Ring Says New Encryption Limits What It Can Give Police (theverge.com) 63
Ring is rolling out a new default encryption system called TAKE, or "Throw Away the Key Encryption," that rotates video keys every five minutes and permanently deletes Ring's copy after 24 hours. The system is designed to preserve cloud features such as smart alerts and AI video search while limiting what Ring can provide under legal process to non-video account information and encrypted footage. The Verge reports: Ring says TAKE uses unique, rotating encryption keys for your footage, stored in a secure enclave and accessible only under strict conditions -- based on the features you enable on your account. Currently, footage captured by Ring cameras is encrypted in transit to the cloud and at rest, and then decrypted for Ring to process for those smart features. With TAKE, the encryption keys change for every five minutes of footage. Ring stores copies of those keys to decrypt the footage, but throws away each copy within 24 hours, "leaving you with the keys and full control of your videos," according to Ring.
TAKE was developed using Messaging Layer Security, an open standard from the Internet Engineering Task Force, according to Ring. The company says it is "inspired by the privacy principles of E2EE (end-to-end encryption)," which Ring offers on some of its cameras. However, the two systems work differently. With E2EE, Ring never has the keys and can't process your video for cloud-based features. Both options are available on newer cameras that encrypt on-device, and you can switch between the two. Older cameras encrypt at cloud ingress and only support TAKE.
According to a white paper the company published today, Ring's copy of those keys is managed inside an AWS Nitro Enclave, to which Ring's access is restricted by "access controls, cryptography, and hardware isolation." The company claims there is no persistent storage and no way for a Ring employee to access it. The stored keys can only be unlocked by the enclave through cryptographic attestation that proves it's running the exact software image Ring approved. The enclave releases a temporary key when an enabled service requests it. When asked about what happens if Ring is subpoenaed by law enforcement, a spokesperson for the company said: "Where TAKE is enabled, Ring will only be able to provide non-video information (such as basic subscriber information) and encrypted video files in response to the valid legal process. We have updated our Law Enforcement Guidelines to reflect this change."
TAKE was developed using Messaging Layer Security, an open standard from the Internet Engineering Task Force, according to Ring. The company says it is "inspired by the privacy principles of E2EE (end-to-end encryption)," which Ring offers on some of its cameras. However, the two systems work differently. With E2EE, Ring never has the keys and can't process your video for cloud-based features. Both options are available on newer cameras that encrypt on-device, and you can switch between the two. Older cameras encrypt at cloud ingress and only support TAKE.
According to a white paper the company published today, Ring's copy of those keys is managed inside an AWS Nitro Enclave, to which Ring's access is restricted by "access controls, cryptography, and hardware isolation." The company claims there is no persistent storage and no way for a Ring employee to access it. The stored keys can only be unlocked by the enclave through cryptographic attestation that proves it's running the exact software image Ring approved. The enclave releases a temporary key when an enabled service requests it. When asked about what happens if Ring is subpoenaed by law enforcement, a spokesperson for the company said: "Where TAKE is enabled, Ring will only be able to provide non-video information (such as basic subscriber information) and encrypted video files in response to the valid legal process. We have updated our Law Enforcement Guidelines to reflect this change."
But... (Score:3)
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And we all know that's a lie.
Ring is getting more blowback due to the Flock issue.
Translation: They want more money for the data (Score:3)
Re:Translation: They want more money for the data (Score:5, Interesting)
I worked at Amazon for 9 years, and security of customers' data is the top priority. I could literally access Jeff Bezo's personnel file with lower permissions than I could access your purchase history or your Ring or Alexa data. We had to complete a refresher course on data protection every year.
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Your experience is literally irrelevant because it doesn't prove a negative and it doesn't speak to anyone else's experience.
"Permanently Deletes After 24 Hr" (Score:2)
Still plenty of time to utilize in a manhunt for diss^H^H^H^H escaped convicts.
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How often does that happen? Meanwhile stranger-initiated outdoor or home-invasion rapes and street murders are happening at tens of thousands annually most of them going unsolved and barely mentioned in the police blotter let alone news (which 99% of people dont watch anyway).
Reference: https://bjs.ojp.gov/library/pu... [ojp.gov]
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How often does that happen?
How often do political dissidents disappear? Something tells me they don't make records for that public, unlike all the crimes they like to blame "illegals" for (ignoring the majority of arrests for these crimes are of Caucasians [fbi.gov]).
FBI crime stats don't say what you want them to. (Score:2, Informative)
Re: FBI crime stats don't say what you want them t (Score:2)
I'm arguing against a narrative that uses bigotry and fear for political gain, and you're turning that into me being the racist one? Fascinating.
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I'm arguing against a narrative that uses bigotry and fear for political gain
Bullshit. You made a racially charged statement: "the majority of arrests for these crimes are of Caucasians" then you're horrified when some calls you a racist and a statistics-liar ? Bro, YOU ARE A RACIST and it's as simple as that and as clear as day. Are you one of those "it's impossible to be a racist against white people" racists?
and you're turning that into me being the racist one?
I didn't turn it into anything. You made a racist statement. You clearly just thought it was fine because it was anti-white.
Re: FBI crime stats don't say what you want them t (Score:2)
What happens when you normalize not for skin color, but, say, for income, parents income, access to education etc?
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Re: FBI crime stats don't say what you want them (Score:2)
They're not "squishy science", they're the factors that actually have thr most influence on whether someone turns criminal or not at that economic level.
They the actual science.
Going for the blank numbers instead without understanding model or context is the true squishy science.
Or do you actually suggest that the amount on melanin in someone's skin is somehow a mechanism that drives crime?
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they're the factors that actually have thr most influence on whether someone turns criminal or not
You think I'm arguing. I'm not. I agree with you. However, all social science is pretty squishy in scientific terms. It's difficult to prove in scientific terms. However, in general, you're correct. It's as close to actual science as we are going to get in this area.
Going for the blank numbers instead without understanding model or context is the true squishy science.
There is some merit to considering other factors. However, there is also some merit in understanding that, yes, in actual point of fact, the non-asian minorities commit more crime. Sure, there are economic factors. Any fool should understand tha
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Did you miss the last year and a half of the news where dear leader has had his ICE brownshirts rampaging round the country? Did you miss all the news where the scum have NOT been limiting their presence and interactions solely to darkening the days of immigrants; but have also targeted, approached, tried to question, attacked, detained, "deported," and even murdered CITIZENS for refusing to bend the knee and love big brother? Did you miss the news where they didn't even wait a whole week, but were going
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Sounds like more reasons we should have more surveillance not less. Or do you reckon the brownshirts won't surveillance to their own ends?
Re: "Permanently Deletes After 24 Hr" (Score:2)
Well, if only women could be more trustworthy, we might get rape convictions, and then more crimes would be reported and investigated. But unfortunately, as we all know, women don't know when they've been raped. That's a man's job to decide.
Almost like you own it (Score:5, Insightful)
Wow, a couple more changes like this and RING uses will have almost as much rights as people that do not connect their hardware to other company's businesses.
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Of course, if you don't pay the monthly subscription, a lot of the functionality of your RING no longer works. So you're right, *almost* like you own it!
We throw away the keys, honest! (Score:5, Insightful)
Sure you do. Just like the USPS deletes their scans for routing instead of sending them to the feds
Re: We throw away the keys, honest! (Score:2)
Seems reasonable (Score:5, Insightful)
Companies should, in general, avoid keeping any user data one second longer than they legitimately need it. Data should be viewed as a liability more than an asset, and every company that achieves significant scale with user data soon realizes this, though some take longer than others to learn the lesson.
The reason it's a liability is because it exposes the company to an endless stream of warrants and subpoenas, and contrary to popular belief, the government does not pay for that data. In some cases the government might pay a portion of the expenses the company incurs in responding, but it's always still a net loss, and most of the time the government just shows up with a court order and says "Hand it over or be held in contempt of court". What makes it even worse is if companies actually want to be good stewards of the data and not hand over more than they should, they'll often get overly-broad requests and then have to go to court to fight to narrow or quash the requests.
This all gets very expensive. It's just a cost of doing business... but it's a cost that can be avoided if you don't have and can't get the data.
Encrypt everything, and arrange to destroy the keys when you no longer need the data is the best way to do it, too. Scrubbing large databases quickly and effectively is hard. Deleting a set of AES keys is a lot easier. This also means that you can focus your internal access controls on controlling which systems and employees can get the keys.
I'd encourage Ring to find ways to close the window of access even more.
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It really depends. ATT makes substantial amounts [reason.com] on their LEO customers. I understand Verizon has a similar program, and after Worldcom, all smaller the telecom companies fell in line.
Give Google and Zuckerbook and the others a decade of mature market profits and it'll get around to optimizing lines of business like that, too. They just make more money on other stuff now so they don't bother.
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The difference here is that Amazon never sells customer data. Ever.
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The difference here is that Amazon never sells customer data. Ever.
lol [x.com]
"In some instances, we may share your personal information with third parties." further lol [amazon.com] I'm sure they are sharing that data just out of a sense of fairness!
You're a trivially deluded tool.
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Ship From Vendor - they'll give the vendor your delivery name and address, kind of necessary
Payment Processing - they'll give the payment processor your name and credit card number, again kind of necessary
Alexa and Ring Emergency Response - They'll give the police your name, address and emergency type, rather necessary as well
Etc.
They don't sell your data. Ever.
Re: Seems reasonable (Score:2)
You don't know enough to speak to that, which I covered elsewhere in this conversation. Your opinion about it is uninteresting.
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Worked there for nine years, sometimes with people who had two- or three-digit employee IDs. In all their time at the company it had never sold customer data. YMMV
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The difference here is that Amazon never sells customer data. Ever.
Neither does Google, and for the same reason: It would be selling the goose that lays the golden egg.
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and contrary to popular belief, the government does not pay for that data
It really depends. ATT makes substantial amounts [reason.com] on their LEO customers. I understand Verizon has a similar program, and after Worldcom, all smaller the telecom companies fell in line.
That program was shut down in 2024, so it's no longer running. It's an interesting point, though. The reason LE was buying that data was because they couldn't easily get subpoenas or warrants for it, which makes it far worse.
Give Google and Zuckerbook and the others a decade of mature market profits and it'll get around to optimizing lines of business like that, too. They just make more money on other stuff now so they don't bother.
The amount of money AT&T was making was trivial, a few tens of millions per year at the high end. For a company that has annual revenues exceeding $100B it's hard to see why they even bothered. My theory is that they were more interested in the goodwill it earned them with the D
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I'm under the impression that most Ring users actually want their data to be used by the police to help stop crime (or whatever). Certainly some do. I can't find a poll on the topic though.
Then if Ring is smart they should make it easy for users to provide the data to the police, and ensure that Ring can't, making themselves useless as a subpoena target and encouraging police to go ask the homeowners directly.
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I'd encourage Ring to find ways to close the window of access even more.
Google stores more data about users' activities than Ring could ever dream of. It's literally the basis of its primary business. Throw some more stones, though.
The benefits of the surveillance state (Score:3, Funny)
Surveillance protects us all. It is a keystone in keeping our nation safe and free. Think about how you never have a package stolen off your porch anymore. And how our bicycles are totally safe in San Francisco, no need to double lock and remove the seat anymore. And let us not forget that mass surveillance prevents terrible crimes like summary executions out at sea [pbs.org]. And even prevented a pedophile and adjudicated rapist from being elected President. GOD BLESS THE USA!
Re:The benefits of the surveillance state (Score:4, Insightful)
If your packages were walking off, or people repeatedly were crashing into your parked cars in your driveway (that has happened to me no less than 4 times), you'd probably want to put up a camera, too. Hell, at this point I'd be half okay with installing a God damned Flock camera pointed at my driveway.
I'd love to live in a society where we didn't need to put up cameras everywhere to hold people accountable for their bad behaviors, but all those examples you gave actually serve to further reinforce that we're clearly not living in such a society.
Re: The benefits of the surveillance state (Score:2)
Putting in a camera is one thing, connecting it to the Internet is another, having it be cloud-connected is still another thing
Re:The benefits of the surveillance state (Score:5, Funny)
If your packages were walking off, or people repeatedly were crashing into your parked cars in your driveway (that has happened to me no less than 4 times), you'd probably want to put up a camera, too.
No less than fou...OK, if you don't have a PPV livestream set up by the end of this sentence, you're doing it wrong. Pass the popcorn and the 12-guage packing box triggers.
Hell, at this point I'd be half okay with installing a God damned Flock camera pointed at my driveway.
OK, let's not get all crazy now. Orwell is already up to 18,000RPM in the grave. Bastards saw his heat signature from space and decided to put it to use. He now powers a series of 144 Flock cameras. Fucking gross. I know.
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Have you ever actually got charges filed from your footage of those people walking off with your packages or crashing into your parked cars? Or was it just to fulfill your sick curiosity?
Sometimes there's an advantage to "whatever will be" and not obsessing over it.
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There's an Oxford comma in there, so it's the car crashing thing that's happened four times, not package theft. Yes, thanks to the camera the responsible parties were held accountable.
1. I had a 3rd party Amazon driver hit my car while turning around. They drove off, but it was caught on camera. Amazon covered the damages.
2. The neighbor's teenage kid backed into my vehicle. Again, another driver who thought they could just play it off like nothing happened, but the camera caught them. There wasn't act
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Maybe you should park your car in the garage. But I am led to believe this is against American culture?
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Perhaps you should realize not all American homes have garages to park within.
Newer ones typically do. Older ones may or may not.
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Then where does the driveway lead? Enquiring minds want to know.
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Then where does the driveway lead? Enquiring minds want to know.
It leads to the house. Which does not have a garage.
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Local cameras are extremely useful considering how dishonorable and shitty many in society are.
We live in a time period where you need to have video evidence on hand to deal with the everyday stupidity of the human race.
Dash cameras to prove the carload of idiots in front of you are trying their damdest for insurance fraud or the fool who blew the red light five seconds late.
Home cameras to protect property and goods upon your property.
Just keep them local. Don't let them get on the internet for any reason
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When I lived in San Jose a big Mexican dude would look out for my house when I was at work and once beat up a porch pirate. Later I found out it was his cousin he beat up.
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I got a bunch of Hikvision cameras with SD cards connected to the net to enable remote access and have stored videos for a couple of days if I need to download something. This is for some cameras facing public places.
And if you dont trust hikvision, you can always firewall it so that it can only do limited things on the internet.
Or restrict whatever(hikvision or otherwise) cameras you get to record to a local NAS without internet access. Thats what I do for cameras in more sensitive locations.
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Surveillance protects us all.
This would all be great if the police were benevolent.
Which county has benevolent police?
It does, does it? (Score:4, Insightful)
Seems their new encryption only limits what they can give law enforcement, until they are motivated to do otherwise.
It's not like they can't push an update to the device to have it dump it's encryption key back to the mothership.
If you don't want other people looking at it, get it off the cloud. Period.
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It's not like they can't push an update to the device to have it dump it's encryption key back to the mothership.
Yeah, or go back to the company-wide IT Disaster Recovery policy that likely enables data recovery for years to cover a myriad of compliance excuses coming from a legal department operating under America, Inc. laws within CONUS.
(EFF Auditor) "OK, so yooou're saying it was your [air quotes] 'random' 'number' 'generator', that somehow scheduled a DR snapshot of the key database every 23 hours and 55 minutes, and copied it into 3,650 VMs for..'data' 'integrity' 'purposes'..."
Interesting.... (Score:1)
Ring is rolling out a new default encryption system
Interesting: Amazon-owned Ring is able to have new 'default' enabled (read: auto opt-in - the hard path) in an existing product/feature.
Extra interesting: Also Amazon-owned Twitch somehow cannot figure out automatic opt-out [slashdot.org] (read: leaving it 'off' by doing nothing - the easy path -, and only enabling it when users turn it on - the harder path) on existing product service.
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Ring is rolling out a new default encryption system
Interesting: Amazon-owned Ring is able to have new 'default' enabled (read: auto opt-in - the hard path) in an existing product/feature.
Extra interesting: Also Amazon-owned Twitch somehow cannot figure out automatic opt-out [slashdot.org] (read: leaving it 'off' by doing nothing - the easy path -, and only enabling it when users turn it on - the harder path) on existing product service.
Settings are often derived from two trains of corporate thought; Fuck Yeah Profit or Legal Made Me Do It.
'Easy' only comes into play if the lawyers remembered to budget for biodegradable water-based lube and not that double-whammy silicone-based shit the EPA loves to nail people for.
Approved software image (Score:2)
The stored keys can only be unlocked by the enclave through cryptographic attestation that proves it's running the exact software image Ring approved
Hence they cannot update the software?
This is called (Score:2)
Trust Me Bro (TM) privacy.
Until they get a national security letter (Score:2)
and a gag order.
Ring is no better than Flock. Expect Ring to soon support ALPR and facial recognition, it's inevitable.
Flock cameras (Score:2)
Ah, yes.... (Score:2)
Yes, sure! (Score:2)
We all fully trust you!
Let me guess... (Score:2)
They encoded it with base64?
Sure they throw away the keys... (Score:2)
... Into a trash can that's owned by law enforcement.
Ring noticing the heat on Flock (Score:3)
I am fairly certain that Ring have noticed the sheer amount of heat (and hate) that Flock are getting in the USA at the moment, and are attempting to be seen as being proactive.