An Amazon Engineer says ‘Ring should be shut down immediately and not brought back’

Well now, when one of your own software engineers calls for the shutdown of your “safety” product, that’s a pretty damning indictment. That’s the case with Amazon’s Ring, with an Amazon software engineer named Max Eliaser calling for the immediate shutdown of the service.

Yikes, although if you’ve been reading any of our Ring coverage, you’re probably having similar thoughts.

Even Amazon’s engineers think Ring shouldn’t be trusted

Hundreds of Amazon staff banded together to get their voices heard after Amazon threatened to fire any employees speaking out about Amazon’s impact on the environmental crisis. Most added quotes related to the climate issues to a post published on Medium, but one, in particular, saw this as an opportunity to speak out about another crisis – the surveillance state created by Amazon’s Ring cameras.

Software engineer Max Eliaser wrote:

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The deployment of connected home security cameras that allow footage to be queried centrally are simply not compatible with a free society. The privacy issues are not fixable with regulation and there is no balance that can be struck. Ring should be shut down immediately and not brought back.

Yikes. Good on you for speaking your conscience Max, joining the growing throng of voices warning about the dangers of Ring’s doorbell cameras. These warnings include the fact that there’s no opt-out if you’re in a neighborhood with installed Ring cameras, even if your home doesn’t have one. That makes footage of you, your family, and your visitors fair game to be called upon by the authorities, or even hackers.

READ MORE: New Amazon Ring patents outline a racist dystopian future

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Footage is also sent to servers abroad, like in Ukraine. The Ring app is full of trackers sending out your data, and the service is missing some pretty basic security features.

If you own one, have a long think about the implications of the Orwellian police state that your camera fosters, and decide if it’s worth it.

What do you think? Do you own a Ring camera? Thinking about getting rid of it? Let us know down below in the comments or carry the discussion over to our Twitter or Facebook.

Editors’ Recommendations:

• PSA: Ring’s Android app is secretly sending your data to Facebook, Google, and more
• Apparently, Facebook’s “clear history” tool is a big fucking sham
• If you shopped at Wawa in the last 9 months, chances are your credit card details have been breached
• Avast’s free antivirus software has been secretly sending your browsing data to advertisers

Joe Rice-Jones

Maker, meme-r, and unabashed geek with nearly half a decade of blogging experience. If it runs on electricity (or even if it doesn't), Joe probably has one around his office somewhere. His hobbies include photography, animation, and hoarding Reddit gold.