NEW: after protests organized by @fightfortheftr and widespread backlash from civil rights groups, Amazon Ring is making some significant changes to the ways they allow law enforcement to request footage from their massive network of surveillance cameras gizmodo.com/amazons-ring-w…
Ring will no longer allow the cops to send requests privately to camera owners. Now they’ll have to do it publicly through the neighbors app. They’re also putting some limits on how often they can request footage, the geographical area covered, and for what purposes.
Let’s be extremely clear: Amazon is only doing this because of the tremendous work done by grassroots digital rights and racial justice activists (as well as journalists!) who helped expose the widespread discrimination & abuse enabled by these corporate surveillance partnerships
And while these policy changes will reduce some harm associated with these partnerships, they don’t change the fact that blanketing our neighborhoods in Amazon’s internet connected cameras is fundamentally dangerous, exacerbates racism & profiling, and undermines community safety
Police can still relatively easily access the enormous trove of footage collected by Ring cameras with a simple administrative subpoena. The proliferation of private surveillance and associated apps like Neighbors still encourage community members to become snitches & vigilantes.
And of course, Amazon could just change these policies anytime they want. The reality is we can’t trust surveillance capitalist corporations — or law enforcement. We need policies that ACTUALLY protect people. Lawmakers should act to ban these surveillance partnerships entirely.
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