Amazon faces class action lawsuit over Ring facial recognition

Amazon was sued on Monday over alleged privacy violations from its Ring doorbell cameras. The class action lawsuit, filed in Seattle by Virginia resident Charles Sigwalt, claims that Ring’s Familiar Faces feature stores images of passersby without consent. Ring announced the Familiar Faces feature last September and faced pushback from consumer protection organizations like the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), a digital rights nonprofit, as well as US Senator Ed Markey. Despite this pushback, the company moved forward with its plans to launch the feature in December.

The feature uses AI facial recognition to let Ring users identify people who regularly come to their home, such as family members or neighbors, to deliver specific notifications. While Ring users must opt in to the feature, the lawsuit centers on the lack of consent from passersby. According to the lawsuit, “Millions of other Americans passed by a Ring ​security camera and unknowingly had their facial recognition information collected.” Amazon did not immediately respond to a request for comment, but the company previously stated that face data is encrypted and unidentified faces are automatically removed after 30 days.

This legal challenge follows a history of alleged privacy violations at Amazon. In 2023, Amazon settled with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), the US consumer protection regulator, and paid a $5.8 million fine over allegations that the company’s staff and contractors had improperly accessed private videos from women customers. The FTC’s complaint stated that every employee had full access to every customer video, even if the worker had no need to access that footage. Ring has also maintained relationships with law enforcement and once granted police the ability to request Ring footage from users without a warrant.

The company has faced similar backlash over other features, such as Search Party, an AI-powered feature that uses Ring footage to find lost pets. Days after introducing Search Party, Ring canceled its plans to partner with video surveillance company Flock Safety, which has reportedly given footage to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), the US immigration enforcement agency, and other federal agencies. When Ring founder Jamie Siminoff spoke with TechCrunch after Ring canceled its arrangement with Flock Safety, he indicated that the deal would’ve created too much of a “workload.”

Why it matters

The lawsuit highlights the growing tension between consumer convenience features like AI facial recognition and the privacy rights of non-users who are captured by surveillance devices in public spaces.