By late 2019, the doorbell company Ring, which is owned by Amazon, had 400 partnerships with police departments across the country. This allowed police to access people’s footage from their homes for surveillance – and there’s a major problem with this.
2020 saw the number of partnerships increase substantially to over 1000 departments, at a time when outcry against police brutality and state violence led to one of the largest movements in history! Black people are particularly affected by this spying expansion.
Amazon already donates to police foundations, but its willingness to work with the police in order to surveil us is a major threat to our privacy. This is also a concern because of the use of discriminatory facial recognition that puts Black people at risk in many ways.
These are just a few of the reasons there are efforts by activists to challenge Amazon’s partnerships with authorities. People who know the risks of big data and policing understand there’s nothing good in it for us, but we certainly don’t have to be quiet about it.
We have to value our privacy, which is especially important when we live under the threat of police violence! Making sure we’re not just giving away the right to know who’s surveilling our homes is of the utmost importance – because we know we can’t just trust policing.