers’ trust.
They could look to argue those, but I’d suspect they just say ‘get a warrant’ now rather than allowing for the 3rd party records requests, which by all accounts warrants are pretty rubber stamp. From my non-lawyer recollection there’s never been a mandate to get a warrant for records in possession of a 3rd party outside of things protected by other laws like banking or HIPPA. So a provider can hand out lists of all your convos, locations, etc if they want. Some do without question, and after a long record of complying with police requests I have a hard time believing Amazon will suddenly change their tune without force. Path of least resistance and all that.
*ring will no longer publicly acknowledge facilitating police requests…
They’re saying they’re not gonna just hand it over. Ring is still gonna have to answer subpoenas.
They could look to argue those, but I’d suspect they just say ‘get a warrant’ now rather than allowing for the 3rd party records requests, which by all accounts warrants are pretty rubber stamp. From my non-lawyer recollection there’s never been a mandate to get a warrant for records in possession of a 3rd party outside of things protected by other laws like banking or HIPPA. So a provider can hand out lists of all your convos, locations, etc if they want. Some do without question, and after a long record of complying with police requests I have a hard time believing Amazon will suddenly change their tune without force. Path of least resistance and all that.