Amazon $AMZN's Ring unit is facing a federal lawsuit alleging that its doorbell cameras collected and stored facial recognition data from passersby without their knowledge or consent.
The suit, filed Monday in federal court in Seattle by Virginia resident Charles Sigwalt, pursues class-action certification and demands a minimum of $5 million on behalf of the proposed class. At the center of the complaint is a Ring feature called "Familiar Faces," which applies AI to build a database of recognized individuals, sending homeowners or business owners personalized alerts that name the person when that individual appears again. The feature is optional for Ring users.
Sigwalt said the affected individuals "did not consent to have their privacy rights violated at the entrance way," according to the suit. "Millions of other Americans passed by a Ring security camera and unknowingly had their facial recognition information collected." Amazon declined to comment on the lawsuit.
The case is the latest in a long string of privacy controversies for Ring, which Amazon bought in 2018 for $1 billion, according to Reuters.
Earlier this year, a Super Bowl advertisement for a Ring service — one the company promoted as a tool for locating lost pets through its network of cameras — sparked a public backlash, with critics warning the same technology could enable broad neighborhood-level surveillance. In the wake of that controversy, Ring cut ties with Flock Safety, a vendor whose products — license plate readers and law enforcement-facing camera systems — had been the subject of a distinct arrangement with the company.
In 2023, Ring settled with the U.S. Federal Trade Commission for $5.8 million to resolve claims that included a staff member secretly watching female customers through cameras inside their homes. Regulators found that Ring allowed employees and contractors broad, unchecked access to download customers' private video footage. Amazon did not admit to any wrongdoing.
In 2022, according to Reuters, Democratic Senator Ed Markey took aim at Ring's law enforcement data-sharing arrangements, arguing they had exposed users' footage to outside access without those users ever agreeing to it.
In the new suit, Sigwalt said Amazon's "conduct here represents a profound privacy failure for millions of people who are now being tracked by Amazon."