Amazon was defendant on Monday for alleged privacy violations by its Ring doorbell cameras. The class action lawsuit, filed in Seattle by Virginia resident Charles Sigwalt, claims that Ring’s Familiar Faces feature stores images of bystanders without consent.
Ring announced the Familiar Faces feature last September and faced pushback from consumer protection organizations like the FEPas well as Senator Ed Markey (D-MA). But the company moved forward with its plans to launch the feature in December.
Familiar Faces allows Ring users to identify people who regularly visit their home using AI facial recognition. That way, if a regular guest, like a family member, mailman, or neighbor, knocks on the door, the device will be able to recognize them and send more specific notifications like “Dad is at the door,” rather than “a person is at the door.” Ring users must opt-in to this feature, but privacy advocates noted that people who pass through these Ring doorbells have not consented to these facial recognition scans. That same concern is at the center of this class action lawsuit.
According to the lawsuit, “Millions of Americans passed by a Ring security camera and unknowingly had their facial recognition information collected.”
Amazon did not immediately respond to a request for comment. At the time the feature was released, the company stated that facial data is encrypted and never shared; Unidentified faces are automatically deleted after 30 days.
Amazon’s Ring has a history of troubling behavior regarding user privacy. In 2023, Amazon established with the FTC and paid a $5.8 million fine over allegations that company staff and contractors improperly accessed private videos of female clients; The FTC complaint said that all employees had full access to all customer videos, even if the worker had no need to access those images. Ring has also maintained relationships with law enforcement and once granted police the ability to request Ring images from users without a court order.
After airing a Super Bowl ad to introduce Search Party, an AI-powered feature that uses Ring images to find lost pets, the company faced similar reaction. Days later, Ring canceled its plans to partner with video surveillance company Flock Safety, which has reportedly provided images to ICE and other federal agencies. When Ring founder Jamie Siminoff spoke with TechCrunch After Ring canceled its deal with Flock Safety, it indicated that the deal would have created too much “workload.”
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