Ring admits its employees tried to access customers’ private video

We knew hackers were creeping on Ring video feeds, but Ring’s own employees?

In a Jan. 6 letter addressed to five U.S. Senators, Amazon-owned Ring admitted that, yes, an unspecified small number of employees have at least tried to inappropriately access customers’ home surveillance videos. Which, well, damn.

The letter, obtained and published by Motherboard’s Joseph Cox, acknowledges four internal reports of employees going above and beyond their job duties in exactly the wrong kind of way. 

“Over the last four years, Ring has received four complaints or inquiries regarding a team
member’s access to Ring video data,” reads the letter. “Although each of the individuals involved in these incidents was authorized to view video data, the attempted access to that data exceeded what was necessary for their job functions.”

Ring’s letter was in response to a host of questions submitted in November of 2019 by Senators Ron Wyden, Chris Van Hollen, Edward Markey, Christopher Coons, and Gary Peters. It is merely the latest unpleasant revelation in an ongoing series of unpleasant revelations about the company.

That Ring employees have attempted to access video generated by home cameras shouldn’t come as a surprise. We’ve seen variations on this theme of abusing access to customer info at Twitter and Snapchat. And, in general, giving employees access to huge amounts of private customer data is just asking for abuse.

Ring, especially, should know this. In January of last year, the Intercept reported that at one point Ring gave certain contractors total access to unencrypted customer video streams. 

And what did they reportedly do with it? According the Intercept’s source, “Ring employees at times showed each other videos they were annotating and described some of the things they had witnessed, including people kissing, firing guns, and stealing.”

But simply because this latest abuse by Ring’s employees may not be surprising, that doesn’t mean it isn’t creepy. It is very creepy — a reality emphasized by the fact that people often place Ring cameras inside their homes.

We reached out to Amazon with a host of questions about the letter. For example, there are four “complaints or inquiries” referenced, but how many actual incidents were there? Also, the letter says “attempted access” — were those attempts successful?

“We do not comment on personnel matters,” responded a company spokesperson. 

The spokesperson also responded with a blanket press statement about Ring’s unveiling of a new “Control Center” at CES. It’s unclear if that newly offered control includes the ability to stop Ring employees from creeping on your home videos.