Ring, the Amazon-owned home security camera company, has introduced a new encryption system called TAKE (Throw Away the Key Encryption), which it says will restrict what footage the company can hand over to law enforcement. The move comes amid heightened scrutiny of Ring over its historical ties to police and privacy concerns surrounding its AI-powered Search Party feature, and marks an attempt to reassure customers without sacrificing cloud-based features such as smart alerts and AI video search.

Under TAKE, encryption keys rotate every five minutes and are deleted within 24 hours, with Ring stating it retains no persistent access and that footage requests to police would yield only non-video information and encrypted files. The system, built on the Messaging Layer Security standard, differs from full end-to-end encryption (E2EE) in that Ring temporarily holds keys via an AWS Nitro Enclave to enable processing, whereas E2EE never gives Ring access at all; newer cameras can toggle between the two, while older models support only TAKE. The feature begins rolling out in September to all customers regardless of subscription status and will eventually become the default, though users who lose access to their devices and cannot use one of several recovery options will be locked out of their encrypted footage.