Ring: An Amagenic Response?
February 22, 2020
Big technology companies like Amazon, Facebook, and Google lie. All of these companies have lied about collecting user data and selling it. Amazon is in the hotspot once again and this time the company was caught lying about facial recognition. Check out the article from Buzzfeed News called, “Ring Says It Doesn’t Use Facial Recognition, Bit It Has ‘A Head Of Face Recognition Research.’”
Amazon’s Ring is a popular home security device deployed in ten million homes. Amazon has gone on the record stating that Ring does not use facial recognition technology, but Buzzfeed News discovered that Ring’s Ukraine branch are working on it. Amazon received flack before about working with law enforcement agencies and it turns out that Ring has partnerships with 405 police departments. According to the article:
“Police departments with Ring partnerships currently have the ability to see the general vicinity of camera locations in a community. Officers, using a tool called Ring Neighborhoods Portal, can then request that users who post videos to Ring’s app, Neighbors, share those clips with law enforcement. As BuzzFeed News previously reported, Ring’s terms of service gives the company an irrevocable, perpetual license to the video content users post on Neighbors.
Documents obtained by Motherboard found that some police departments were required to distribute free Ring cameras to residents and encourage adoption of the Neighbors app, while some cities paid Ring up to $100,000 to subsidize Ring cameras for community residents.”
Ring currently does not have facial recognition technology deployed to its units, but in the future it could be possible. Facial recognition technology is imperfect and constantly fails to identify individuals.
Ring is likely to remain in the digital frame.
Whitney Grace, February 22, 2020
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