Amazon’s Ring plans to scan everyone’s face at the door
Facial recognition technology is increasingly used in airports, police investigations and sports venues.
Now Amazon’s Ring says it’s putting facial recognition for the first time into its home security doorbells and video cameras. It’s intended to identify your sister, a neighbor or other people you know.
While the feature will be optional for Ring device owners, privacy advocates say it’s unfair that wherever the technology is in use, anyone within sight will have their faces scanned to determine who’s a friend or stranger.
The Ring feature is “invasive for anyone who walks within range of your Ring doorbell,” said Calli Schroeder, senior counsel at the consumer advocacy and policy group Electronic Privacy Information Center. “They are not consenting to this.”
Ring spokeswoman Emma Daniels said that Ring’s features empower device owners to be responsible users of facial recognition and to comply with relevant laws that “may require obtaining consent prior to identifying people.” (Amazon founder Jeff Bezos owns The Washington Post.)
Other companies, including Google, already offer facial recognition for connected doorbells and cameras. You might use similar technology to unlock your iPhone or tag relatives in digital photo albums.
But privacy watchdogs said that Ring’s use of facial recognition poses added risks, because the company’s products are embedded in our neighborhoods and have a history of raising social, privacy and legal questions.
How Ring’s facial recognition will work
The feature called “Familiar Faces” will be available for new Ring doorbells and security cameras starting in December. The company offered few details about the feature during a product announcement and in a post Tuesday, but agreed to answer my questions.
The next time that person shows up, you can get an alert that says “Emma” or “neighbor” is at the door, rather than the typical notice of, “There’s a person at your front door.”
Facial recognition features like this work by capturing the unique mathematical contours of each face, sometimes called a face template or faceprint. Each faceprint would then be compared with the previously identified faces in the Ring database, said Albert Fox Cahn, executive director of the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project, a privacy advocacy group.
It’s typically legal to film in public places, including your doorway. And in most of the United States, your permission is not legally required to collect or use your faceprint.
Privacy experts said that Ring’s use of the technology risks crossing ethical boundaries because of its potential for widespread use in residential areas without people’s knowledge or consent.
You choose to unlock your iPhone by scanning your face. A food delivery courier, a child selling candy or someone walking by on the sidewalk is not consenting to have their face captured, stored and compared against Ring’s database, said Adam Schwartz, privacy litigation director for the consumer advocacy group Electronic Frontier Foundation.
“It’s troubling that companies are making a product that by design is taking biometric information from people who are doing the innocent act of walking onto a porch,” he said.
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