US lawmaker presses Amazon to drop facial recognition plan for Ring

Senator Edward J. Markey, a senior member of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation, is urging Amazon to abandon its plans to integrate facial recognition technology into its Ring doorbells.

In a letter to Amazon CEO Andrew Jassy, Markey warned that the company’s new “Familiar Faces” feature represents a dangerous step toward normalizing mass surveillance in American neighborhoods.

Markey described the rollout as “a dramatic expansion of surveillance technology” that poses “vast new privacy and civil liberties risks,” arguing that ordinary people should not have to fear being tracked or recorded when walking past a home equipped with a Ring camera.

Markey’s letter represents the continuation of a campaign he began six years ago to hold Amazon accountable for its surveillance practices. Earlier interventions prompted modest reforms, such as clearer consent prompts and the elimination of automatic footage sharing with police.

Still, Markey argues that these measures do not address the deeper problem of unregulated biometric monitoring.

Markey’s latest demand signals a return of the Ring debate to the legislative arena, where lawmakers in both parties have expressed unease about the spread of facial recognition technology across both the public and private sectors.

Whether Amazon complies with Markey’s request or proceeds with its December rollout may determine the next major flashpoint in the national fight over privacy and surveillance.

Amazon announced in September that it would begin offering facial recognition on certain Ring devices by December. According to the company this feature will allow homeowners to identify people who frequently appear on their doorstep, such as friends or delivery workers.

Markey countered that this functionality would inevitably collect and analyze the faces of everyone who happens to come into view, regardless of whether they have given consent. He wrote that while Ring owners may choose to activate facial recognition, “that safeguard does not extend to individuals who are unknowingly captured on video by a Ring doorbell camera.”

Those people, he emphasized, “never receive notice, let alone the opportunity to opt in or out of having their face scanned and logged in a database using FRT.” Markey called the practice “an unacceptable privacy violation” and urged Amazon to cancel its plans before deployment.

In 2019, Markey pressed Amazon for details about Ring’s privacy policies after reports that the company allowed users to capture footage beyond their property lines and offered police departments direct access to user videos through partnerships with hundreds of local agencies.

Amazon admitted at the time that it had few controls to prevent abuse, no clear limits on how long law enforcement could retain footage, and no answer to whether it intended to add facial recognition capabilities.

Markey said the company’s silence on the latter question now “speaks volumes” considering its latest announcement.

Three years later, in 2022, Markey again accused Amazon of disregarding privacy norms. He pointed to the company’s refusal to make end-to-end encryption the default for consumers, to turn off automatic audio recording, and to clarify the range at which devices record conversations.

Markey also criticized the expansion of the Neighbors Public Safety Service, a portal through which police departments can request footage directly from Ring users. These actions, he argued, revealed “glaring failures” to protect Americans’ data even before the company decided to integrate biometric technology.

In his latest letter to Amazon, Markey warned that combining facial recognition with Ring’s existing systems could create a new layer of surveillance that extends well beyond individual homes. He noted that the feature’s potential connection to law enforcement raises troubling questions about government overreach.

Citing reporting by Wired that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has begun using facial recognition on agents’ mobile devices, Markey cautioned that Amazon’s data could form a “new pipeline” for federal surveillance.

Markey said the convergence of corporate and government monitoring “represents the precise privacy and civil liberties danger that I and other FRT opponents have repeatedly warned about.”

Markey demanded a written response from Amazon by November 21 that addresses a series of detailed questions, including how Amazon plans to obtain informed consent from individuals whose biometric data is captured by Ring cameras, including passersby and delivery workers, and whether the company provides notice to people approaching homes where Ring devices are active.

Markey also requested clarification on how long Amazon retains biometric data, what policies govern its deletion, and whether individuals can request that their information be removed.

The senator also is seeking answers about how Amazon tests its facial recognition software for demographic bias, whether those results are disclosed publicly, and what steps are taken to prevent disproportionate harm to communities of color, immigrants, and other vulnerable groups.

Finally, Markey pressed Amazon to disclose its policies for sharing biometric data with law enforcement, including whether agencies such as the Department of Homeland Security can access live streams or stored data, and whether users are notified when such requests occur.

Markey’s letter situates the debate over Ring’s new facial recognition feature within a larger national conversation about privacy, civil liberties, and the role of technology companies in public safety.

Amazon’s Ring network already spans millions of households, and the Neighbors app has created an ecosystem where footage from private devices can be quickly shared with police. Privacy advocates argue that layering biometric tracking on top of this infrastructure risks turning residential neighborhoods into zones of persistent surveillance.

Markey echoed those warnings, writing that “this convenience feature for Ring doorbell owners is not worth the vast surveillance web that it enables,” and that the only responsible step is for Amazon to abandon its facial recognition rollout entirely.

Amazon has not yet publicly responded to Markey’s letter but has previously maintained that its facial recognition feature will be optional and that stored data will remain encrypted, presenting the update as a user convenience rather than a surveillance expansion.

Civil liberties advocates counter that Amazon’s assurances are undermined by its past partnerships with law enforcement and by the absence of explicit safeguards for non-consenting bystanders.

Article Topics

Amazon  |  Amazon Web Services (AWS)  |  biometric bias  |  biometrics  |  data privacy  |  facial recognition  |  law enforcement  |  Ring doorbells  |  U.S. Government  |  video surveillance