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< | Labor and Privacy Implications of Public Surveillance | >
> | “Smile! You’re on Camera”: Privacy Implications of Private, Public Surveillance | | | | |
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< | -- By TheodoraOh - 05 Mar 2024 | >
> | -- By TheodoraOh - 09 May 2024 | | | | |
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< | Introduction: Employees surveilled from all angles. | >
> | The plight of delivery drivers draws attention to privacy concerns with doorbell cameras. | | | | |
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< | Private or internal surveillance of employees has become a concern as the workplace becomes increasingly digitized and depersonalized. Amazon employees, for example, are electronically surveilled in myriad ways, recording factors like productivity which may impact personnel decisions. Business Insider. Internal surveillance may even monitor relations between employees and union organizers, implicating labor concerns. Washington Post. Third-party, public, or other external forms of worker surveillance should receive equal scrutiny. While there is little oversight of on-site surveillance, it is even more difficult to measure and regulate employees’ exposure to recording by third-parties. We will explore two categories of workers who are increasingly subject to third-party surveillance, but evoke different policy and political concerns: delivery drivers and police officers. Internal surveillance of delivery drivers has already been, and continues to be, scrutinized and litigated. See NLRB memo; Chartwell summary of NLRB decision regarding inward-facing cameras in delivery trucks. But often, delivery drivers may also be recorded by home security doorbell cameras that homeowners can install and set to record anyone who approaches their door (or even their driveway) without consent or the ability to opt-out, like Amazon's popular Ring cameras. Ring. As a counter-example, however, bystander recordings of police activity may constitute a situation where it might be in the public interest to subject certain employees to third-party surveillance and recording. | >
> | Internal surveillance of delivery drivers has already been, and continues to be, scrutinized and litigated. See e.g. Chartwell summary of NLRB decision regarding inward-facing cameras in delivery trucks. But often, delivery drivers may also be recorded by home security doorbell cameras that homeowners can install and set to record anyone who approaches their door (or even their driveway) without consent or the ability to opt-out. See Ring capabilities. An industry leader, Amazon’s Ring cameras have a uniquely public presence due to partnerships with police departments, controversy over privacy, and rising concerns about data sharing. See Ring popularity; agreements with police department; consumer privacy; warrantless video requests. Public surveillance isn’t new—these days, it’s almost impossible to go from home to work without being captured by multiple cameras: parking lots, highways, schools, subways, and storefronts all have outward-facing cameras that capture indiscriminately. What is new is an increase in privately owned, operated, and monitored surveillance cameras. See Ring sales. A privacy-minded individual might be able to avoid some of these cameras—but delivery drivers don’t have a choice. | | | | |
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< | Example: Doorbell camera recordings of delivery drivers infringe on their privacy rights. | >
> | Unfortunately, delivery drivers might not have much recourse when it comes to being recorded by private parties (especially when they are having such little success even when it comes to being recorded by their employer). See Reuters. But the exceptionally visible, familiar situation of delivery drivers invites bigger questions about privacy policy. Viral recordings of delivery dancers being asked to dance in front of the camera have sparked debate about when it's okay to film an employee just trying to do their job—or, relatedly, someone innocently walking past a front door when a generation ago, no one would’ve ever known they were there. See Teen Vogue; NYT; Vice. | | | | |
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< | As millions of doorbell cameras like Amazon’s Ring are being sold and installed every year, concerns over the outward-facing nature of these devices has risen. Business Wire. Technology review website Wired.com has slowly evolved over the years since Ring’s release from generally positive reviews of the doorbell camera to a more critical and privacy-focused viewpoint. See Wired’s 2015 review, notably praising the camera’s ability to record UPS and FedEx? deliveries; Wired’s 2019 piece that appears conflicted about the “Ringification of suburban life;” Wired’s 2023 article against Ring cameras on the basis that “homeowners shouldn’t be allowed to act as vigilantes;” and Wired’s 2024 reporting on warrantless video requests for Ring data. As delivery drivers and the general public become more aware of the constant, inescapable surveillance of the Ring camera (and, by extension, Amazon—or even the police), some homeowners remain staunchly pro-Ring. See Amazon's letter to Senator Ed Markey regarding police access to Ring data; but see recent changes to Ring’s policy in the New York Times. The FTC has noted concerns about Ring’s failure to protect private information, with a focus on exposed videos within consumers’ homes—this implicates larger concerns about the unwarranted, undisclosed public surveillance from those same cameras. FTC. | | | | |
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What difference does it make which services in the net any particular property owner chooses to connect video cameras on its property? Does the Ring camera make some difference as against all the video cameras in the law school feeding tot he Columbia police? Why is the privacy of a UPS driver less or more interfered with by one over the other?
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> | Ring cameras contribute to a “civilian surveillance network.” | | | | |
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< | Counter-example: Police may use privacy concerns as a pretext for limiting bystander recordings to prevent public oversight of police misconduct. | >
> | For years, police were able to request doorbell camera footage from users without a warrant, implicating private citizens in a “citizen surveillance network”—while evolving social attitudes have led Ring to announce it will end this type of partnership, that doesn’t change the fundamental nature of these cameras or the company’s relationship with the police. See The Guardian; Wired; Vox. Footage is still recorded, shared online, and with police if they have a warrant (and still sometimes even without one). See NPR; Vox. Sometimes, the police don’t even need to be involved. Putting a camera on every front door turns each house into a cop at its arguable best, and a vigilante at its worst. The Ring Neighbors app (similar to other popular apps like NextDoor? and Citizen) lets Ring owners in the same neighborhood upload video straight from their doorbell cameras to a social-network-type feed, where others can comment and “like” posts. See Neighbors. Ring advertises this as “neighborhood security”—perhaps a rebranding after its previous tagline of “the new neighborhood watch” which has troubling connotations. See Neighbors on Amazon (still showing the “neighborhood watch” tagline which has been removed from the main Ring website); Vice: Liberation News; Trayvon Martin’s murder by George Zimmerman, a member of the neighborhood watch. | | | | |
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< | Ignited by the Black Lives Matter movement, popularity and support of bystander recordings have been touted as a mechanism to keep police in check. Police have been consistently opposed to these changes. The New Yorker. But civilians do have a legal right to film police officers and police encounters as long as they aren’t actually interfering with “legitimate law enforcement operations.” ACLU. Without legitimate reasons to prevent bystanders from recording, police officers may use privacy-related arguments to claim some other reason they can’t be recorded: "Cops have long tried claiming that the act of filming them in itself obstructs their ability to do their job…and now that this argument failed, they are rather transparently trying to create a safe space from observation by the people they are sworn to serve." Ari Cohn, Reason. A proposed bill in Florida (which ultimately died in subcommittee) attempted to criminalize recording police by creating a 30-foot “bubble” around police officers so civilians can’t approach or film police. Florida Senate. After unlawfully arresting a woman who legally recorded the incident, one police officer in Florida advanced the argument that the videotape violated the Wiretap Act, “intercepting oral communications.” Ford v. City of Boynton Beach, 323 So. 32 215. Recognizing the absurdity of this argument, the appeals court found that, as a matter of law, “the officers could not have had a [reasonable expectation of privacy].” See Daily Business Review. | >
> | Even when the police aren’t watching, and your neighbors aren’t watching, the mere existence of Ring cameras leaves open the possibility that any one of them could be watching, which is troubling, to say the least. See The Spy Next Door. To say more: Ring cameras turn ordinary neighborhoods into a modern-day panopticon, sacrificing privacy and dignity for so-called safety. In reality, the system reinforces racial and socioeconomic homogeneity in neighborhoods, perpetuates a culture of fear for capitalism’s sake, encourages “boss behavior,” and invites the police into the private sphere—leading to the question: safety for who? See The Cop in Your Neighbor’s Doorbell; At the Digital Doorstep; Infrastructural Obfuscation. | | | | |
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Calling following the rules a "pretext" doesn't make much sense. It is sometimes in institutional best interests to follow the rules for less than appealing reasons. Every bureaucracy exists in part, as Max Weber observed in the invention of the analysis, on secrecy. Privacy implies secrecy, and therefore operates to benefit bureaucracy. Seeing that does not somehow establish the intended conclusion, however.
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< | Comparison: Balancing policy interests between public recordings and privacy rights. | >
> | Attitudes towards video doorbells are changing, but not fast enough. | | | | |
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< | While police arguments against bystander recording are still largely focused on the idea of civilian “interference,” the idea that police might turn to pretextual privacy arguments highlights an interesting tension in the debate over privacy rights. Pro-privacy activists may find themselves in the interesting position of opposing third-party recording of delivery drivers, while supporting the same activity when applied to the police. This is not an uncommon contradiction; many pro-labor activists find themselves supporting all unions—except police unions. See Harvard Political Review; The Guardian; The Los Angeles Times. Of course, an obvious distinction explaining this dichotomy is that police officers are both public servants and, further, carry guns. Then again, as D.C.’s police union chairman says, in big cities these days “there’s almost nowhere you can go where you’re not being recorded.” The Atlantic. While that might be true and support his policy of telling officers “that’s the way you should behave all the time—as if you’re being recorded,” I’m not convinced that that’s a fair argument or that we should so blindly accept the rapid disintegration of our privacy rights. | >
> | Technology review website Wired.com has slowly evolved over the years since Ring’s release from generally positive reviews of the doorbell camera to a more critical and privacy-focused viewpoint. See Wired’s 2015 review, notably praising the camera’s ability to record UPS and FedEx? deliveries; Wired’s 2019 piece that appears conflicted about the “Ringification of suburban life;” Wired’s 2023 article against Ring cameras on the basis that “homeowners shouldn’t be allowed to act as vigilantes;” and Wired’s 2024 reporting on warrantless video requests for Ring data. As delivery drivers and the general public become more aware of the constant, inescapable surveillance of the Ring camera (and, by extension, Amazon—or even the police), some homeowners remain staunchly pro-Ring. See letter from Amazon to Senator Ed Markey regarding police access to Ring data; but see recent changes to Ring’s policy in the New York Times. Ironically for them, homeowners too are seeing their privacy rights eroded by Ring; Amazon’s policy of disclosing Ring footage to the police may violate Ring users’ own Fourth Amendment rights. See Washington Law Review. | | | | |
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Not actually a conclusion, I think. | >
> | Public sentiment around Ring cameras specifically, and privacy more generally, is changing, but it needs to change faster before we all live under Jeff Bezos’s watchful eye. I realize that sounds dramatic, but some would argue we’re already there. And as a personal note, there was nothing I could do to stop my dad from buying a Ring camera, so every visit home puts me on camera in front of his, and all four of his neighbors’ Rings. | | | | |
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< | So it looks like the most important route to improvement is a substantive rethinking. Your material is strong, and a less argumentative explanation of what you've learned seems like a promising approach to the next draft.
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> | Bonus pic: (to be clear, this is not my dad's house)
“SMILE! YOU’RE ON CAMERA” sign next to Ring doorbell camera in customer review for the $65 sign purchased on Etsy which also features the Punisher logo. The logo, associated with the idea of vigilante justice, also has a controversial association with the Thin Blue Line movement and police officers. |
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