AMAZON RING: WHO IS WATCHING?

#INSP: TECHNOLOGY IS WATCHING WITH THIS RING

Is Amazon’s device sealing an unholy marriage between law enforcement and Big Data? Street Roots learns more about Amazon’s controversial home surveillance system by speaking to Evan Greer, the deputy director of Fight for the Future. His organization is fighting for net neutrality and against the use of intrusive technology, such as facial recognition software, and warns consumers about the risks associated with purchasing Ring surveillance systems.

By: Christen McCurdy, Street Roots, Seattle. Courtesy of INSP.ngo. Philadelphia information added by Emily Taylor, One Step Away staff.

In one advertisement for Amazon’s Ring surveillance system, a pair of bumbling crooks is frightened off by the mere sight of the Ring doorbell as the homeowner smirks while monitoring the scene from the gym on his phone.

Another ad shows a montage of oddly persistent prepubescent boys ringing the doorbell and running away at various times of day and night, followed by a man hollering, “I know where you live!” and the words, “Ding Dong Ditch RIP.”

Ring was invented in 2012 as DoorBot and re-branded as Ring in 2014. Amazon bought the company in 2018 and has marketed it as a home security system that’s both inexpensive — Ring doorbells start at $99 and the service costs $100 annually — and easy to use.

Amazon has sold Ring not just as a deterrent to would-be burglars or to foil Dennis the Menaces, but as a way to record, and therefore catch, package thieves.

And thanks to partnership agreements between Amazon and more than 400 local law enforcement agencies, sheriffs’ offices, and municipal police forces have followed suit. The partnership agreements let police request video from a specific time and area—that is, not just footage from individual victims of crimes, but from anyone who might be able to provide evidence of suspects traveling down a particular street at a particular time.

This summer, Vice reported extensively on Ring’s history and on the agreements the company has made with four law enforcement agencies in the Portland metropolitan area, while The Oregonian drilled down on an agreement between the Beaverton Police Department and Ring.

Philly Voice reported that Amazon has 15 Pennsylvania and six Philadelphia law enforcement partnerships. The six Police Departments Townships in the area with Ring partnerships are: Lower Salford, Hatfield, Lansdale, Nothampton, Lower Gwynedd, and Upper Darby.

According to a map published by The Washington Post with data the paper obtained from Ring, the Beaverton Police Department, the Washington County Sheriff’s Department, the Oregon City Police Department, and the Clackamas County Sheriff’s Office have all signed agreements with Ring.

The partnership allows officers to log into Ring’s app, Neighbors — which has been described as both an “online neighborhood watch” or a version of the neighborhood-based social network NextDoor, if the latter functioned solely as a way to gather and share information about activities they find suspicious. The latter site itself has been criticized as being a hotbed of racism and vicious sentiments about house-less people.

Civil liberties advocates have voiced concern about privacy and profiling issues connected with Ring. They’ve also said that Ring and Neighbors are helping to normalize a culture that increasingly encourages people to fear and surveil their neighbors rather than talk to them directly.

And some advocates — who are concerned about the security risks of Ring — are suing. A federal class-action lawsuit filed at the end of December alleges the company failed to properly secure the system against hackers.

Street Roots spoke with Evan Greer, deputy director of Fight for the Future, which has emerged as one of Ring’s sharpest critics. The organization was formed in 2011 and has also fought for net neutrality, against facial recognition software and other intrusive forms of technology — and also runs consumer awareness campaigns to help individuals better secure their own phones and computers.

Q: For someone who hasn’t heard of Ring, or who maybe who has heard of it but isn’t completely sure what it is, how would you explain it in brief? How was the technology developed?

Evan Greer: Ring, owned by Amazon, produces and sells home surveillance devices. These devices include doorbell cameras, motion sensors, indoor/outdoor cameras, and an alarm system. Amazon, along with over 700 police partners, promotes these devices as crime-fighting tools despite their ongoing security breaches and data leaks. Coupled with privacy, civil liberty, and racial profiling concerns, Ring devices aren’t safe for people’s homes or their communities.

Q: How does Ring differ from another, older security system—such as a store surveillance camera or a webcam I set up on my porch? I mean for both good and bad: what’s more attractive about it and what are the drawbacks people might not think about?

Amazon Ring devices are not secure. People should not buy them. The drawbacks that people should be aware of are [many]. Ring devices connect to the Internet, which makes people vulnerable to hacking, Amazon accessing data for their own agenda, and sharing private, sensitive footage with the government. As cloud connected devices, Ring centralizes around storage owned, maintained, and controlled by Amazon. [There are] reports of Amazon employees accessing and sharing live footage. Amazon Ring’s Neighbor app allows for the proliferation of racial profiling; increasing the targeting and surveillance of brown and black people in the community. In the absence of clear civil liberties and rights-protective policies to govern the technologies and the use of surveillance footage, once collected, stored footage can be used by law enforcement to conduct facial recognition searches, target protesters exercising their First Amendment rights, or be shared with other agencies, like ICE.

In light of recent security breaches, Fight for the Future and other groups issued a product warning to inform the public that Amazon Ring cameras are not safe. RingSafetyWarning.com outlines the dangers associated with Ring devices and encourages members of the public NOT to buy Ring camera devices.

Q: When and how did Ring get on activists’ radar as a civil rights issue? What’s being done to push back against Ring’s agreements with law enforcement?

We found out about Ring from media reports. In September, Fight for the Future launched a campaign calling on elected officials to end Amazon-police partnerships. As the popularity of the campaign grew, we and over 30 other organizations penned an open letter calling on elected officials to address the partnerships with investigation and legislation. Recently, we—along with 15 other organizations—escalated this call to focus on Congress investigating Amazon’s surveillance empire, technology, and practices.

Q: Talk about the big picture of digital surveillance beyond Ring. It seems like it’s almost impossible to have a full sense of the extent to which we’re being surveilled in various ways by tech companies. Is there any meaningful way to avoid it—or at least reduce it—and still participate in society?

Big Tech companies want us to think that a dystopian surveillance state is inevitable. And worse, they’re convincing us that it’s actually a good thing for us, by selling it as a form of convenience and sense of safety. But we don’t have to live in a world where we are constantly being monitored by governments and corporations.

While surveillance technology is spreading quickly, resistance to it is spreading as well. Dozens of cities across the U.S. have taken steps to limit surveillance technology and corporate data harvesting. There’s growing cross-partisan support for policies to restrict facial recognition surveillance and other forms of invasive biometric spying.

We’re at a turning point as a society. We can’t sit back and let our rights slip away. We have to fight to ensure that technology is a force for liberty, not tyranny.

The following concerns about the Amazon Ring are highlighted on the site:

Devices are not secure.

Recently, someone hacked into a Ring camera to watch and have conversations with young girls in their bedroom. The hacker introduced himself as “Santa, your best friend.”

Personal information is exposed.

The Neighbors app shares the location of Ring devices, while the Ring device itself has leaked users’ Wi-Fi passwords to the public.

Hacking Ring devices is easier than ever.

Reports indicate there is a growing black market for software to hack Ring devices, likely being purchased by stalkers, cyber criminals, and those wishing to do harm to children.

Video footage can be shared without your permission.

Representatives for Ring told U.S. lawmakers that police are free to keep videos forever and share them with whomever they’d like. Local police departments currently share camera footage with Immigration and Customs Enforcement to assist in deportations.

Amazon’s technology encourages racial profiling.

Reports document a disproportionate targeting of brown and black communities on Amazon’s Ring Neighbors App and through Amazon’s Recognition software.

From RingSafetyWarning.com.

Article Courtesy of Street Roots / INSP.ngo. Edited by One Step Away staff. Photos from Amazon.com.