Ring

Ring is the startup developing doorbells with video surveillance and connection to the Internet. "Smart" calls of the company allow to answer calls to a door from the smartphone or the tablet using audio-or video conference worldwide. Devices support Wi-Fi, can write HD video and store such files in a cloud. Besides, Ring gadgets are equipped with the motion sensor with a possibility of setup of notifications in case of activity in the territory, adjacent to the house.

Ring founded in 2012. From that moment to February, 2018 the company attracted in total $210 million investments.

2019: Use of living Ukrainians instead of AI

In January, 2019 it became known of use of the Ukrainian IT specialists by Amazon company instead of artificial intelligence in work of "smart" calls which allow to write and monitor in real time the one who enters and leaves the house.

The scandal story was published in the The Intercept edition with reference to the informed source. According to its data, in 2016 unlimited access to the cloud storage of Amazon S3 where all videos shot by devices of the Ring company purchased by Amazon for $1 billion in 2018 are stored was opened for the Ukrainian developers. Content placed in a cloud is not ciphered as the management of Ring decided to save on it. In addition to videos, the database which correlates each video to the specific user of Ring was opened for the Ukrainian employees.

The Amazon company used work of the Ukrainian developers who spied upon Americans and trained a neuronet

The company opened for employees access to videos because of shortcomings of work of the software — the neuronet of Amazon did not cope and often gave a wrong alarm. The camera incorrectly reacted to the passing cars and the falling leaves.

To train a system, the company employed developers from Ukraine. Operators manually mark objects on record for the subsequent entering into the special register (it is supposed that they do it still — by January, 2019) as the artificial intelligence was not able to do it independently.

It is about the Neighbors service developed by Ring which participants can provide information on security of the area and to leave comments on it. These data, as envisioned by developers, should help law enforcement agencies to solve quicker the crimes and to prevent them. However effective work of service requires correctly working AI system capable to distinguish criminals. The Ring programmers did not manage to adjust the correct automatic analysis of objects, and then the company decided to use living people.^[1]

According to data of the informant of The Intercept, Ring also gave to top managers and developers from office in the USA access to the video portal of technical support using which it was possible to browse round the clock broadcastings from cameras of some clients. To see broadcasting, the owner of admission of the high level needs to know only the client's mail.

Sources of the edition note that they did not detect very gross violations (such as data transmission to third parties), however learned about a number of unseemly situations. For example, developers browsed records from outside and internal cameras of the colleagues and joked on that with whom those came back home after the appointments.

The representative of Ring assured The Intercept that in the company adhere to "high ethical standards" and "do not suffer abuse". Later in the company directly said that "employees of Ring never had and never provided to employees access to forward translations of the Ring devices".

These records are received only from public videos of Ring from the Neighbors application (according to our conditions of provision of services) and from a small part of users who gave the written consent to that we could browse and use their video for such purposes — reported in the company.

Specify in the edition that this statement contradicts data which were received from the informants knowledgeable about the events in the company.

In the publication it is also said that privacy policy does not contain mentioning of the accessibility of strangers to data of clients.

2018: Amazon was purchased by Ring for $1 billion

On February 27, 2018 announced Amazon Ring purchase. Though the price of the transaction of the company was not set, Reuters and The Wall Street Journal is known of it — $1 billion.

If really paid Amazon such amount, then this acquisition became the second in value in the history of the American Internet giant. The large remains purchase of retailer Whole Foods for $13.5 billion.

"Smart" call of Ring

Purchase of Ring marks attempt of Amazon to be fixed in the fast-growing market of "smart" devices and security technologies of housing. The equipment of a startup can be built in Amazon Key — the "smart" system allowing couriers to leave sendings in the house of the customer. Also devices can work based on the voice assistant  to Alexa.

The analyst of Baird Equity Research Colin Sebastian considers that "smart" gadgets for security will become an important factor which will promote that consumers shopped on the Internet with home delivery more often.

We will be able to reach bigger, cooperating with such inventive, customer-oriented company as Amazon —  reported  in Ring company.

It is expected that Ring will continue to develop independently, but under a wing of Amazon as it happens to Twitch, Zappos and other projects.^[2]

Notes