Amazon Execs Defend Ring Over Privacy and Security Concerns

Amazon executives in charge of Ring doorbells claim their products are making the world safer, insisting they are not laying the foundation for a police surveillance state.

Ring makes internet-connected doorbells and other smart home devices. Recently, the company was criticized for the security of their products and their Neighbors app, which allows first responders to request footage from camera owners. Civil rights groups criticized the company for their close ties to law enforcement and their security.

“I don’t think any of the concerns I saw were reasonable,” Ring CEO Jamie Siminoff told Axios in an interview at CES. “What we are doing is a good, beneficial thing.”

According to Axios, Amazon senior vice president David Limp says Ring has added improvements to the company’s software. These new features include the ability for customers to decline all requests from law enforcement, a new feature that allows customers to choose what part of their camera’s view they can have access.

According to The Verge, Ring founder Jamie Siminoff says the new Control Center puts the security and privacy into a central location for customers to manage, while also adding new features. One of those new features includes seeing who is currently logged into the account and give them the ability to log them out from the app. Other features include giving users the ability to set up two-factor authentication from the dashboard.

“Ring’s business model is fundamentally incompatible with democracy and basic human rights.” Fight for the Future’s Evan Greer told Axios. “A world full of cheap, insecure, privately owned surveillance devices is not a safer world for the majority of people on this planet.”

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