New York (CNN) — Many Americans feel growing unease about the proliferation of cameras — in people’s hands, on homes and businesses, in public spaces for police use — that seem to be capturing our every move, sparking backlash, protests and users ditching or destroying devices.
Now Ring, one of the largest home security camera providers in the United States, is rolling out a new encryption technology that it hopes will give customers more confidence about the privacy of their cameras and footage.
It is the latest move by a security camera company to address consumers’ privacy and surveillance fears. Earlier this month, law enforcement technology firm Flock introduced new police auditing and accountability controls.
Ring’s update effectively means customers don’t have to worry about any third parties, including law enforcement and Amazon itself, viewing their home security footage without their consent, according to the Amazon-owned company. That was already Ring’s policy, but the new form of encryption reinforces that on a technical level.
The technology is called TAKE — an acronym for “throw away the key.” When stored in the cloud, a user’s videos will be kept in what Ring says is effectively a secure digital vault to which only the user has the key. The company says it will only get the virtual key to run features like video search for a limited time with a customer’s approval and then will “throw away the key,” so Ring doesn’t have ongoing access to the videos.
Ring will roll out the new encryption as the default security setting on all of its cameras starting in September.
“People are always going to have questions about, like, how do you store it? How do you protect it?” Ring founder Jamie Siminoff told CNN. “As a company we’ve done, I believe, a really good job with that, but this is the physical way of now giving them confidence … this is the show, not just tell.”
Ring has long faced criticism over its relationship with law enforcement.
The company faced intense scrutiny earlier this year after a Super Bowl ad about a lost dog feature prompted surveillance fears. Weeks later, Ring canceled a controversial partnership with Flock.
Ring says TAKE provides a similar level of protection as end-to-end encryption, where sensitive data is effectively scrambled when traveling between one trusted endpoint (like a camera) and another (like a customer’s phone) and no outsider can access it. But the company says the new technology is more effective for the multi-device, multi-user configurations used by many Ring customers.
Ring users can still voluntarily share footage with law enforcement if police request it through the company’s Neighbors app.
Ring began offering end-to-end encryption in 2021, following calls from privacy advocates, but it restricted how people could use their devices. The company says it will retain end-to-end encryption as an option starting in September.
The new technology may address some users’ fears about who can access Ring camera footage. But even non-Ring users have raised concerns about privacy violations when they walk by a neighbor’s home or walk up to a friend’s front door.
Siminoff said he hopes that Ring’s new encryption will help ease those fears, too — at least to some extent.
“I think there is an anxiety of, like, I just don’t know what’s happening with this (footage),” Siminoff said. “I think people will hear about this and then feel more comfortable when they see a Ring camera, knowing that there’s a default encryption on it, that it’s locked to the specific person.”
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