Do Ring Doorbells Require a Sign Informing Passersby?

We recently bought a house in Portland. Are Ring doorbells, or other outside security cameras, considered legal? If we have them, do we need to post a sign outside informing passersby that cameras are mounted outside on the street-facing side of our house? —Frank S.

Your commitment to the letter of the law is admirable, Frank. That said, part of me can’t help wondering if you just have a fetish for obscure regulations since actual prosecution for a doorbell camera is about as likely as a public flogging from Judge Judy for cutting the “Do Not Remove” tag off your mattress: Unless you’re pointing it up someone’s skirt, your Ring camera is almost certainly legal.

The law in Oregon (and many other jurisdictions) does not require you to obtain consent before filming people as long as they already have no “reasonable expectation of privacy.” If someone is walking down the sidewalk, say, or frolicking in a public park, or even standing on their own property in view of passersby, they can’t expect not to be seen. Since those are precisely the situations that your doorbell camera is documenting, you’re probably in the clear.

I say “probably” because, until recently, there was one way even a public-facing security camera might run afoul of the law: While it was legal in Oregon to film people in public settings, it was not legal to make audio recordings of their conversations, so a security camera with a good microphone could be something of a gray area.

However, in July 2023, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals struck down the Oregon law forbidding the recording of in-person conversations. Under this decision, consent for such recording is no longer required provided at least one participant in the conversation is aware of the recording. (Weirdly, this was already the rule for conversations on the telephone.)

The person we have to thank for this ruling is, bizarrely, Project Veritas’ James O’Keefe, the conservative provocateur best known for sneaking hidden cameras into Planned Parenthood and editing the resulting footage to make it sound like the group routinely repurposes fetal tissue into fish sticks. Even so, the ruling probably is a net positive for investigative reporting. It seems strange to have a right-wing extremist coming down on the side of press freedom, but I guess even a blind hog finds an acorn once in a while.

Questions? Send them to dr.know@wweek.com.