Lawsuit
FTC: Ring spied on customers
2023The FTC found Ring let employees and contractors watch customers' private videos and failed to secure them, resulting in a $5.8M settlement.
TA
Individual
Tom Alberg
Early angel investor & board member
Seattle venture investor (later co-founder of Madrona Venture Group) who was one of Amazon's first angel investors in 1995 and served on Amazon's board of directors from June 1996; he was a key early advisor to Bezos until his death in 2022.
On the record
Companies
Incidents in their orbit
Investigation
2,000+ police footage partnerships
2021Ring built partnerships with thousands of police and fire agencies to request residents' doorbell footage, turning private homes into a distributed surveillance network.
Investigation
Falsely matched 28 members of Congress
2018The ACLU showed Amazon's Rekognition falsely matched 28 members of Congress to mugshots — disproportionately people of color — while Amazon marketed it to police.
Ban / Halt
Police-use moratorium
2020Amid bias findings and protests, Amazon paused police use of Rekognition — a moratorium it later extended indefinitely.
- ↳Amazon pauses police use of Rekognition — Reuters, 2020