Wednesday, February 12, 2020

Shut down Amazon Ring’s law enforcement partnerships


From Restore the Fourth:

Hi Friend,
Tell Congress: it’s time to investigate Amazon’s surveillance empire.
Amazon's Echo and Ring devices are, at heart, surveillance devices. They record our conversations, capture video footage of our lives, track our faces, and partner with police to build a nationwide surveillance network. They exploit our intimate moments and sensitive personal information for their profits. [1,2,3]
Amazon devices don’t make us safer. Their executives recently admitted there are no safeguards in place to protect our data, privacy, or our civil liberties in their Ring doorbell cameras and surveillance police partnerships. Like any private company, Amazon should require a probable cause warrant before giving user data to police. [4]
Amazon also has a long-standing partnership with the CIA and other intelligence agencies. Their intelligence community cloud services smooth the rollout of the surveillance state. [5]
In response to Amazon’s blatant disregard for our basic rights and security, a group of Senators sent letters demanding answers. But now that lawmakers in DC are asking questions, Amazon will dispatch their army of lobbyists and call in their favors with the politicians they helped elect. There’s nothing they won’t do to avoid scrutiny and accountability.
To stop Amazon, we need to build grassroots pressure on lawmakers to launch a full Congressional investigation of Amazon. Click here to demand Congress take action now.
Amazon is going to continue to expand their surveillance network. They will take advantage of the holiday season to sell more devices that listen to us and watch us.
We need lawmakers to intervene. A Congressional hearing will help to expose Amazon’s invasive data harvesting practices, and restrict them from acting as paid informants for the surveillance state.
If you want to protect privacy and your Fourth Amendment rights, tell Congress to investigate Amazon.
Together, we can shut down Amazon’s surveillance dragnet.
Alex
Footnotes:
1. Forbes
2. Reuters
3. Washington Post
4. Fight for the Future
5. The Atlantic