Legal/Law/Criminal Justice and Reform

Amazon’s Ring Doorbell Stored Strangers’ Faces, New Lawsuit Claims

Ring, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

A Virginia resident sued Amazon on Monday alleging that the company’s Ring doorbell cameras used facial recognition software without individuals’ consent.

Charles Sigwalt filed a lawsuit alleging that Ring’s “Familiar Faces” feature stores images of passersby without their consent, Reuters reported. Sigwalt is seeking class-action status and at least $5 million in damages.

The suit said that the individuals who had their facial images stored “did not consent to have their privacy rights violated at the entryway,” according to Reuters.

“Millions of other Americans passed by a Ring security camera and unknowingly had their facial recognition information collected,” the suit continued, according to the outlet. “[Amazon’s] conduct here represents a profound privacy failure for millions of people who are now being tracked by Amazon.”

Amazon said it did not have a comment when the Daily Caller News Foundation reached out.

Familiar Faces uses artificial intelligence to identify and remember people when they approach a Ring camera so that notifications can be given about specific names, according to Ring’s website. The feature is optional and deactivated by default. Once turning on the feature, it allows a catalog of up to 50 people to be identified by name and alert the Ring user of specific people rather than a motion or unidentified person being detected.

The information is encrypted and stored in the cloud and not the Ring camera, Ring adds on its website.

“We are committed to ensuring we are building safe and responsible intelligent products and features throughout our design, development, deployment, and operation,” the Amazon-owned smart doorbell company states.

Amazon bought Ring for $1 billion in 2018 and since then, the video doorbell-making subsidiary been under scrutiny several times. In 2023, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) reached a $5.8 million settlement with Ring over privacy allegations that said a former employee was spying on female customers inside their homes.

The FTC said that Ring had access to customers’ video data, and they were able to download it, but Amazon denied any wrongdoing as part of the settlement, Reuters reported.

Ring also ended a partnership with Flock Safety after facing criticism over installing license plate readers and cameras for law enforcement use, according tom the outlet.