The Wiretap: Facial Recognition, Amazon Ring, And Surveillance Of The LA Protests

Forbes

10-06-2025

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The protests in LA are being captured by all manner of surveillance devices. But federal and local police have different restrictions on what they can do with the footage (Photo by)
'I have all of you on camera. I'm going to come to your house.' Those were the words coming from an LAPD officer in a helicopter over LA protestors, according to the LA Times. The implicit threat, according to some privacy advocates, was that the cops would use facial recognition software to identify and locate those protesting Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids.
It's not quite so easy to do that, though. A source close to the agency, who was not authorized to talk on record, told Forbes that LAPD will be going through camera footage - whether shot from a helicopter, surveillance cams or bodycams - and try to identify people. However, the LAPD can only search for matches from police-owned arrest records, namely, mugshots. Its own rules don't allow it to search for matches across other sources, such as social media.
Federal agents, however, don't have the same restrictions. Any federal agent using Clearview or an alternative can take the same footage and run facial images to find matches across photos scraped from social sites. One of Clearview's best-known federal customers is ICE, which typically uses it in child exploitation cases. It's unclear how often the agency uses it for immigration enforcement. Neither ICE nor the LAPD had responded to requests for comment at the time of publication.
Law enforcement has another potential source for protest footage: video from Amazon Ring cameras or its competitors. Though Amazon has stopped cops requesting information directly over the Ring Neighbours social platform, federal and local cops can demand data recorded by those devices with a court order. The video could then be used to identify protestors.
While the source close to LAPD said they weren't aware of any specific uses of Ring around this week's events, they said it's certainly a capability that exists.
Meanwhile, concerned citizens have also been using Neighbors to share footage of ICE raids and agents in the L.A. area, either to warn about them or to celebrate the actions.
In footage from Monday, identified by a Forbes' reporter, a Ring user shared footage they claimed showed ICE targeting laborers at a local Home Depot. Another warned about ICE agents at a mall and a Costco.
Amazon Ring didn't comment on record, though a spokesperson pointed Forbes to guidelines that prohibit users posting on 'topics that cause inevitable frictions like politics and election information,' as well as 'highly debated social issues.' Its moderators might be busier than normal this week.
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