{"id":8790,"date":"2026-02-13T15:00:30","date_gmt":"2026-02-13T15:00:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/ring-cameras-surveillance-privacy\/"},"modified":"2026-02-13T15:00:30","modified_gmt":"2026-02-13T15:00:30","slug":"ring-cameras-surveillance-privacy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/ring-cameras-surveillance-privacy\/","title":{"rendered":"All These Ring Cameras Are Creating a \u201cSurveillance Nightmare,\u201d Critics Say"},"content":{"rendered":"
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What if the biggest threat to your safety and privacy isn\u2019t a person, but a device millions of Americans have installed in their homes willingly?<\/p>\n

That\u2019s the contention of tech critics at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, who say Amazon\u2019s Ring doorbell devices constitute a \u201csurveillance nightmare\u201d \u2014 what they\u2019re calling the largest civilian surveillance panopticon in the history of the United States.<\/p>\n

The pitch is that Ring doorbells help homeowners watch out for porch pirates and incoming trick-or-treaters. But they do so, the digital rights advocacy group charges, at a staggering cost to your privacy. For example, Ring has previously been sued by the Federal Trade Commission<\/a> for illegally collecting and storing audio and video data between 2017 and 2020. That particular issue came to a head in 2023, after the company was found to give employees extensive access<\/a> to footage captured by Ring devices \u2014 including for cameras inside people\u2019s homes.<\/p>\n

And sure, you could argue, that wouldn\u2019t be an issue if you simply use the company\u2019s devices on your porch. Not even that\u2019s a safe bet, however. Back in 2022, Consumer Reports<\/em> found<\/a> that Ring doorbells could record ambient audio from 20 feet away \u2014 allowing them to listen in on pedestrians, neighbors, and in some cases, even in on homeowners who keep their doors or windows open.<\/p>\n

All of this feeds into what the EFF calls the \u201cdigital porch-to-police pipeline,\u201d where tech enables paranoid homeowners to make snap judgements<\/a> about who does or doesn\u2019t belong in their neighborhood and easily dispatch police to confront them. Indeed, since at least 2016, Ring has made it a point to loop law enforcement agencies like the Los Angeles Police Department into its business through free giveaways<\/a> and warrantless access<\/a> to user footage.<\/p>\n

As research fellow at Harvard Kennedy School Chris Gilliard told Consumer Reports<\/em>, any surveillance devices will disproportionately impact those who already face the highest amount of repression from law enforcement \u2014 like Black and immigrant communities. \u201cThat\u2019s a truism of surveillance: It\u2019s going to fall earliest and most often on the marginalized,\u201d Gilliard said.<\/p>\n

And with Ring\u2019s recently announced<\/a> \u201cSearch Party\u201d function, in which Ring can track down a dog by chaining multiple devices together, things are looking even more dystopian. In a statement, Ring said it \u201cbuilt the feature with strong privacy protections from the start,\u201d allowing owners to \u201cchoose on a case-by-case basis whether they want to share videos with a pet owner to support a reunion.\u201d<\/p>\n

Yet as the EFF points out<\/a>, the devices already have a baked-in facial recognition feature for humans. Simply put, it\u2019s not hard to imagine a world where Ring and tech like it makes privacy in public impossible. Maybe the right question to ask isn\u2019t whether Ring will build it \u2014 but whether we\u2019ll notice before the panopticon becomes irreversible.<\/p>\n

One thing\u2019s for sure: the pressure\u2019s getting to Ring. After backlash to the company\u2019s disastrous Super Bowl ad<\/a>, it announced that it\u2019s canceling its partnership with Flock<\/a>, a controversial surveillance startup that would have looped its cameras into an even larger network<\/a>. <\/p>\n

More on surveillance: <\/strong>Officials Deploying AI Surveillance Devices in School Bathrooms<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

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The post All These Ring Cameras Are Creating a \u201cSurveillance Nightmare,\u201d Critics Say<\/a> appeared first on Futurism<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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What if the biggest threat to your safety and privacy isn\u2019t a person, but a device millions of Americans have installed in their homes willingly? That\u2019s the contention of tech…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[177,3841,314],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8790","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-artificial-intelligence","category-ethics","category-facial-recognition"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8790","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8790"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8790\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8790"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8790"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8790"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}