Amazon finds itself in hot water once again, as the FTC found privacy violations regarding Amazon Ring technology in a multi-million dollar settlement.
The settlement details a former Amazon Ring employee’s spree of violating fundamental human privacy rights by using Amazon technology to spy on female customers in 2017. The employee utilized Ring cameras placed in bedrooms and bathrooms to voyeur customers, the Federal Trade Commission said Wednesday in court proceedings. Amazon said, “While we disagree with the FTC’s claims regarding both Alexa and Ring and deny violating the law, these settlements put these matters behind us,” in a statement regarding the outcome, Reuters reports.
Amazon’s fines total $30.8 million, a tiny fraction of the company’s $1.24 trillion valuation. While the Third and Fifth Amendments to the US Constitution detail privacy rights as the right to privacy in the home and the right against self-incrimination, Amazon claimed it deleted voice transcripts and sensitive location information, and the FTC claimed it did not. This violated the agreement between Amazon Ring and the user, and was responsible for $25 million of the settlement payout. It’s worth mentioning that the recording transcripts violated children’s privacy rights, with Amazon failing “to delete Alexa recordings at the request of parents and kept them longer than necessary,” Reuters reports.
The 2017 privacy breach, in which the unnamed employee used Amazon Ring technology to spy on homes without consent, allegedly involved 81 separate video recordings in sensitive areas of homes. This was before Amazon bought Ring in 2018, and the company has vowed to make changes to protect privacy following the purchase.
With the Amazon Ring settlement reportedly behind them, Amazon’s response to the outcome of the settlement reads: “We take our responsibility to our customers and their families very seriously, and we will continue to develop more privacy features on behalf of our customers and ensure they are aware of the controls and options available to them. The whole statement can be read on Amazon’s site.
