In the Battle for Privacy, the Ring Closes

Evan Greer and Anna Bonesteel of Fight for the Future have an impassioned piece on NBC’s News Think on the effects of near-ubiquitous doorbell cameras like Amazon’s Ring, Google’s Nest, and Wyze. Reading their piece feels being the proverbial frog that finally understands it is already in boiling hot water.
 
Greer and Bonesteel write:
 
“Devices like Ring and the apps associated with them are made to keep us on constant alert. They ping us with notifications, demanding our attention, and offer ‘infinite scroll’ like Facebook and Instagram, but for neighborhood crime. These devices make watching one another constantly feel acceptable, expected and even addicting.”
 
As we’ve reported, Amazon encourages customers to share images with about 2,000 police and fire departments. Greer and Bonesteel write that Amazon is “effectively giving police an easy push-button portal to request video from Ring camera owners in exchange for officers’ help in marketing Amazon products.”
 
They add that “Ring’s lax security practices in the past have allowed stalkers and hackers to break into people’s cameras … This dystopian vision of a private police camera on every home would have been unthinkable a generation ago.” We would add to that observation the disturbing fact that general counsels of federal law enforcement and intelligence agencies assert a right to purchase Americans’ personal data from digital data brokers without a warrant.
 
In China, the erection of universal surveillance is the result of a deliberate campaign by the Chinese Communist Party to watch and listen in on everyone. In the United States, a similar Panopticon is being erected, piece by piece, out of desire to gain market share for doorbell cameras, lawn furniture, and home fitness equipment sold online. But the destination is beginning to look the same.