Neighborhood surveillance technologies, including Amazon Ring and its partner neighborhood watch app, Neighbors, erode communities’ sense of safety and social trust.1, 2 They substitute racial profiling, vigilantism, and neighbor-on-neighbor spying for public safety.3 Their expansion turns friends into informants, extends the surveillance state, and creates hotbeds for intolerance.4 Despite this, as of May 2021, 10% of police departments had joined Ring’s surveillance platform.5 Amounting to over 1,800 agencies.6 This is unacceptable.

Why Ring is a Problem

Technologies like Ring imagine threats where they don’t exist, making the community no safer.7 An investigation of 40 police departments in eight states found no evidence of crime reduction due to Ring—but did find that officers spent too much time “reviewing clips of non-criminal issues such as racoons.”8 This model ordinance addresses the problem by canceling contracts between the local government and Amazon for tools like Ring. It also prohibits the local government from entering into any future agreements for similar technology.

Please Note: While S.T.O.P. strongly supports passage of this model legislation, with customizations to reflect Amazon’s behavior in each community, we’re unable to ensure the accuracy of third-party statements in support of this model bill. As such, we do not endorse any third-party statements in support of this legislation unless specifically stated elsewhere.

1 “Berserk: The National Consequences of Mistrust,” Baron PA, February 8, 2022, https://baronpa.com/library/berserk-the-national-consequences-of-mistrust/.
2 Jessi Hempel, “For Nextdoor, Eliminating Racism Is No Quick Fix,” Wired, February 16, 2017, https://www.wired.com/2017/02/for-nextdoor-eliminating-racism-is-no-quick-fix/.
3 Caroline Haskins, “Amazon’s Home Security Company Is Turning Everyone Into Cops,” Vice, February 7 2019, https://www.vice.com/en/article/qvyvzd/amazons-home-security-company-is-turning-everyone-into-cops.
4 Id.
5 Lauren Bridges, “Amazon’s Ring is the Largest Civilian Surveillance Network the US has ever Seen,” The Guardian, May 18, 2021, https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/may/18/amazon-ring-largest-civilian-surveillance-network-us.
6 Id.
7 Mark Harris, “Video Doorbell Firm Ring Says Its Devices Slash Crime—but the Evidence Looks Flimsy,” MIT Technology Review, October 19, 2018, https://www.technologyreview.com/2018/10/19/103922/video-doorbell-firm-ring-says-its-devices-slash-crimebut-the-evidence-looks-flimsy/.
8 Cyrus Francisco, “Cute Videos, but Little Evidence: Police Say Amazon Ring Isn’t Much of a Crime Fighter,” NBC News, February 15, 2020, https://www.nbcnews.com/news/all/cute-videos-little-evidence-police-say-amazon-ring-isn-t-n1136026.