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Amazon was sued on Monday over alleged privacy violations from its Ring doorbell cameras. The class action lawsuit, filed in Seattle by Virginia resident Charles Sigwalt, claims that Ring’s Familiar Faces feature stores images of passersby without consent.
Ring announced the Familiar Faces feature last September and faced pushback from consumer protection organizations like the EFF, as well as Senator Ed Markey (D-MA). But the company moved forward with its plans to launch the feature in December.
Familiar Faces lets Ring users identify people who regularly come to their home through AI facial recognition. That way, if a regular guest, like a family member, mail carrier, or neighbor, comes to the door, the device will be able to recognize them and deliver more specific notifications like “Dad is at the door,” rather than “A person is at the door.” Ring users have to opt in to this feature, but privacy advocates noted that the people who walk past these Ring doorbells have not consented to these facial-recognition scans. That same concern is at the center of this class action lawsuit.
According to the lawsuit, “Millions of other Americans passed by a Ring security camera and unknowingly had their facial recognition information collected.”
Amazon did not immediately respond to a request for comment. At the time the feature was released, the company stated that face data is encrypted and never shared; unidentified faces are automatically removed after 30 days.
Amazon’s Ring has a record of concerning behaviors regarding user privacy. In 2023, Amazon settled with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and paid a $5.8 million fine over allegations that the company’s staff and contractors had improperly accessed private videos from women customers; the FTC’s complaint said that every employee had full access to every customer video, even if the worker had no need to access that footage. Ring has also maintained relationships with law enforcement and once granted police the ability to request Ring footage from users without a warrant.
After airing a Super Bowl ad to introduce Search Party, an AI-powered feature that uses Ring footage to find lost pets, the company faced similar backlash. Days later, Ring canceled its plans to partner with video surveillance company Flock Safety, which has reportedly given footage to ICE and other federal agencies. When Ring founder Jamie Siminoff spoke with TechCrunch after Ring canceled its arrangement with Flock Safety, he indicated that the deal would’ve created too much of a “workload.”
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