A doorbell company owned by Amazon wants to start producing “crime news” and it’ll definitely end well
Because what good is a panopticon if you can’t generate some clicks?
With "Ring" Amazon manufactures intercoms with video function. So far, so good. Now the company wants to turn the recorded material directly and indirectly into money and is setting up its own media department. This department will probably process the most exciting recordings in the well-known reality TV style and bring them to the people with a "journalistic" touch. Practical side effect: Ring has a suitable offer for those who are afraid of the videos.
https://www.niemanlab.org/2019/04/a-doorbell-company-owned-by-amazon-wants-to-start-producing-crime-news-and-itll-definitely-end-well/
The Doorbell Company That’s Selling Fear: Amazon-owned Ring is hiring editors to push local crime news to its users
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/05/amazon-owned-ring-wants-report-crime-news/588394/
📡 @NoGoolag
#Ring #amazon #DeleteAmazon #doorbell #crimenews #realityTV #why
Because what good is a panopticon if you can’t generate some clicks?
With "Ring" Amazon manufactures intercoms with video function. So far, so good. Now the company wants to turn the recorded material directly and indirectly into money and is setting up its own media department. This department will probably process the most exciting recordings in the well-known reality TV style and bring them to the people with a "journalistic" touch. Practical side effect: Ring has a suitable offer for those who are afraid of the videos.
https://www.niemanlab.org/2019/04/a-doorbell-company-owned-by-amazon-wants-to-start-producing-crime-news-and-itll-definitely-end-well/
The Doorbell Company That’s Selling Fear: Amazon-owned Ring is hiring editors to push local crime news to its users
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/05/amazon-owned-ring-wants-report-crime-news/588394/
📡 @NoGoolag
#Ring #amazon #DeleteAmazon #doorbell #crimenews #realityTV #why
Nieman Lab
A doorbell company owned by Amazon wants to start producing “crime news” and it’ll definitely end well
Because what good is a panopticon if you can't generate some clicks?
Forwarded from BlackBox (Security) Archiv
Amazon Requires Police to Shill Surveillance Cameras in Secret Agreement
Amazon's home security company Ring has enlisted local police departments around the country to advertise its surveillance cameras in exchange for free Ring products and a “portal” that allows police to request footage from these cameras, a secret agreement obtained by Motherboard shows. The agreement also requires police to “keep the terms of this program confidential.”
Dozens of police departments around the country have partnered with Ring, but until now, the exact terms of these partnerships have remained unknown. A signed memorandum of understanding between Ring and the police department of Lakeland, Florida, and emails obtained via a public records request, show that Ring is using local police as a de facto advertising firm. Police are contractually required to "Engage the Lakeland community with outreach efforts on the platform to encourage adoption of the platform/app.”
In order to partner with Ring, police departments must also assign officers to Ring-specific roles that include a press coordinator, a social media manager, and a community relations coordinator.
Ring donated 15 free doorbell surveillance cameras to the Lakeland Police Department, and created a program to encourage people to download its “neighborhood watch” app, Neighbors. For every Lakeland resident that downloads Neighbors as a result of the partnership, the documents show, the Lakeland Police Department gets credit toward more free Ring cameras for residents: “Each qualifying download will count as $10 towards these free Ring cameras.” A Ring doorbell camera currently costs $130 on Amazon.
👉🏼 Read more:
https://outline.com/TvwejM
#DeleteAmazon #security #ring #surveillance #police #shill #secret #agreement #thinkabout
📡@cRyPtHoN_INFOSEC_DE
📡@cRyPtHoN_INFOSEC_EN
📡@cRyPtHoN_INFOSEC_ES
Amazon's home security company Ring has enlisted local police departments around the country to advertise its surveillance cameras in exchange for free Ring products and a “portal” that allows police to request footage from these cameras, a secret agreement obtained by Motherboard shows. The agreement also requires police to “keep the terms of this program confidential.”
Dozens of police departments around the country have partnered with Ring, but until now, the exact terms of these partnerships have remained unknown. A signed memorandum of understanding between Ring and the police department of Lakeland, Florida, and emails obtained via a public records request, show that Ring is using local police as a de facto advertising firm. Police are contractually required to "Engage the Lakeland community with outreach efforts on the platform to encourage adoption of the platform/app.”
In order to partner with Ring, police departments must also assign officers to Ring-specific roles that include a press coordinator, a social media manager, and a community relations coordinator.
Ring donated 15 free doorbell surveillance cameras to the Lakeland Police Department, and created a program to encourage people to download its “neighborhood watch” app, Neighbors. For every Lakeland resident that downloads Neighbors as a result of the partnership, the documents show, the Lakeland Police Department gets credit toward more free Ring cameras for residents: “Each qualifying download will count as $10 towards these free Ring cameras.” A Ring doorbell camera currently costs $130 on Amazon.
👉🏼 Read more:
https://outline.com/TvwejM
#DeleteAmazon #security #ring #surveillance #police #shill #secret #agreement #thinkabout
📡@cRyPtHoN_INFOSEC_DE
📡@cRyPtHoN_INFOSEC_EN
📡@cRyPtHoN_INFOSEC_ES
Forwarded from BlackBox (Security) Archiv
30+ civil rights organizations call on elected officials to stop Amazon’s doorbell surveillance partnerships with police
Today, 30+ civil rights organizations signed an open letter sounding the alarm about Amazon’s spreading Ring doorbell partnerships with police. The letter calls on local, state, and federal officials to use their power to investigate Amazon Ring’s business practices, put an end to Amazon-police partnerships, and pass oversight measures to deter such partnerships in the future.
With no oversight and accountability, these partnerships pose a threat to privacy, civil liberties, and democracy. A few of the concerns highlighted by the organizations:
❓ 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, teenagers for minor drug possession, or shared with other agencies like ICE or the FBI.
❓ Ring technology gives Amazon employees and contractors in the US and Ukraine direct access to customers’ live camera feeds, a literal eye inside their homes and areas surrounding their homes. These live feeds provide surveillance on millions of American families––from a baby in their crib to someone walking their dog to a neighbor playing with young children in their yard––and other bystanders that don’t know they are being filmed and haven’t given their consent.
❓ Amazon has not been transparent about plans to integrate facial recognition into Ring cameras. The Information reported Ring’s Ukraine-based research team accessed customer’s surveillance footage to train image recognition software. As facial recognition software has been shown to disproportionately misidentify people of color, women and transgender people, it further compounds existing civil liberties concerns and expands suspected criminality centered in racial profiling and gender bias.
👉🏼 Read more:
https://www.fightforthefuture.org/news/2019-10-08-new-30-civil-rights-organizations-call-on/
#amazon #DeleteAmazon #ring #surveillance #partnership #police #why #thinkabout
📡@cRyPtHoN_INFOSEC_DE
📡@cRyPtHoN_INFOSEC_EN
📡@cRyPtHoN_INFOSEC_ES
Today, 30+ civil rights organizations signed an open letter sounding the alarm about Amazon’s spreading Ring doorbell partnerships with police. The letter calls on local, state, and federal officials to use their power to investigate Amazon Ring’s business practices, put an end to Amazon-police partnerships, and pass oversight measures to deter such partnerships in the future.
With no oversight and accountability, these partnerships pose a threat to privacy, civil liberties, and democracy. A few of the concerns highlighted by the organizations:
❓ 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, teenagers for minor drug possession, or shared with other agencies like ICE or the FBI.
❓ Ring technology gives Amazon employees and contractors in the US and Ukraine direct access to customers’ live camera feeds, a literal eye inside their homes and areas surrounding their homes. These live feeds provide surveillance on millions of American families––from a baby in their crib to someone walking their dog to a neighbor playing with young children in their yard––and other bystanders that don’t know they are being filmed and haven’t given their consent.
❓ Amazon has not been transparent about plans to integrate facial recognition into Ring cameras. The Information reported Ring’s Ukraine-based research team accessed customer’s surveillance footage to train image recognition software. As facial recognition software has been shown to disproportionately misidentify people of color, women and transgender people, it further compounds existing civil liberties concerns and expands suspected criminality centered in racial profiling and gender bias.
👉🏼 Read more:
https://www.fightforthefuture.org/news/2019-10-08-new-30-civil-rights-organizations-call-on/
#amazon #DeleteAmazon #ring #surveillance #partnership #police #why #thinkabout
📡@cRyPtHoN_INFOSEC_DE
📡@cRyPtHoN_INFOSEC_EN
📡@cRyPtHoN_INFOSEC_ES
Forwarded from BlackBox (Security) Archiv
Ring’s Hidden Data Let Us Map Amazon's Sprawling Home Surveillance Network
As reporters raced this summer to bring new details of Ring’s law enforcement contracts to light, the home security company, acquired last year by Amazon for a whopping $1 billion, strove to underscore the privacy it had pledged to provide users.
Even as its #creeping objective of ensuring an ever-expanding #network of home #security devices eventually becomes indispensable to daily #police work, #Ring promised its customers would always have a choice in “what information, if any, they share with law enforcement.” While it quietly toiled to minimize what police officials could reveal about Ring’s police partnerships to the public, it vigorously reinforced its obligation to the privacy of its customers—and to the users of its crime-alert #app, #Neighbors.
However, a #Gizmodo #investigation, which began last month and ultimately revealed the potential locations of up to tens of thousands of Ring #cameras, has cast new doubt on the effectiveness of the company’s privacy safeguards. It further offers one of the most “striking” and “disturbing” glimpses yet, privacy experts said, of #Amazon’s privately run, #omni-#surveillance shroud that’s enveloping U.S. cities.
Gizmodo has acquired data over the past month connected to nearly 65,800 individual posts shared by users of the Neighbors app. The posts, which reach back 500 days from the point of collection, offer extraordinary insight into the proliferation of Ring video surveillance across #American #neighborhoods and raise important questions about the #privacy trade-offs of a consumer-driven network of surveillance cameras controlled by one of the world’s most powerful corporations.
And not just for those whose faces have been recorded.
👉🏼 Read more:
https://gizmodo.com/ring-s-hidden-data-let-us-map-amazons-sprawling-home-su-1840312279
#DeleteAmazon #DeleteRing #why #thinkabout
📡@cRyPtHoN_INFOSEC_DE
📡@cRyPtHoN_INFOSEC_EN
📡@BlackBox_Archiv
As reporters raced this summer to bring new details of Ring’s law enforcement contracts to light, the home security company, acquired last year by Amazon for a whopping $1 billion, strove to underscore the privacy it had pledged to provide users.
Even as its #creeping objective of ensuring an ever-expanding #network of home #security devices eventually becomes indispensable to daily #police work, #Ring promised its customers would always have a choice in “what information, if any, they share with law enforcement.” While it quietly toiled to minimize what police officials could reveal about Ring’s police partnerships to the public, it vigorously reinforced its obligation to the privacy of its customers—and to the users of its crime-alert #app, #Neighbors.
However, a #Gizmodo #investigation, which began last month and ultimately revealed the potential locations of up to tens of thousands of Ring #cameras, has cast new doubt on the effectiveness of the company’s privacy safeguards. It further offers one of the most “striking” and “disturbing” glimpses yet, privacy experts said, of #Amazon’s privately run, #omni-#surveillance shroud that’s enveloping U.S. cities.
Gizmodo has acquired data over the past month connected to nearly 65,800 individual posts shared by users of the Neighbors app. The posts, which reach back 500 days from the point of collection, offer extraordinary insight into the proliferation of Ring video surveillance across #American #neighborhoods and raise important questions about the #privacy trade-offs of a consumer-driven network of surveillance cameras controlled by one of the world’s most powerful corporations.
And not just for those whose faces have been recorded.
👉🏼 Read more:
https://gizmodo.com/ring-s-hidden-data-let-us-map-amazons-sprawling-home-su-1840312279
#DeleteAmazon #DeleteRing #why #thinkabout
📡@cRyPtHoN_INFOSEC_DE
📡@cRyPtHoN_INFOSEC_EN
📡@BlackBox_Archiv
Forwarded from BlackBox (Security) Archiv
Is It Too Late to Stop Amazon?
The brain-splitting moment happened about a week ago. A video (watermarked with the logo of a camera from Ring, an Amazon company) showing a man delivering an Amazon package, finding a box of snacks on a porch, then dancing went viral. My mind failed to find joy in the moment.
Think of the moving parts. There’s a hungry and dehydrated Amazon employee—or, more likely, an Amazon contractor—finding a slight reprieve from his grueling job only to see that moment turned into some weird viral ad. There’s a Ring security camera, made by Amazon, watching what this Amazon employee or anyone else in the neighborhood is doing and potentially sharing that video feed with the local police department. There’s the knowledge that Amazon and Ring have used police partnerships to bait potential package thieves in what could be described as a marketing campaign for a privately run state-sponsored surveillance effort.
👉🏽 Video (Facebook):
https://www.facebook.com/kathy.slater.330/posts/10157619021525967
👉🏽 Read more:
https://gizmodo.com/is-it-too-late-to-stop-amazon-1840393075
#DeleteAmazon #DeleteRing #ring #surveillance #thinkabout #why
📡@cRyPtHoN_INFOSEC_DE
📡@cRyPtHoN_INFOSEC_EN
📡@BlackBox_Archiv
The brain-splitting moment happened about a week ago. A video (watermarked with the logo of a camera from Ring, an Amazon company) showing a man delivering an Amazon package, finding a box of snacks on a porch, then dancing went viral. My mind failed to find joy in the moment.
Think of the moving parts. There’s a hungry and dehydrated Amazon employee—or, more likely, an Amazon contractor—finding a slight reprieve from his grueling job only to see that moment turned into some weird viral ad. There’s a Ring security camera, made by Amazon, watching what this Amazon employee or anyone else in the neighborhood is doing and potentially sharing that video feed with the local police department. There’s the knowledge that Amazon and Ring have used police partnerships to bait potential package thieves in what could be described as a marketing campaign for a privately run state-sponsored surveillance effort.
👉🏽 Video (Facebook):
https://www.facebook.com/kathy.slater.330/posts/10157619021525967
👉🏽 Read more:
https://gizmodo.com/is-it-too-late-to-stop-amazon-1840393075
#DeleteAmazon #DeleteRing #ring #surveillance #thinkabout #why
📡@cRyPtHoN_INFOSEC_DE
📡@cRyPtHoN_INFOSEC_EN
📡@BlackBox_Archiv
Police Are Monitoring Black Lives Matter Protests With Ring Doorbell Data and Drones
Amazon's Ring doorbell cameras, drones and a number of other surveillance technologies are being used by law enforcement agencies to monitor communities across the U.S., including Black Lives Matter protests.
According to a new searchable database called the Atlas of Surveillance, Amazon Ring has video-sharing partnerships with more than 1,300 law enforcement agencies across the U.S., including the Los Angeles Police Department in California, the St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department in Missouri and the Louisville Metro Police Department in Kentucky.
https://www.newsweek.com/amazon-ring-drones-monitor-protests-1523856
#US #Amazon #Ring #protest #surveillance
Amazon's Ring doorbell cameras, drones and a number of other surveillance technologies are being used by law enforcement agencies to monitor communities across the U.S., including Black Lives Matter protests.
According to a new searchable database called the Atlas of Surveillance, Amazon Ring has video-sharing partnerships with more than 1,300 law enforcement agencies across the U.S., including the Los Angeles Police Department in California, the St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department in Missouri and the Louisville Metro Police Department in Kentucky.
https://www.newsweek.com/amazon-ring-drones-monitor-protests-1523856
#US #Amazon #Ring #protest #surveillance
Newsweek
Police are monitoring Black Lives Matter protests with Ring doorbell data and drones, activists say
Amazon Ring has partnerships with more than 1,300 law enforcement agencies across the U.S. while drones are operated by more than 1,000 agencies, according to a new searchable database.
Doorbell Cameras Like Ring Give Early Warning of Police Searches, FBI Warned
Two leaked documents show how a monitoring tool used by police has been turned against them.
The rise of the internet-connected home security camera has generally been a boon to police, as owners of these devices can (and frequently do) share footage with cops at the touch of a button. But according to a leaked FBI bulletin, law enforcement has discovered an ironic downside to ubiquitous privatized surveillance: The cameras are alerting residents when police show up to conduct searches.
https://theintercept.com/2020/08/31/blueleaks-amazon-ring-doorbell-cameras-police/
#US #FBI #Amazon #Ring #surveillance
Two leaked documents show how a monitoring tool used by police has been turned against them.
The rise of the internet-connected home security camera has generally been a boon to police, as owners of these devices can (and frequently do) share footage with cops at the touch of a button. But according to a leaked FBI bulletin, law enforcement has discovered an ironic downside to ubiquitous privatized surveillance: The cameras are alerting residents when police show up to conduct searches.
https://theintercept.com/2020/08/31/blueleaks-amazon-ring-doorbell-cameras-police/
#US #FBI #Amazon #Ring #surveillance
Amazon Unveils Drone That Films Inside Your Home. What Could Go Wrong?
On social media, people had some concerns about the Ring Always Home Cam. To put it mildly.
When Amazon’s chief executive, Jeff Bezos, promised in 2013 that drones would soon be flying everywhere delivering packages, a miniature camera whirring through homes and recording video was probably not what people envisioned.
But on Thursday, Amazon’s Ring division unveiled the $249 Ring Always Home Cam, a small drone that hums as it flies around houses filming everything, ostensibly for security purposes.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/24/technology/amazon-ring-drone.html
#Amazon #Ring #drone #home #security #surveillance
On social media, people had some concerns about the Ring Always Home Cam. To put it mildly.
When Amazon’s chief executive, Jeff Bezos, promised in 2013 that drones would soon be flying everywhere delivering packages, a miniature camera whirring through homes and recording video was probably not what people envisioned.
But on Thursday, Amazon’s Ring division unveiled the $249 Ring Always Home Cam, a small drone that hums as it flies around houses filming everything, ostensibly for security purposes.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/24/technology/amazon-ring-drone.html
#Amazon #Ring #drone #home #security #surveillance
#Ring "security" cameras gave every employee 'full access' to all customer video for years: FTC
Ring's parent company, #Amazon, said it "promptly addressed the issues at hand."
https://abcnews.go.com/Technology/ring-security-cameras-gave-employee-full-access-customer/story?id=99737142
#wiretap
Ring's parent company, #Amazon, said it "promptly addressed the issues at hand."
https://abcnews.go.com/Technology/ring-security-cameras-gave-employee-full-access-customer/story?id=99737142
#wiretap
ABC News
Ring security cameras gave every employee 'full access' to all customer video for years: FTC
Ring security cameras "gave every employee ... full access to every customer video" before 2017, the FTC says
#Amazon's #Ring to Stop Letting Police Request #Doorbell Video from Users
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-01-24/amazon-s-ring-to-stop-letting-police-request-video-from-users
Comments
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-01-24/amazon-s-ring-to-stop-letting-police-request-video-from-users
Comments
Bloomberg.com
Amazon’s Ring to Stop Letting Police Request Doorbell Video From Users
Amazon.com Inc.’s Ring home doorbell unit says it will stop letting police departments request footage from users’ video doorbells and surveillance cameras, retreating from a practice that was criticized by civil liberties groups and some elected officials.