Technology. Standing Sentry

• Author: Richard Acello
• Pages: 24-24

Business of Law | TECHNOLOGY

TECHNOLOGY

Standing

Sentry

Amazon’s Ring doorbell cameras

may help deter package thefts

and other crimes, but critics worry

about overreach

BY RICHARD ACELLO

Expecting a package today?

Good luck.

According to the New York

Times, more than 90,000

packages a day are stolen or disappear

without explanation in New York City

alone, up about 20% from four years

ago. Nationally, that number rises to

1.7 million per day, according to the

Times piece.

Among the companies with a sub-

stantial interest in delivering packages

is Amazon, which sends out billions of

packages per year. As such, when Ama-

zon acquired doorbell camera company

Ring in 2018 for over $1 billion, it

seemed like a logical move and a good

addition for the company’s surveillance

portfolio, which includes facial recogni-

tion software Amazon Rekognition.

In fact, soon after acquiring Ring,

Amazon launched an app called

Neighbors, which allows users to share

video with neighbors and local police

departments. Amazon would not share

with the ABA Journal how many Ring

cameras it has sold, nor the number

of Neighbors apps that have been

downloaded.

Racial prof‌iling

Critics warn Ring threatens to turn the

U.S. into a surveillance state.

“It’s basically increasing surveillance

in American life and doing so in a way

that has the potential to become a

centralized surveillance infrastructure,”

says Jay Stanley, senior policy analyst

for the Speech, Privacy and Technology

Project of the American Civil Liber-

ties Union, based in Washington, D.C.

“Ring is pushing the cameras on people

and cooperating with law enforcement

in ways that raise concerns, making it

an organized surveillance infrastruc-

ture rather than a bunch of individu-

al cameras.”

In addition to concerns about the

storage of data in the cloud, Stanley

cites numerous articles and reports that

Ring and Neighbors highlight “issues

of racial proling when individuals use

cameras to raise suspicions about racial

minorities.”

Amazon said through a spokesman:

“Ring’s mission is to make neighbor-

hoods safer. We work towards this

mission in a number of ways, including

allowing local police to share ofcial,

important crime and safety updates

with their residents through the free

Neighbors app. We’ve seen many

positive examples of residents and local

police engaging on the Neighbors app

and believe open communication is an

important step in building safer, stron-

ger communities.”

Ring has faced several purported

class action lawsuits in recent months.

In December, an Alabama resident led

a complaint in the U.S. District Court

for the Central District of California

against Amazon accusing it of lax cy-

bersecurity practices that left Ring cam-

eras vulnerable to hackers. The com-

plaint cited several reported incidents,

including a December incident where

a hacker used the device to harass an

8-year-old girl in Mississippi. According

to media reports, Amazon stated that

its network had not been compromised

and posited that users may have used

passwords on multiple platforms and

devices. Then, in January and February,

two more lawsuits were led in the

same court.

Police partnerships

One of the law enforcement agencies

that has partnered with Ring is the

Chandler, Arizona, Police Department.

Chandler is a fast-growing suburb of

Phoenix with a population of 263,000.

Seth Tyler, a detective with the

Chandler Police Department, says Ring

systems can be valuable in tracking

criminal activity, including “package

thefts, vehicle burglaries and residential

burglaries—to name a few.”

“Since a camera can be placed vir-

tually anywhere from any location, the

opportunities could apply to virtually

any crime,” Tyler says. “We have nu-

merous success stories involving vehicle

burglaries and package thefts.”

According to Tyler, one such case

involved a woman who accused her

ex-boyfriend of stalking her. The Chan-

dler Police Department gave her a Ring

camera for free, and it helped lead to an

arrest. “The benet for the community

is the ability to share any criminal or

suspicious activity, which is captured on

their device, to neighbors and the police

department.”

While Stanley of the ACLU admits

the number of package thefts is “incred-

ible,” he also says Amazon should scale

back on “marketing that causes people

to be fearful, and stop working hand-in-

glove with police departments.”

Asked if the presence of cameras

doesn’t help to reduce temptation to

commit crimes, Stanley agrees that

it’s probably true, but adds “you

could probably achieve that through

other cameras that are not internet

connected.”

The ACLU also favors “broad-based

privacy laws to give people more con-

trol over any data that they share with

companies in the cloud,” he adds. Q

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ABA JOURNAL | APRIL–MAY 2020

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