When you buy a Ring camera for your house, you’re also agreeing to let Amazon store everything it records indefinitely, share your data with law enforcement on request, and build a neighborhood surveillance network using your porch as a hub.
The Fulu Foundation, a non-profit organizing for digital ownership over consumer goods, wants to change that. Founded by tech repair YouTuber Louis Rossman, the Fulu Foundation pays bounties to hacktivists who can successfully crack consumer devices to remove harmful features.
It currently has three bounties active on its website: the Xbox Series X, the GE Refrigerator SmartWater Filter — and, in a particularly of-the-moment topic, Ring’s video doorbell.
The Ring bounty, spotted by Wired, will grant over $11,000 to the hacker who can make a software modification preventing the devices from sending data to Amazon servers and requiring connection to Amazon to function. The solution should also give the device owner total control over the video doorbell, allowing it to be “directly integrated with a local PC or server, either through wi-fi, or a direct physical connection.”
“People who own security cameras bought them to make their homes more secure,” reads the Fulu bounty. “But without control of the video those cameras generate, Ring owners might actually be making them less so.”
There are a few caveats: the modification should be able to be carried out with “readily available” tools, for one thing, and it must work on at least one model of the Ring cameras released after 2021.
“It’s been an interesting moment for people to grasp exactly the trade-off that they have had to accept when they installed these security doorbell cameras,” Fulu cofounder Kevin O’Reilly told Wired of the project. “People who install security cameras are looking for more security, not less. At the end of the day, control is at the heart of security. If we don’t control our data, we don’t control our devices.”
On Fulu, anybody can donate to the bounty fund at any time. In the case of Ring, the Fulu Foundation says it’s matching up to the first $10,000 added to the pot. Looking at donations, the challenge has clearly struck a nerve.
“Don’t have a [R]ing camera myself,” wrote David, who donated $10. “But want to help the cause.”
Ring has courted significant controversy recently, especially after its dystopian Super Bowl sparked criticisms that it was responsible for the largest civilian surveillance panopticon in history. In the backlash, some owners have already gone far beyond trying to hack the devices by simply smashing them.
More on surveillance: AI Surveillance Systems Are Causing a Staggering Number of Wrongful Arrests
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