Nest Competitor Ring Reportedly Gave Employees Full Access To Customers' Live Camera Feeds (9to5google.com)

Amazon-owned Ring allowed employees to access customers' live camera feeds, according to a report from The Intercept. "Ring's engineers and executives have 'highly privileged access' to live camera feeds from customers' devices," reports 9to5Google. "This includes both doorbells facing the outside world, as well as cameras inside a person's home. A team tasked with annotating video to aid in object recognition captured 'people kissing, firing guns, and stealing.'" From the report: U.S. employees specifically had access to a video portal intended for technical support that reportedly allowed "unfiltered, round-the-clock live feeds from some customer cameras." What's surprising is how this support tool was apparently not restricted to only employees that dealt with customers. The Intercept notes that only a Ring customer's email address was required to access any live feed.

According to the report's sources, employees had a blase attitude to this potential privacy violation, but noted that they "never personally witnessed any egregious abuses." Meanwhile, a second group of Ring employees working on R&D in Ukraine had access to a folder housing "every video created by every Ring camera around the world." What's more, these employees had a "corresponding database that linked each specific video file to corresponding specific Ring customers." Also bothersome is Ring's reported stance towards encryption. Videos in that bucket were unencrypted due to the costs associated with implementation and "lost revenue opportunities due to restricted access." In response to the report, Ring said: "We have strict policies in place for all our team members. We implement systems to restrict and audit access to information. We hold our team members to a high ethical standard and anyone in violation of our policies faces discipline, including termination and potential legal and criminal penalties. In addition, we have zero tolerance for abuse of our systems and if we find bad actors who have engaged in this behavior, we will take swift action against them."

Comments

Duh

[sexconker]

What did you think would happen?

Re:Duh

[swillden]

What did you think would happen?

That some (perhaps most) of these companies would cut corners and do the wrong thing was inevitable. But the implication of your question is that it's inevitable everywhere, which is not true. It's perfectly possible to construct a system so that no employees have access to the content other than those who need it to troubleshoot specific problems at customer request, and even those are closely audited and monitored. Yes, even the sysadmins can be disallowed access, through use of encryption and separation of responsibilities applied both to the system architecture and to the groups of administrators who manage different elements of the system.

I know this can be done because I've seen it done (and participated in doing it), including regular pen testing and ongoing security analysis to ensure it's tight and stays tight. It's not even that expensive to do on a large scale. It's challenging for startups to do well, but can be done even there; liberal use of cloud computing helps because it's easy to put the bulk data processing in a location where it's physically inaccessible to all of your employees, and logical access can easily be partitioned among admins. Appropriate use of encryption is essential, to ensure that no system in isolation (and therefore the managers of that system) has access to sensitive data in plaintext. Then you just need to carefully architect, control and audit the ways in which ciphertext and decryption keys can be brought together.

commentsubject

[Anonymous Coward]

phonehome device owners shocked to learn device is phoning home

welcome to the future

welcome to Cloudthing, Smartproduct, and Alwaysonline

this is for your safety
this is for your convenience
this is for your user experience to be reliable and carefully controlled
this is not for our sake

Re:commentsubject

[Anonymous Coward]

Wait, wot? Having a camera on your porch is the same as harassing black citizens and wasting police resources? I don't see it. I think you're simple and/or upset about something unrelated.

Re: commentsubject

[Anonymous Coward]

I think there should be no privacy, especially for those in power.

Re: commentsubject

[b0s0z0ku]

Privacy is a good thing as long as we have stupid social/religious norms.

Re:commentsubject

[HornWumpus]

WTF?

All SJWs are authoritarian assholes. Your post makes no sense.

Re:commentsubject

[thesupraman]

Are those different from the kind of cowards who rob someone of the wrong colour walking in the neighborhood?

Just wondering.

Re:commentsubject

[suutar]

wanting to know which of my cats is walking on the countertop makes me a busybody?
wanting to know when the UPS guy drops off a package on my front porch makes me a busybody? ... I'm still not seeing it.

Re:commentsubject

[zugmeister]

Funny, I always thought the phrases "authoritarian asshole" and "SJW cunt" belonged together.
Before you get upset, name me three SJW causes that don't attempt to assert control over others.

Re:commentsubject

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not about what they do (it's certainly not fighting injustice). It's how they do it. They use authoritariand and downright facist methods to push their ideology on others.

Re: commentsubject

[Anonymous Coward]

SJW answer to everything - government control. Social control when they do not have sufficient political power.

How is that not authoritarian?

Re:commentsubject

[serviscope_minor]

First give a definition of of SJW that actually encompasses any people and isn't applicable to moe or less anyone of any politicial orientation you don't like.

Re:commentsubject

[crypticedge]

Wanting to know who is at the door without having to go up to the door is not "being a busy body"

It's also far safer. The person on the other side can't shoot through the door and hit you if you're not near the door. They also can't use a key fob scanner on you because you won't be in range. Plus, you can see if someone is stealing your packages, and have proof of it.

Let me fix that for you.

[taustin]

In addition, we have zero tolerance for abuse of our systems and if we find bad actors who have engaged in this behavior, we will take swift action against them."

I think you mean "if we get caught with bad actors."

The worst acting here is pretending this wasn't all done intentionally.

Call me a shitposting troll if you must,

[HotNeedleOfInquiry]

But anyone that trusts their privacy to Ring gets what they deserve.

Not just Nest

[Ichijo]

...but any network-connected camera with proprietary firmware might phone home without your knowledge. The only sure way to prevent this with untrusted firmware is by isolating those cameras on their own network with no Internet access.

Re:Not just Nest

[JaredOfEuropa]

Done and done. I found having a doorbell with a camera in it is very useful (we don’t have Ring though), but you can be sure that sucker shares a separate VLAN with the other security cameras, with no access to the internet. And when we are at home, the indoor cameras have their power cut physically. Until we see CEOs in jail for such blatant unsafe practises, I’ll always double down on privacy measures when using IoT devices. And after that day... I’ll continue to do so. It is not hard to enjoy a little convenience without sacrificing or risking your privacy.

Get the DEBARK Smart Video Doorbell

[JustAnotherOldGuy]

I recommend that instead of Ring, people should get the DEBARK Smart Video Doorbell.

It's less expensive (~$78 on Amazon) and it can record to SD card, SDVR, or a cloud service of your choosing (optional). Comes with a free remote indoor chime, and from what I understand, it's easy for it to connect to your old doorbell chime. Can be used wired or wireless. Two-way audio, and very good night vision capability.

Ring is waaaaaay overpriced and they force you to use their paid cloud service. Yes, it's only $3 a month, but why be forced to pay anything? The cheaper models won't let you do anything besides receive alerts and watch live video.

And, for the record, I have no connection to DEBARK, I just think their wireless doorbell is FAR better than the crap that Ring puts out.

Re:Get the DEBARK Smart Video Doorbell

[Miamicanes]

If you're not at home when somebody rings the doorbell, will you get the notification and be able to launch the viewer app on your phone in time to see who rang the bell before they're in their car backing out of your driveway?

It's not entirely Ring's fault (Google kind of pulled the rug out from under them with regard to push notification timing post-Marshmallow), but the real-world massive time lag was probably the biggest disappointment when I got mine 2 years ago. From my own experience, if you aren't at home & connected to the same wifi network as the doorbell the moment someone presses the button, you'll be lucky if your phone plays the "doorbell" notification within 20-30 seconds. Add another 10-20 seconds to unlock your phone and launch Ring's viewer app, and your likelihood of getting a chance to even SAY anything to whomever rang the doorbell before they're already gone is pretty low.

Even if you're at home & connected to the same wifi network as the doorbell, you almost have to have the phone in your hands & already unlocked to have any chance of getting the "Ring" app launched before whomever rang the doorbell turns around and walks away.

Want a camera at home?

[AHuxley]

Make sure its a USB webcam that only gets used when needed.
Build your own CCTV network.
Network your own CCTV to a wider network you designed, understand and trust.
Don't let camera and microphones connect to network you did not set up.

Stop trusting Amazon, Google, Facebook, et al

[Anonymous Coward]

If you are a technologist, then lead the way. Gently educate your family and friends that *everything* is tracked by these companies, especially by the large tech firms that offer "free" services. These companies do not respect privacy or personally identifying information (PII) because it's a big reason how they make money. The US has no laws to protect individuals' personal data. The US has no restrictions on what data can be collected and stored beyond the weak and easily bypassed age checks.

Non-technical people have no real understanding about how easy and effortlessly it is to log, store, and analyze every keystroke, mouse movement, mouse click, touch gesture, search query, location, picture, video, audio, document, email, phone call, website visit, instant message, etc. And they have no concept that the largest tech companies also buy personal data from smaller companies to supplement their own.

The US needs protections for privacy now.

Opps, they are selling the videos

[theCat]

OP: Videos in that bucket were unencrypted due to the costs associated with implementation and "lost revenue opportunities due to restricted access."

Translation: They are selling the videos to 3rd-parties.

Goddamn.

IF ONLY

[Laserfuzz]

If only there were some way they could WATCH their employees remotely......any ideas anyone?

Re:“NOPE!”

[JaredOfEuropa]

To be fair, it sounds like Amazon had little to do with this snafu. Not malice, not a desire for customer data, but simple negligence combined with bone shattering stupidity. Even so I agree with your sentiment: connected products that belong to data mining firms like Amazon and Google are doubly tainted. A voice assistant would make a great addition to my smart home setup but I am not adding one until they can be run off the cloud.