Usually when you When you see a heartwarming story about finding a lost dog, you don’t immediately react with fear and revulsion. But it was indeed the case in response to a Super Bowl commercial from Amazon-owned security camera company Ring. There is now a group offer to distribute a $10,000 bounty to regain control of user data controlled by Ring.
The announcement introduced a new feature from Ring called Search Party. It uses a network of Ring cameras to explore a neighborhood for signs of lost dogs. But like the details of a internal Ring email leaked reported by 404 Media, the service could eventually be used to find other animals and people as well.
The ad was widely criticized on social media and in the tech press, who criticized Search Party for essentially being a thinly veiled quarter. surveillance net. People are even publicly destroy their Ring cameras. In response, ring immediately canceled its partnership with the controversial AI monitoring company Flock. Ring CEO Jamie Siminoff experienced something of a apology tour since the Super Bowl commercial aired. (A Ring spokesperson acknowledged our request for comment and said the company would provide one shortly; we will update this story when we hear back.)
The Fulu Foundation, a group founded by an advocate for reparations and YouTuber Louis Rossman, pays bonuses to people who can remove user-hostile features on connected devices. The nonprofit saw the pushback as an opportunity for people to take back control of their devices.
“It’s been an interesting time for people to understand exactly the trade-off they had to make when they installed these security cameras,” says Kevin O’Reilly, co-founder of Fulu. “People who install security cameras are looking for more security, not less. Ultimately, control is at the heart of security. If we don’t control our data, we don’t control our devices.”
The flu last bonus is aimed at Ring’s video doorbell cameras, intended to encourage hackers and DIYers to disable software features that require devices to send data to Amazon. The reward is a potential payout of $10,000 or more.
To win the prize, the winner will have to meet a few requirements intended to ensure that the equipment itself remains in working order. After modifications, the device must be able to work with a PC or local server, and be able to stop data being sent to Amazon servers or require a connection to other Amazon hardware. All of this must be done without disabling the device’s hardware features such as motion detection and color night vision. The work must also be achievable with “readily available, inexpensive tooling” and “instructions that a moderately technical user could perform” in less than an hour.
“It has to be a weekend project,” O’Reilly says, “where someone who has been scared by an ad and wants to take back control can take care of it, do it and be able to sleep soundly at night knowing that only they can see their images.”
The first person to accomplish all of this with a Ring camera and prove they can do it gets the money. The reward starts at $10,000, but will likely increase as donors contribute more (it’s already sitting closer to $11,000 from publication). On top of that, Fulu will award up to an additional $10,000 to match the winner’s donations.
To get a Fulu bounty, winners don’t actually need to disclose their findings to the public, because that could open them up to legal recourse for violating the portion of Section 1201 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which prevents people from circumventing digital locks. O’Reilly says that, like all Fulu Bounty winners, the recipient will be able to choose whether they want to publish their work and thereby expose themselves to legal reprimands.
“In a perfect world, we would find someone who could solve this problem,” O’Reilly says. “We would make it available to Ring owners across the country. But because of Section 1201 and its frankly antiquated and outdated policies, people won’t be able to do that.”
O’Reilly claims that Fulu had long considered prioritizing Ring in its bounty program, given the various controversies the company has generated over how Ring cameras collect data and the right to privacy of people captured in the videos. Ring has worked to soften its public image by focusing on wellness features such as finding lost dogs or a partnership with the fire tracking service. Monitoring service to better monitor the movements of forest fires. Still, Ring hasn’t been able to separate itself from the panopticon talk, and the fervor around the Super Bowl ad justified moving the project to the very top of the bounty list.
O’Reilly also says it’s important to focus on software here, because even though some people break their devices, others still want to have a working hardware camera.
“Control shouldn’t require compromising on all the features you love,” says O’Reilly. “You shouldn’t have to sacrifice your device’s smart capabilities if you don’t want to.”