Amazon has a privately run, for-profit surveillance network—and they’re giving police departments VIP access to the footage collected.

Over 2,000 local law enforcement agencies across the country have partnered with Amazon’s Ring home surveillance company. Police promote Ring products. In exchange, Amazon provides police departments a seamless and easy way to request and store footage from thousands of residents throughout the city, allowing for warrantless surveillance.

This gives law enforcement unprecedented access to identify and monitor people without oversight or judicial review. As protesters take to the streets in response to police killing George Floyd, police departments can request and store footage from Ring users en masse with no probable cause.

Once the footage is received, it can be used to target and even arrest protesters exercising their First Amendment rights. This same footage can also be used to conduct facial recognition searches to find other protesters and shared with other agencies like ICE.

These surveillance partnerships erode privacy rights and civil liberties, especially for black and brown communities. Already at the center of the protests, black and brown people are more likely to be surveilled by law enforcement and Amazon Ring’s Neighbor App—only adding to the concerns of increased criminalization and over-policing.

But mayors and city officials have the power to stop police from entering into these partnerships, which is why we are calling on local elected officials to ban and stop these deceptive partnerships.

Sign the petition to tell your mayor and elected city officials: “Stop police surveillance partnerships with Amazon Ring. These partnerships undermine our democratic process and allow police to access surveillance footage to arrest protesters; they should be banned.”