10,000 people want Congress to investigate Amazon's Ring surveillance
The Ring doorbell is under fire again.
10,000 people want Congress to investigate Amazon's Ring surveillance network.
A new campaign is calling for Congress to investigate Amazon's surveillance "empire," Fight for the Future announced Tuesday. It's a response to how Amazon's helping police build a surveillance network with its Ring doorbell cameras -- and it now has more than 500 cities partnered to use the footage for law enforcement purposes, according to the digital rights group.
This is a threat to civil liberties, privacy and security, Fight for the Future said, and Amazon can't be trusted to protect people, added Evan Greer, the group's deputy director.
"Amazon is aggressively expanding its for-profit surveillance empire," the campaign -- called Tell Congress: Investigate Amazon's surveillance dragnet -- says. "Amazon provides law enforcement with an automated way to request and access user footage from tens of thousands of Ring surveillance doorbells, en masse without a warrant."
Amazon's surveillance network even "outpaces" the NSA's, the campaign is claiming.
"Ring's mission is to help make neighborhoods safer," a Ring spokesperson said in an emailed statement.
Ring also denied scripting what law enforcement says about accessing camera feeds, saying it only provies "materials and information about our products and services to help ensure they are accurately represented to the public."
The campaign had collected 10,594 signatures as of time of publication from its goal of 12,800. By Thursday, it had 10,841 signatures.
First published at 4:24 p.m. PT on Oct. 29.
Updated on Oct. 31 at 3:38 p.m.: Adds more detail on Amazon Ring, update on signatures.
