One of the criticisms faced by Amazon’s Ring isn’t so much that the product or system doesn’t work, but rather the invasion of privacy felt by some when the company allowed law enforcement agencies in the country to tap into the Neighbors app. The idea on paper is that this is meant to improve security and safety, but many feel like it’s a violation of their privacy.
However, Amazon has decided to make some changes that will hopefully make their customers feel more at ease. Instead of shutting out law enforcement agencies entirely, Amazon wants to make these requests for video footage more transparent and public. This will now require that law enforcement agencies make public requests in the Neighborhood app’s feed.
This means that whenever the police need access to footage, it will be made public so that people know when these requests are made. Amazon has also made it so that users can opt in to receive requests for assistance from law enforcement, thus giving users a choice as to whether or not they want to help.
These changes are expected to come into effect next week, so if you’ve always felt a little uncomfortable by this, hopefully these changes will put you at ease.
Filed in . Read more about Amazon, Connected Objects, IoT (Internet of Things), Legal, Privacy and Ring. Source: blog.ring