Civilian Deputies: Ring, the New Surveillance, and Risks
Ring and its peers aren’t just creating security systems. They’re redefining social control
Amazon’s Ring, and similar smart security systems, are the harbingers of gentrification. Neighborhoods in Washington, D.C. where home values are rapidly rising, for example, are by and large adopting a program by the municipal government which provides large discounts for doorbell surveillance cameras like Ring. They, and neighborhoods which are largely white and wealthy to begin with, receive the lion’s share of these cameras; areas which historically have experienced less investment receive fewer cameras. Regardless of where they are, Amazon has a vast selection of data from these cameras, as do the police departments with which it partners to distribute them. Surveillance in itself is not new, but these systems create a new phenomenon: a privatized Panopticon.
A Panopticon is a system of social control originally taking the form of a prison; specifically, a ring-shaped building with several floors of cells, surrounding a central tower. In the tower, guards can monitor any cell at any time. To adapt, prisoners act as if they are always being watched, altering their behavior to match whatever the guards expect of them.
Today, we encounter Panopticons more as metaphor than as reality: take a walk in most major cities, and you will see city-owned-CCTV cameras. With them and Ring cameras, civilians caught in their lenses know they are being watched and, consciously or not, alter their behavior accordingly. The Ring surveillance system differs in that it presents a more visible public-private partnership. Amazon is one of the largest firms in the world, and it has access to millions of these systems throughout the country, as do many police departments. And while many individual police departments are technically decentralized, Amazon is a central entity — it has access to these systems on a much broader scale than any individual police department can ever hope to.
The cameras also deputize civilians into surveilling their own communities. The cameras have a wide field-of-view; they can capture the surroundings of the home, like the porch, the surrounding street, or the homes across the street. But Ring also offers larger security systems with cameras for in-home use, and all of these cameras can stream footage live to the owner’s smartphone. Often the security systems are used explicitly to snoop: to monitor one’s kids and guests, for example, or to monitor workers in the home, like housekeepers and babysitters, without their consent. One person admitted to doing just that in an unscientific survey by The Washington Post, knowing that they should tell their workers and guests, but not doing so because “they won’t be as candid”.
At least private companies have privacy policies!
But there are also risks to the snoopers. If a hacker gains access to the security system, harassment, cyberstalking, and even identity theft all become possible. We’ve all heard of incidents of men surveilling children through these cameras. Some of these cameras also have speakers so the owner can interact with people beyond them through their phone’s microphone. Hackers can take advantage of this, too. We have seen incidents where hackers gain access to cameras in children’s rooms and shout racist slurs, or threaten kidnappings.
This begs the question: is Ring’s premise sound? Porch pirates are annoying, but has crime gotten so bad that we need Ring, consequences be damned?
The answer to that question is, in fact, no. Our perception of crime, at least in the United States, is actually pretty poor. Over the past few decades, property and violent crime rates per capita have fallen significantly, yet the polling firm Gallup consistently shows that, year-over-year, the vast majority of Americans think crime rates are increasing.
So is Ring a solution searching for a problem? It may certainly be a solution to a manufactured problem. Turn on your local news channel and you’ll more likely than not hear about another murder, perhaps warning that the killer is still on the loose. The body of research tells us that these sensationalized crimes receive a disproportionate amount of media attention to more common crimes, such as physical assault. Simultaneously, especially in this current moment, with racism and police brutality at the fore, politicians and other figures latch onto this sensationalization, promising to bring back “law and order”. Narratives speak louder than data and the facts.
Which brings us again to the question of Ring. Its promotion through public policy raises serious privacy concerns. And while low contemporary crime rates make it seem like a solution in search of a problem, it appears instead to be a solution to a problem manufactured by United States politics. Perhaps instead of using it as a crutch, we can divert more attention to programs which actually foster community safety, such as education, childcare, and other programs which address the economic and sociological needs that cause crime in the first place. We shouldn’t get lost in the surveillance sauce.
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