This might have been my turning point regarding anger at the policing institutions in this state. Still not sure, but this episode (across two columns) got me mad enough to offer three ill-considered (and four ill-fated) articles at town meeting and probably informed a lot of why I started MassTransparency a few years back.

Anyway, my views haven't changed much on this. If anything, I'm more angry now than I was in January 2020 when this first ran. It should be noted that Amazon ended the practice of giving this data to the police without a warrant last year, but the fact that it's still being collected remains a problem.

I am not the first person to observe that 2020 is looking a lot more like George Orwell’s 1984 than we may collectively be comfortable with.

I am also not the first person to note that the whole “surveillance state”/1984 narrative many civil liberties advocates present is somewhat overblown. But, as we set up our new smart devices and ask Alexa what the weather is going to be tomorrow, it helps to acknowledge the bridge society has collectively (and quickly) crossed in just a short time. 15 years ago, we might have been concerned about our browser histories; today, we carry phones that track our every movement, install microphones across our homes that are connected to the internet 24/7, and allow Google to control numerous aspects of our day-to-day lives (from our heating systems to smart fridges that tell us when we’re low on milk).

There is a lot of convenience to go along with the modern amenities we take for granted. But, as often attributed to Ben Franklin, the quote that “those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety,” makes me wonder what we are so quick to give up. I have a tendency to be an early adopter of technology. I got a Smart TV as soon as it was fiscally reasonable, I was relatively early on the smartphone bandwagon, and our home has Amazon Echos throughout. I have no real issue with my data being out there and I am aware of the risks I take in doing so. Others, however, are not – look at the shocked responses to the recent New York Times series about the cellphone data they were able to de-anonymize for an example – and it is to our detriment. An informed populace is necessary to make good laws and policies, and we simply lack that societal understanding of what our data holds and what it means for our own privacy.

It’s not just the government knowing how many times I order from the pizza place, it’s being able to, for example, coordinate my calling data with my location data and my purchasing data to deduce that I might be suffering from a specific ailment. It’s about the danger in being able to create a digital footprint of someone’s life in ways they can’t anticipate and didn’t consent to.

So this brings me to doorbell cameras.

Of the many new technologies out there, doorbell cameras are ones I haven’t adopted. Part of it is cost, for sure, but honestly? I find it creepy. It’s bad enough that it’s difficult to walk down any major street these days and not end up on camera footage for an indeterminate amount of time for the simple sin of existing in public, but to have it on my property and neighborhood too? It feels like a bridge too far with little overall benefit.

I started worrying more, however, with the rise of an Amazon program that grants police departments access to Amazon’s Ring doorbell cameras. 500 departments have signed onto Ring Neighbors, including nine in Massachusetts (but none in Worcester County as of mid-December). Thanks to a piece of legal kung-fu called the “third-party doctrine,” any information we hand over voluntarily to a third party (like, say, bank history or your Gmail account) does not carry a “reasonable expectation of privacy.” No expectation of privacy equals no need for a warrant. Your Ring cameras (and, for that matter, your Alexa searches and your Amazon purchase history)? They store your camera footage on Amazon’s servers. Amazon’s servers? A third party, which generally means if the police want it, they can get it.

The Millbury Police Department, unfortunately, is rolling out a program that impacts our community directly because of how the third-party doctrine works. While they are not signing onto the Ring Neighbors program, the MPD announced their intention to create a database of sorts (they would later clarify that it is literally a binder of printed sheets behind dispatch) of residents with cameras to assist in future investigative efforts. They insist that they only want the information to make legitimate investigations easier, and with current Chief Donald Desorcy and others in leadership roles at the department, I believe them. However, Chief Desorcy has indicated his retirement is looming, and we do not know what the next chief might intend to do with the collected information. Imagine, instead of responsibly using the information, a future Chief of Police opts to partner with Amazon on this Neighbors service and now knows exactly who has cameras in town.

Now, many of you reading this likely have Ring cameras. When you installed it on the front of your house and installed the software on your computer, did you understand what you were getting into? Did you grasp the idea that law enforcement could access the data simply by asking for it? Is that what you signed up for when you handed over your information to the police?

I have so many questions about this program. What are the specific MPD policies on the use of the information? How do officers view the book and how is access tracked (as the information, per MPD on Facebook, is not in a password-protected database)? What controls for the information are in place at the MPD? If the information is misused, what are the repercussions? How much footage is accessed in a given investigation? How are they choosing which cameras to review at what times? What authority are they exercising? Does signing their form to opt in constitute opting out of a warrant in the event your camera data is not held by a third party?

I reached out to Officers Keith Gasco and Andrea Warpula (who are listed on the form as the contacts at MPD for this program) twice to get answers; Gasco responded following my second inquiry that they “have spoken to the media in an exclusive capacity on this matter already” and directed me to the chief of police “as a citizen” if I had specific concerns (Susan Spencer, who wrote the Telegram & Gazette article that highlighted the Millbury plan in the context of package thefts, told me when I asked about this “exclusive” that the officers mentioned it, but the “exclusive” wasn’t from her and “they didn’t say anything material beyond that”). Putting aside the fact that public officials are now giving exclusive interviews to members of the out-of-town press for possibly controversial programs, what does it say about their confidence in the appropriateness of the program when public scrutiny - whether by a columnist or a citizen - is so quickly dismissed and ignored?

So, at the moment, the police want us to share our camera information with them, but resist questions and concerns over the program and offer only direct and unsettling dismissals when pushed on the issue. When I initially engaged with the MPD on their Facebook page, I was met with some fairly trite and often rude responses – many from the officers themselves, one of which accused me of simply “causing trouble” as if I have not been concerned about these issues for years. The idea that asking these questions is “trouble” and unworthy of response definitely gives me less confidence in the program and the MPD as an institution to handle the program properly. (And should the MPD really be conducting official discussions on Facebook and going after citizens or the press (or in my case, both) on their personal accounts?)

I also worry about how willing many residents are to share this data with the authorities without even considering the issues involved, and the MPD’s desire to carry this information without perhaps understanding the ripple effect both legally and within our community. That so few are willing to ask these questions, and so many people lining up to give the police their camera information (as one Facebooker put it, “anything to catch the bad guys”) almost disappoints me as much as the police response.

I have a public records request out to the MPD on an issue somewhat related to this.They have until January 6 to respond, and I will be following this column up with what I learn along with additional concerns. For now, though, if you are considering signing up for this program, you may want to hit pause. There are too many unknowns, and it is unfortunate that the MPD are moving forward without those considerations. The motto of many police departments in the United States is “To Protect and To Serve,” and that mentality appears to be lost here - our privacy is not adequately protected, and our need for reasonable information not being served.

This week, I’m putting a temporary bow on the Millbury Police’s effort to collect information on surveillance camera information from town residents. I’m writing a lot of this on a day where the MPD inadvertently posted an image on Facebook that appeared to have a Social Security number in plain sight that some people caught, so it seems apt…

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A resident who asked to remain anonymous relayed a story to me after my first column on this topic. The Millbury resident was involved in a domestic dispute caught on cell phone camera as well as doorbell camera at the home in question. Says my anonymous informant, the videos were shown to the MPD. The MPD, after speaking to both parties, informed the resident that the assailant would press charges as well if said resident was to press charges first. When an officer was asked about the video by the resident, “[the officer] said unless they see it happen in front of them, video means nothing. Not for arrest, not for court.”

This raises plenty of questions for me. I know that Massachusetts is a “two-party consent” state in regards to audio recordings, which means that if you intend to record someone on audio, everyone on the recording needs to be aware of this. Case law and statute are much murkier when it comes to video surveillance, and has so far hinged on the “reasonable expectation of privacy” test. This goes back to my thoughts from the last column on this topic – I do not have a “reasonable expectation of privacy” walking down Elm Street, but do I have a “reasonable expectation of privacy” if I walk up to someone’s door? Other states have situations where the purpose of surveillance must be to deter criminal activity, rather than an attempt to capture it. As people generally do not advertise whether they are filming their front steps, and people generally don’t expect to be filmed when they visit a private residence, perhaps the MPD are working under that assumption if the story I was told is correct?

Since the MPD have “spoken to the media in an exclusive capacity on this matter already,” we may never know for sure. Which, of course, is the problem, right? Either way, we lose as citizens: either the camera footage is unusable in court and thus cannot credibly be used except in rare circumstances (such as when the footage was used to identify the vehicle that hit the jogger in Sutton last year), or the camera footage is usable and we, as mere commoners, cannot expect privacy anywhere anymore.

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Here is a scenario that scares me about this entire scheme: as this technology proliferates, I lose any remaining expectation of privacy on my daily routines. If someone in the MPD wanted to use the information to stitch together my commute, they now can basically do so with a phone, a binder, and a few hours of time. If a future chief decides to sign onto some sort of collective program like the Ring Neighbors deal? It’s a call to Amazon at best, a click of the button at worst.

A more realistic scenario: my neighbor’s front door faces my front yard. My kid goes outside to play in the yard, as kids do. Maybe I’m not out there, maybe my wife goes inside to grab something. Someone notices a kid playing outside alone, gets worried, calls the police, video confirms it. No one has done anything wrong per se (although if you’re calling the police on kids playing in the yard, recalibrate your values), but now it’s a big hassle or an expensive legal problem.

“But Jeff,” I hear some of you saying, “this is all unrealistic. None of this would ever happen.” To you, I ask: how do you know for sure? Maybe I don’t trust the authorities enough, but also consider that perhaps you might trust the authorities a bit too much?

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Do you have a Ring doorbell? Check your terms of service. To point them at the street or at a neighbor is a terms of service violation. The police are not only encouraging this, but asking residents to put themselves at possible civil legal risk.

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I mentioned that I had put out a public records request on a related issue. Without showing all my cards yet, I will say that the MPD did deny the initial request as expected. Whether the state agrees with me or them upon my coming appeal remains to be seen (although I suspect I know the answer to this question as well), but it still makes me wonder: what do they actually have to hide?

If this program was such an unqualified benefit to the community, with no drawbacks to law-abiding citizens and no reason for concern, why the secrecy? Why, instead, are they not shouting from the rooftops about exactly how the program works and how they’re protecting our information? Instead, a department with no dearth of issues surrounding responsibility (remember the “Goods for Guns” pistol issue from 2015?), and with an officer close to an insurance theft scheme that made national news, it doesn’t give me a lot of confidence in the program, especially when one officer on Facebook told me that asking questions about programs like this “is why we sometimes say the ‘hell with it’.”

Personally, I don’t want the police, so willing to “say ‘the hell with it’,” when faced with uncomfortable questions and so unwilling to accept even basic scrutiny, to have this much power and information. You can disagree, but I hope that, if you do, you have a strong argument as to why.