Amazon’s Ring fired staff for trying to access customer data

A Ring doorbell camera at a home in Wolcott, Connecticut. Ring has been beset by allegations of privacy flubs in the last year, from a report that employees had previously passed around unencrypted footage captured by doorbells, to claims from civil liberties groups that Ring’s partnerships with law enforcement, which allow police departments to ask that doorbell owners turn over footage to aid investigations, risk enabling a government surveillance network. — AP

Amazon.com Inc said its Ring subsidiary fired at least four employees for improperly seeking access to customer data over the last four years, the latest privacy headache for the video doorbell maker it acquired in 2018.

"Although each of the individuals involved in these incidents was authorised to view video data, the attempted access to that data exceeded what was necessary for their job functions,” Brian Huseman, Amazon’s vice-president of public policy, wrote in response to an inquiry from five Democratic senators about the company’s privacy and data security practices.