Wherever and whenever you are, Amazon is "watching" you!

When you think of Amazon, you probably think of sitting on your couch and comparison shopping, getting exactly what you want and spending less than you would have paid in the store. You might think of the courier dropping a package off at your doorstep exactly on time, as well as the fact that you can send it back and get a full refund if there's something wrong with it. You might think about asking Alexa to put on a song or a TV program, or asking it to turn on a light, and be amazed that it actually does it (usually). You might think about Prime members getting a discount on avocados at Whole Foods (which Amazon acquired in 2017).

Amazon is known for serving customers with low prices and ruthless efficiency, which may help explain why the company has consistently topped the list of America's most valuable or popular brands in survey after survey. A recent study found that Amazon ranked second among the most trusted organizations in the U.S., ahead of Google, the police, and the higher education system, and just behind the U.S. military. While Facebook has been discredited by an endless string of privacy and election scandals, and Google has suffered from YouTube's radicalization and content censorship, Amazon is becoming more powerful than ever.

But Amazon's public image as a trusted "store of everything" belies the mysterious beast it has become - and the erosion of our privacy (online and offline) by the products it builds today. Even as competitors reassess their own data practices, reflect on their responsibilities, and call for new regulations, Amazon is doubling down on surveillance devices, refusing to accept responsibility for the way others use its technology, and ignoring the concerns of academics, media, politicians, and its own employees.

Lindsey Barrett, a full-time attorney at Georgetown Law's Institute for Public Representation (IPR), said, "We all hope they built something other than a circular prison. " The firm is legal counsel to a group of 19 watchdog organizations. Last month, IPR sent a call to the FTC (Federal Trade Commission) to investigate whether Amazon allegedly violated federal laws regarding the protection of children's online privacy. Among other concerns, they found that Amazon's Echo Dot Kids Edition smart speaker retained children's recordings and personal data even when parents tried to delete the data.Amazon blamed at least part of the problem on a software bug and said it had been fixed.

While the outcome of this case remains to be seen, this lawsuit is just the tip of the iceberg. Today's Amazon has a wide sphere of influence on the public Internet; it utilizes artificial intelligence to process data from many of the world's largest companies and agencies (including the CIA); it also tracks user shopping habits to create detailed user profiles for targeted ads; and it buys cloud-connected, AI-powered speakers and screens inside the home. It acquired a company that makes Wi-Fi routers that can form a mesh network to access our private Internet traffic. Through its subsidiary Ring, Amazon places surveillance cameras on the doorbells of millions of homes and invites them to share footage with their neighbors along with the police on a social network geared toward crime prevention. It also sells facial recognition systems to police and private companies.

Amazon is basically selling fear

As outlined in patents, contract bids, and marketing materials, tomorrow's Amazon could be even more ubiquitous. Imagine Ring doorbell cameras everywhere, and imagine what would happen if there were so many that you couldn't leave the house without alerting your neighbors and the police. Imagine what would happen if these cameras had built-in facial recognition systems that could work together as a network to identify people deemed suspicious. Imagine Ring surveillance cameras in cars and drones, Ring baby monitors inside daycare centers, and all sorts of Amazon Echo devices from schools to hotels and even hospitals. Now imagine again that all of these Alexa-powered smart speakers and screens recognize your voice and analyze your speech patterns, and can tell when you're angry, sick, or want to buy something. The Telegraph reported last week on a patent Amazon filed in 2015 for a so-called " Surveillance-as-a-Service " system, which seems a pretty apt way to summarize many of the products it already sells.

Behind this is the same company whose leaders had routinely dismissed privacy concerns as exaggerated, internal dissent as inconsequential, and possible misuse of Amazon's technology as someone else's problem.

Andy Jassy, the head of Amazon's cloud business, had said at Code Conference earlier this month, "Just because technology has the potential to be abused doesn't mean we should ban and vocally denounce it." . He argued that banning facial recognition systems (which may be effective surveillance tools but tend to discriminate against people of color) would be like banning email or knives - two technologies, one new and one very old, that can be used for both good and evil. "You can be sneaky with a knife," he said.

It should be noted that everything Amazon is making has the potential to be used for good. Its doorbell camera could catch a home invader; its facial recognition software could help authorities track suspects; Alexa could be used in countless ways at home. But when you piece it all together, the company's access to the eyes and ears of the cloud can have an Orwellian impact that seems to dwarf the tech companies that consumers tend to worry about the most when it comes to privacy - Facebook and Google.

The living room has ears.

Let's start with the company's Alexa-enabled devices like the Amazon Echo, Echo Dot, and Echo Show, which have become smart home staples. They put internet-accessed, always-on microphones (and sometimes cameras) in your kitchen, living room, or bedroom. For the paranoid, that alone might be reason to shy away from them: why risk opening up a permanent portal between the Internet and your family's most private space? But more than 100 million buyers have embraced them, and trust Amazon to protect their records in the process.

Amazon says that the Echo device will only start recording when it hears a preset wake-up call, such as "Alexa" for example. Unfortunately, their system is far from foolproof - almost every Alexa user has had a scare like this - a device that mistakenly hears a wake-up call is suddenly activated. Amazon therefore often mistakenly collects and saves snippets of conversations and, on at least one occasion, has accidentally sent these recordings to a stranger.It doesn't help that Amazon ignores the data privacy features included in rival smart speakers. And it's harder to delete recordings from an Echo than a Google Home or Apple HomePod, and Amazon has been dragging its feet about equipping devices like the Echo Show with a physical shutter on the camera to prevent accidental recordings. (Even Facebook is one.)

For a company leading the revolution in human-computer relationships, Amazon's attitude toward privacy concerns sometimes seems dismissive. In an interview on Slate's podcast If Then last year, I asked Al Lindsay, vice president of Alexa Engine Software, to point to one data privacy issue he thought was valid in relation to Amazon, or to name one privacy-related challenge his team was working on. He said he couldn't think of a single one.

So far, Amazon hasn't rolled out voice ads on Alexa, which may help reinforce the image that the company is selling something, rather than making you the product. But that doesn't mean your Echo won't collect data and profit from it. It now tracks your purchases and music choices for product recommendations. While it hasn't come under the same scrutiny as Google or Facebook, Amazon's digital advertising business is quietly booming: it's now the third largest behind the duopoly. According to recent estimates, Amazon is expected to take nearly 10 percent of the $130 billion U.S. market in 2019.

There are eyes in the street.

Then there's Ring, the "smart doorbell" startup that Amazon acquired in early 2018 for $1 billion. While most other internet giants limit their snooping to a user's online behavior, Ring lets Amazon - and you - monitor what other people are doing in the real world. Its Wi-Fi connected devices installed outside homes and businesses monitor a 30-foot radius uninterruptedly and capture video when motion is detected. Users can view camera content in real time and, for a fee, store and watch recorded content.

These surveillance capabilities aren't new: businesses and buildings have always deployed expensive security camera systems. But just as Amazon's previous e-commerce brought them to the masses, Ring has made the service mainstream by embedding doorbell cameras into a simple $200 package, while continuing to aggressively market them to the average home as well as to police departments.Amazon is now a major player in the doorbell camera market, and one analyst predicts this submarket for home surveillance cameras will reach $10 billion by 2023 will reach $10 billion.

Not content with letting users keep an eye on their own front yards, Ring has also turned its cameras into a semi-public search network through an app called Neighbors.Neighbors lets Ring owners upload, share, and comment on surveillance footage with each other, and users have the option to make it available to the police.In a statement, Amazon said. "Community Alerts for Ring encourages communities to work with local police on active cases to help keep their neighborhoods safe."

The feature could make some law enforcement agencies happy, and a CNET report found that police departments from Houston to Hammond, Indiana, are partnering with Amazon to offer citizens discounted Ring while encouraging them to share surveillance video on Neighbors. Police officers in Bloomfield, New Jersey, told CNET that thanks to Ring, "the entire township now has full camera coverage." The police chief of Mountain Brook, Alabama, told the site that accessing residents' Ring videos through Neighbors has allowed his department to achieve nearly full coverage of the city's security cameras at no cost.Amazon doesn't require users to share surveillance videos with police, but its law enforcement-facing site makes it easy for officials to make the request of any particular user -- and many may find it difficult to refuse such a request. Users technically remain anonymous in the app, but their approximate location is already obvious.Ring told OneZero that he's committed to protecting user privacy, noting that programs that require customers to share videos with police in exchange for discounts on equipment are not supported themselves.

You might think that at a time when concerns about online privacy have increased, it's only right that tech giants should give more caution to the idea of dabbling in offline surveillance. But here at Amazon, you'd be wrong. Under Ring founder Jamie Siminoff, there appears to be a group spirit within the company, and in 2016, Siminoff had issued camouflage T-shirts to employees and declared war on "dirtbag criminals "Declared war.

But the company's own security, at least before it was acquired by Amazon, has seemed a bit lax at times: ring has repeatedly been caught storing customers' home WiFi passwords in plain text and sending short 20-millisecond audio packets to outside servers. ring quickly took steps to address both of these issues, and there's no evidence of any harm being done. According to a 2018 report by The Information, starting in 2016, Ring also gave Ukrainian researchers and developers access to users' personal video recordings for analysis. amazon later claimed that blocking this practice was limited to videos shared publicly on the Neighbors app, but declined to say when the policy went into effect. ring said in a statement in which it said, "As a security company dedicated to reducing crime in our communities, security is at the core of Ring and it drives everything we do, and no one can view a user's video footage unless they give permission or share it out."

Amazon has embraced this crime-fighting idea of Ring. dave Limp, Amazon's vice president for devices, said at an event in September 2018, " I can't think of a more noble mission." Earlier this year, Ring also launched targeted ads on Facebook showing residents of Mountain View, California, actual surveillance footage that showed a woman inside the footage who appeared to be trying to break into a car.

Chris Gilliard, an English professor at Macomb Community College, said, "Amazon is basically selling fear. They're selling the idea that a society that watches more closely is a safer society." But it depends on whether or not you're the one being watched.Gilliard argues that Ring and Neighbors would actually make society less safe for people of color, who are disproportionately identified as "suspicious" in social networks with a neighborhood watch element. In the past, residents might have told a neighbor or called the police if they saw someone they thought was suspicious, "but they probably wouldn't have spread it far and wide to the whole neighborhood. But now they are."

brains in the clouds

While most people still think of Amazon primarily as an online retailer, most of its profits actually come from AWS, which is estimated to support almost half the Internet with its cloud servers. For smaller sites, AWS acts primarily as an infrastructure provider. But for some of the world's largest organizations and companies, AWS also mines and analyzes data, decodes text and images, and makes predictions and recommendations.

Major law enforcement and intelligence agencies such as the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, the Department of Defense, and the Central Intelligence Agency are among its customers.In 2017, Amazon created a special division at AWS to handle classified government intelligence.AWS customers also include Palantir, a Silicon Valley big data company co-founded by Peter Thiel, which provides software to the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Now, AWS is battling Microsoft Azure for a massive $10 billion contract to get the Pentagon on its cloud, after Google pulled out under pressure from its own employees.