What to know about police and your security camera footage

Here's what you need to know about storing and sharing your clips

Updated August 1, 2023

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Security cameras help give us peace of mind, allowing us to know more about what goes on around our home, ensuring that if something does happen, we have useful evidence and footage at the ready. These can also be extremely convenient—especially when integrating with other smart home devices.

But sometimes, it’s not just us looking at the security camera footage. The companies that make the cameras often have access to recorded footage, and, in some cases, that means that police have access to it, too.

If that sounds a little unsettling, that’s because it is—especially because you may not know if police have access to your security footage.

Here’s what you need to know about the situations in which police can get access to your security footage and what you can do to stop it if you want to.

When it comes to security cameras, like video doorbells, make sure to read the fine print on how your videos may or may not be shared.

Whether or not companies need permission to share recordings depends on your setup and the access that the companies themselves have. In short, however, it’s unlikely that a company needs your permission to share data, if that data is stored on the company’s servers.

In other words, if you make use of cloud storage for videos, which is offered by most major security brands like Ring, Eufy, and Arlo, and that data is not end-to-end encrypted, then they do not need your permission to share your data. That doesn’t mean they’ll share it freely, but it does mean that they could if they wanted.

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There are times when someone other than you, such as a security company or law enforcement, may access your private footage.

Police don’t necessarily simply have direct access to your data—they have to go through either you or the company that makes your security camera first.

In the case of Ring, which operates the Neighbors community service, police can directly ask users if they can access footage, through the Request for Assistance feature. Usually, this will involve users within a certain distance of an incident receiving that request.

Users can then supply all security camera footage from a certain period, share only certain footage from that period, or ignore the request. If you do end up sharing footage, you’ll also be sharing your email address and physical address with law enforcement, and that data will be available for law enforcement for up to 30 days—though they can download it and store it for longer.

Importantly, Ring says that law enforcement never has access to live feeds of footage.

Police don’t have to ask for individuals to help though. Instead, they can request data directly from Ring, and Amazon (which owns Ring) has confirmed that it shares camera and doorbell footage with police in emergencies.

That, however, is just Ring. Most security camera companies don’t run services like Neighbors, and their rules are likely much more relaxed.

Most of the time, law enforcement can request access to your footage from companies. Some companies may only supply that data if there’s a warrant, but others are a little more relaxed with their customers’ data.

Not necessarily—and in fact, it’s unlikely that they will. Companies want to ensure that you feel safe with the services so that you keep using the products.

In most circumstances, law enforcement will make a formal request to access your security video footage.

There are a few things you can do to prevent companies from making decisions for you about whether or not to share the footage with the police—and most of those options involve ensuring that companies don’t have access to the footage in the first place.

In these situations, police have to come to you directly to access footage if they want it.

For starters, you can choose cameras and doorbells that store footage locally instead of in the cloud.

Security brands Eufy and Wyze offer options with local video storage, meaning that footage isn't stored in a company-owned server. Some options from D-Link and TP–Link also have local storage.

Thankfully, you can use cloud storage and still retain complete control—if you use a cloud storage service offering end-to-end encryption. A good example of this is Apple’s HomeKit Secure Video, which stores footage in your iCloud account.

Only the user can access this footage since it is end-to-end encrypted, and Apple can't access the data even if it wants to. The list of devices that support HomeKit Secure Video is small, but it is growing.

Ring also offers some end-to-end encryption options. Users have to opt in to end-to-end encryption with Ring, but if they do, Ring won’t be able to access or share it with law enforcement.

End-to-end encryption is available as an option on all of the products Ring currently sells—but may not be an option on its older devices.

Unfortunately, however, Ring users that opt in to end-to-end encryption can't preview videos on the Ring Event Timeline or view footage on shared devices, like an Amazon Echo Show.