Ring / CC BY-SA (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)
Recently, Amazon’s Ring (the electronic doorbell and surveillance technology and subsequent apps) has been the subject of criticism by media outlets for various reasons such as privacy breaches and mismanaging user data. Many issues pertaining to Amazon’s Ring intersects with some of our course lecture topics and student presentations of data privacy, facial recognition technology and police and government intervention. Here’s a primer of the larger issues that Ring and Amazon are facing.
Police Partnerships
In July 2019, it was uncovered the Ring had partnered with at least 200 police departments across the United States (and later to be estimated to over 400 police departments). Through these partnerships, police departments are able to view all the Ring camera locations in a certain area and request footage from owners directly. Some partnerships require police departments (such as the case in Pittsburg, Kansas) to promote the purchase of the Ring through press releases and social media posts in return for free Ring cameras or subsidies towards the purchase of Ring cameras.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) have stated that these partnerships have heightened fears and concerns of users by “turn[ing]” the delivery person or census-taker innocently standing on at the door into a potential criminal.” Their strategy of increasing consumer paranoia to sell products has led to reports of racial profiling through the accompanying free neighbourhood watch “Neighbor” app that is being promoted by the police to let households report suspicious behaviour in their neighbourhood.
Further, Amazon has been reported to coach police on how to effectively request footage directly from the Ring users, who may not be as easily persuaded to hand over footage. Ring had provided police departments with an email template to send to customers with messaging such as “If you would like to take direct action against crime in your community, this is a great opportunity.” If unsuccessful, police departments are still able to request Ring camera footage from Amazon through a subpoena.
Privacy
Earlier this year, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) found that Amazon’s Ring app is sending user information such as customer names, private IP addresses, mobile network carriers, persistent identifiers and sensor data to analytics and marketing companies. The EFF contends that user data is being sent without meaningful consent from users or notification to users. Even small information such as this can be combined together to spy on user activities and track their digital lives.
Prior to this, there were reports on hackers breaking into a Ring camera and talking to users (as we have seen in a previous student presentation on smart homes and privacy) and data breaches that led to the disclosure of 3,600 users information such as email, passwords, camera locations. Ring blamed the attacks on user reusing passwords (as previously discussed in another Communications Law post) and claimed that hackers used a technique called credential stuffing, using information from another leak to input into the Ring database. Even if this was the case, which EFF finds unlikely, this explanation is still problematic as Ring wasn’t aware that this was happening until “alerted by security researchers”. Amazon and Ring’s track record with privacy has been plagued with reports of negligence such as transmitting video footage to cloud providers completely unencrypted and alleged mishandling and improper access to user data by employees.
Facial Recognition
Although Amazon has developed and released facial recognition software, Rekognition (which has received heavy criticism for its inaccuracy), it has not added this technology to Ring. Amazon and Ring have not directly stated any plans to add facial recognition in the future, but many suspect that they will, as they have employed a “Head of Face Recognition Research” in Ukraine. Further, Ring internal documents obtained by the Intercept suggest that Ring will add facial recognition if there becomes “customer demand”.
Despite this, police departments in the United States have started to run their own facial recognition technology to obtained Ring camera footage. As of last month, Ring maintains that they have no current plans to add facial recognition technology, but a promotional video directed to law enforcement in Florida stated that a future version of Ring will include “suspicious activity detection and person recognition”.
Wrap-up
The Ring saga highlights how problematic the surveillance system is. Cybersecurity risks and ownership of footage are only the tip of the iceberg of issues Ring users face. Will Oremus, from OneZero, wrote:
“Alarming as the security flaws are, what worries Ring’s critics most is not that they’ll be used against their owners. It’s how they affect everyone else.”
Amazon’s Ring partnership with law enforcement and probable integration of facial recognition technology, through the proliferation of fear and need for security, will negatively impact communities.
For Further Information:
- Amazon Told Police It Has Partnered With 200 Law Enforcement Agencies
- Amazon’s Ring Is a Perfect Storm of Privacy Threats
- Amazon Is Coaching Cops on How to Obtain Surveillance Footage Without a Warrant
- Ring Doorbell App Packed with Third-Party Trackers
- Ring Throws Customers Under the Bus After Data Breach
- Five Concerns About Amazon Ring’s Deals with Police
- Why Amazon’s Ring and facial recognition technology are a clear and present danger to society
- What to Know Before You Buy or Install Your Amazon Ring Camera
This was a very interesting post to read. Thank you so much for your contribution.
It’s interesting how the inclusion of smart-home devices is transforming surveillance from public spaces into private spaces. When one goes to the shopping mall nowadays they are aware that they will likely be surveilled or video recorded, but what happens when this surveillance extends to private space? What happens when guests enter a home unaware of the existence of a ring system? I’ve also been recently thinking about the ongoing corporatization of police departments. I believe these two ideas/issues intersect. When reading your analysis of the Amazon Ring in conjunction with the recent developments from the New York Times discussing police departments’ use of Clearview AI facial recognition technology, it seems that quite soon, the state will be able to find whomever they want whenever they want.
It is equally as troubling to me that Amazon and Clearview AI (and companies alike) are for-profit entities that have developed contracts for the use of their products by the police. When the police run a face through facial recognition software or obtain a security video from a ring customer, who else is gaining access to this information? Does this give Jeff Bezos or Clearview the ability to see into our private spaces or even collect names of those searched or of interest? Furthermore, are other companies (besides the police) contracting for the use of this software? It worries me that ‘safety’ and ‘crime-fighting’ equipment is being used to release and collect personal user information without proper informed consent or investigation into future risks. At the end of the day technology companies are primarily concerned with their bottom line and company success, not the interest of the individual and certainly not individual privacy.
Looking forward to hearing more about these issues and seeing how this all unfolds. For now, definitely not purchasing an Amazon Ring.