{"id":14068,"date":"2019-11-27T11:08:53","date_gmt":"2019-11-27T19:08:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/?p=14068"},"modified":"2019-11-27T11:08:53","modified_gmt":"2019-11-27T19:08:53","slug":"amazons-ring-considering-facial-recognition","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/2019\/11\/27\/amazons-ring-considering-facial-recognition\/","title":{"rendered":"Amazon&#8217;s Ring Considering Facial Recognition"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class='__iawmlf-post-loop-links' style='display:none;' data-iawmlf-post-links='[{&quot;id&quot;:2217,&quot;href&quot;:&quot;https:\\\/\\\/theintercept.com\\\/2019\\\/11\\\/26\\\/amazon-ring-home-security-facial-recognition&quot;,&quot;archived_href&quot;:&quot;https:\\\/\\\/web-wp.archive.org\\\/web\\\/20260206024954\\\/https:\\\/\\\/theintercept.com\\\/2019\\\/11\\\/26\\\/amazon-ring-home-security-facial-recognition\\\/&quot;,&quot;redirect_href&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;checks&quot;:[{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-03-04 04:13:42&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:200},{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-04-08 18:05:24&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:200},{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-04-15 20:34:20&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:200}],&quot;broken&quot;:false,&quot;last_checked&quot;:{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-04-15 20:34:20&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:200},&quot;process&quot;:&quot;done&quot;}]'><\/div>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/theintercept.com\/2019\/11\/26\/amazon-ring-home-security-facial-recognition\/\">Ring just gets creepier and creepier<\/a>. While the basic home security idea isn&#8217;t bad, the implementation, especially when combined with the (existing or just discussed) partnerships with law enforcement, giving them unfettered access to the video captured by the cameras, is really, really disturbing.<\/p>\n<p>(I have friends who have Ring cameras, some of whom have been very glad to have them when weird things have happened at their place. I don&#8217;t want to discount the benefits that these systems can provide. But for people who have been considering a Ring system, it&#8217;s worth thinking seriously about the potential wider concerns with the system and considering other options; for those who do have a Ring system, it might be worth reviewing the settings to see how much, if any, of the data sharing can be opted out of.)<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\n  In its public-relations efforts, Ring has maintained that only thieves and would-be criminals need to worry about the company\u2019s surveillance network and the Neighbors app. From the way Ring\u2019s products are designed to the way they\u2019re marketed, the notion of &#8220;suspicion&#8221; remains front and center; Ring promises a future in which &#8220;suspicious&#8221; people up to &#8220;suspicious&#8221; things can be safely monitored and deterred from afar.<\/p>\n<p>  But &#8220;suspicious&#8221; is an entirely squishy concept with some very potentially dangerous interpretations, a byword of dog-whistling neighborhood racists who hope to drape garden-variety prejudice beneath the mantle of public safety. The fact remains that anyone moving past a home equipped with Ring cameras is unavoidably sucked into a tech company dragnet, potential fodder for overeager chatter among the suburban xenophobe set. To civil libertarians, privacy scholars, and anyone generally nervous about the prospect of their neighbors forming a collective, artificially intelligent video panopticon maintained by Amazon for unregulated use by police, Ring\u2019s potential consequences for a community are clear.<\/p>\n<p>  A &#8220;proactive&#8221; approach to information sharing could mean flagging someone who happens to cross into a Ring video camera\u2019s frame based on some cross-referenced list of &#8220;suspects,&#8221; however defined. Paired with the reference to a facial recognition watch list and Ring\u2019s generally cozy relationship with local police departments across the country, it\u2019s easy to imagine a system in which individuals are arbitrarily profiled, tracked, and silently reported upon based on a system owned and operated solely by Amazon, without legal recourse or any semblance of due process.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>While the basic home security idea isn&#8217;t bad, the implementation, especially when combined with the (existing or just discussed) partnerships with law enforcement, giving them unfettered access to the video captured by the cameras, is really, really disturbing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2038],"tags":[231],"class_list":["post-14068","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-tech","tag-amazon"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14068","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14068"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14068\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14068"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14068"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14068"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}