Recently, the Amazon-controlled “smart” doorbell and camera company Ring has partnered with police forces in more than 400 cities in the United States, offering access to recorded images from its devices installed in millions of homes. The initiative, recounted in a recent survey in the Washington Post, has numerous implications for the protection of personal data and adds new arguments to the debate – already very broad – on video surveillance systems and on whether their management should be delegated to private companies. over which it is not always easy to exercise adequate controls.
Ring has been around since 2013 (it was initially called Doorbot) and in just a few years it has achieved considerable success in the United States, selling home security cameras plugged into a variety of systems, including doorbells and intercoms. The cameras are activated when they detect movement and save online videos, where they can be consulted in real time or on a delayed basis by their owners, to check for any suspicious activity.
Ring's success coincided with Amazon's growing interest in Internet-connected home security systems. In 2018, Amazon acquired Ring for more than $ 800 million and then began promoting its products quite aggressively on its site. Ring's devices are now available in various countries, including Italy, but the most important market for the company continues to be that of the United States, where many residential districts are made up of single houses that are better suited to the use of systems of video surveillance.
Once installed, Ring's devices can be controlled through an app on your smartphone, which keeps you updated on what's happening around your home. For example, if someone approaches the door, the doorbell with camera detects movement and records it, sending a notification via the app. In addition, a live view of the camera can be accessed at any time to check that everything is okay. Live and recorded images are only visible to the account owner linked to the cameras, but Ring has built part of its success thanks to a parallel app – Neighbors – which serves instead to share the footage with the neighborhood. And it is this that raises greater perplexity for the protection of privacy.
Neighbors is a kind of social network for video surveillance. Users can report suspicious activity, alleged crimes, accidents and lost animals by sharing images from their Ring cameras. Each member participates anonymously and can interact with others, commenting on the contents and offering additional information, for example on the movements of a suspicious person from one house to another. A group of editors also works on Neighbors who are responsible for selecting the most interesting reports, which are highlighted in the application.
Police officers can log into Neighbors, follow reports and offer information for some particularly sensitive content. Cops are also given the opportunity to chat directly with users, through the comment system, and to receive notifications on their app when something happens regarding the neighborhood they are on patrol in.
Police participation is explicit and is often promoted by the Ring app itself. For example, if agents in a city start partnering with the company, local residents are provided with an update via Neighbors with messages like: “Your neighborhood with Ring has become much safer.”
Police officers are also given the option to request video recordings from camera owners. To do this, they have a map, on which they can indicate a specific area and time, activating the request. The system then automatically sends an email to all users with Ring devices in the affected area, notifying the police request and asking whether or not they want to share any video recorded by their cameras at the times indicated. A message from the police is also included in the email.
Users who decide to participate automatically receive a selection of the videos that will be sent, and have the possibility to review them before they are forwarded. The system gives the possibility to refuse to share the images and not to receive further requests. The emails, however, have a rather insistent tone and aimed at encouraging sharing, such as: “If you want to act directly to make the neighborhood safer, this is a great opportunity”.
As the Washington Post always reports, the cops do not have access to live footage from the Ring cameras, just as they cannot know directly from the app which owners have decided to collaborate and which do not. This does not exclude that they may receive subsequent requests, formulated directly and in person by the agents. Ring devices are quite recognizable, especially the video intercoms and doorbells, so it may happen that agents search the neighborhood in search of the houses that use them and then ask if it is possible to see the recorded videos.
Ring itself may be involved in the request for viewing content. The company manages and saves the videos of individual users on its servers, therefore it maintains a huge amount of information, and nothing prevents the authorities from resorting to the judiciary to ask for some files to be made accessible. The company says it is employing legal solutions to minimize these eventualities, while admitting it doesn't have many alternatives if a search warrant is presented. In the terms of use, the long document that you sign when you subscribe to a service (and which almost never reads anyone), of Ring, there are explicit references to the fact that by registering, users agree that the company can provide their video to the authorities in the case of special requests.
Video surveillance systems such as those of Ring do not have an impact only on those who decide to use them. The cameras provide high-definition images that can be used to see far beyond the porch and porch of your home. With a few enlargements of the videos, the activities of the neighborhood become visible, both in the case of the suspicious passage of someone, and to keep under control their neighbor with obvious problems for the protection of privacy.
Ring does not use automatic face recognition systems for now, which reduces the chance of a person being constantly monitored by someone else, but this may change in the future. Amazon, which controls Ring, has developed very refined systems for recognizing faces, selling its Rekognition software to numerous police forces in the United States. The program employs algorithms that improve as more faces are cataloged and recognized, and Amazon recently announced that it has further improved the system by adding a feature to detect people's mood.
Ring works with more than 400 police forces in individual neighborhoods and entire cities across the United States, and membership continues to grow rapidly. Especially in the early days, the company organized promotional initiatives to make Neighbors known in police stations, for example by offering free cameras and starting experimental projects in some neighborhoods. The official purpose is to make the neighborhood safer, but the implicit and purely commercial one is to have the approval of the authorities in order to incentivize the purchase of video intercoms and other systems by the population.
Most of the posts on Neighbors are about videos posted by users and flagged as “suspicious activity”. In many cases they are images of people, unknown to homeowners, approaching the front door and then walking away. The video of the suspect is posted as is, with their face visible and often without much other background information. The posts usually contain invitations to check if the same person has also approached other homes, in order to verify the alleged danger. In this, users take the place of police work, without having the correct training to do so and with unpredictable consequences.
Motivating the need to increase security levels, many cities in recent times have installed an increasing number of cameras in their most at-risk neighborhoods, with automatic face recognition systems to track flows of people and identify suspicious activity. Taking advantage of automatic recognition and artificial intelligence systems, mass video surveillance in China has reached unprecedented levels in recent years, effectively involving the constant monitoring of tens of millions of people. In the West, where the focus on citizens' privacy is usually higher, there are greater safeguards towards individuals, but many organizations still report a worrying increase in remote control systems with cameras by governments.
Solutions such as those offered by Ring, say the most critical, lead to a further complication because they ensure that a large part of the control activity is in the hands of private companies, which in a short time can collect enormous amounts of data on activities and movements of millions of people. On Neighbors, for example, police officers are merely guests and must rely on a company's proprietary software and services to do their jobs.
Ring has also been accused of using business models based on fear and paranoia to increase its sales. If in a short time dozens of cameras appear in a neighborhood, the inhabitants who do not have them begin to have a different perception of risk, and end up buying cameras and other systems too. The fact that Ring cameras are easily available on Amazon, and at low cost, further facilitates their diffusion and normalizes the presence of an interconnected and increasingly widespread video surveillance system.
