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A similar video was shot in September 2019 in Arcadia, California. A woman dressed in pajamas rushes to the frame of another doorbell camera. He looks over his shoulder as he knocks on the door, but the perpetrator catches up immediately. “No!” she shouts and tries to resist, the man grabs her by the hair and pulls her out into the front yard. His vision is blocked, but he seems to be hitting and stepping on it multiple times. Finally, he says, “Get up or I’ll kill you.”
These videos showcase traumatic moments, and experts say people caught on camera have no control over what happens to the footage. Either way, the camera belongs to a stranger, and so is the video. The host is the person who agrees to Amazon’s terms of service and decides whether the video is uploaded to the Neighbors app and handed over to the police or the media.
Angel Díaz, senior adviser to the Freedom and National Security Program at the Brennan Center for Justice, says the person in the footage “has no affiliation with the company and has never agreed to have their surrogates cut into a product.” Critics like Díaz claim that such videos have become free marketing material for Ring, which essentially trades on horror and voyeurism.
The company thinks videos like these, while sad, can help protect the public. “Ring established Neighborhoods to empower people to share important safety information with each other and connect with the public safety agencies that serve them,” Ring spokesperson Daniels said in an emailed statement.
Ring says it takes steps to protect the privacy of people who appear in such videos. “When it comes to sharing customer videos with the media or our owned channels, our current policy is to blur or broadcast the face of every identifiable person in the video before sharing.”
When acts of violence like this are caught and shared on camera, on the surface it may seem like the video surveillance system and the neighborly neighbors system are working as they should. Video evidence can certainly help police and prosecutors. But advocates for victims of domestic violence say that when these intimate moments are made public, those involved are re-victimized, losing their power to make their own decisions. Lawyers say the women in such videos can seek and need help – but that’s not necessarily from the police.
For example, in Manor, Texas, police charged the man in the video with third-degree abduction. But the woman in the video later told local reporters that she was seeking a lawyer to get the charges dropped.
“They sell fear in exchange for people giving up their privacy.”
Angel Díaz, Brennan Center for Justice
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