Ring’s Hidden Data Let Us Map Amazon’s Sprawling Home Surveillance Network

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Headings…
Ring’s Hidden Data Let Us Map Amazon’s Sprawling Home Surveillance Network
Everything Cops Say About Amazon’s Ring Is Scripted or Approved by Ring
Cops Are Giving Amazon’s Ring Your Real-Time 911 Caller Data
Amazon’s Ring Barred Cops From Using ‘Surveillance’ to Describe Its Product

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Even as its creeping objective of ensuring an ever-expanding network of home security devices eventually become 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.
He shared a preview of his research with Gizmodo, including a map representing every Ring video posted to Neighbors since 2017.
To identify which of the 65,800 posts Gizmodo collected potentially originated from a Ring doorbell camera, Gizmodo filtered for posts specifically categorized as being a “Ring” or a “Video Alert.”
“Posts to the Neighbors app do not reveal the exact addresses of users or Ring devices owners,” a Ring spokesperson said.
Ring’s website states that supplying a home address enables Neighbors to “create a radius around your home” in order to share alerts from “within that radius.” (Users aren’t required to provide accurate information.) As such, users presumably expect that their own posts are, likewise, visible only to the neighbors in whose radii they fall.
A Ring spokesperson said elsewhere the company characterizes posts to Neighbors as “public” and allows users to link to specific posts on social media.
Reporters documented 1,788 Ring cameras in Denver used to post footage on Neighbors in the past 500 days.
“Ring is always open to dialogue about ways we can iterate and improve upon our products, but it is also important to ensure that the Neighbors app and the way its features work are properly represented,” a Ring spokesperson said, adding it would continue to educate the public on how the app works, “and the positive impact its users are having on communities around the country

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