Is Amazon Responding to Employee Concerns About 'Ring' Privacy?

[SaM]

“The deployment of connected home security cameras that allow footage to be queried centrally are simply not compatible with a free society,” wrote Amazon software developer Max Eliaser (as part of last week’s Medium post from “Amazon Employees For Climate Justice.”)

“The privacy issues are not fixable with regulation and there is no balance that can be struck. Ring should be shut down immediately and not brought back.”

Inc. columnist Chris Matyszczyk describes what happened next:
Amazon released a new control center for Ring. It instituted a few more privacy-conscious settings. One of its new features involves the ability to “opt out of receiving video request notifications when local police seek information related to an investigation.”

That, to some eyes, may be a start – or even a swift reaction to Eliaser’s comments. Many might want to believe that an employee’s strong words could bring some positive reaction.

Sadly, this new control center only gives customers the option to opt out, rather than have the default set the other way around. It does, though, at least inform customers which police departments have joined the Ring Neighbors app and therefore are more likely to make requests.

Ring did insist that “this is just the beginning. Future versions of Control Center will provide users the ability to view and control even more privacy and security features.”

The new control center also lets Ring’s users see if two-factor authentication is enabled, add and remove Shared Users, and view and remove all devices and third-party services authorized to log into their account.

Amazon’s blog post about the changes adds that not only security but also privacy “have always been our top priority…”