Ring doorbells – they’re almost everywhere these days.

Whenever someone steals a package off your front door or someone suspicious lurks in your driveway, your Ring doorbell is recording and is there to have your back.

But what if that video footage didn’t just belong to you? What if it could be used in a reality show to broadcast video you thought was private to the whole world? It sounds like the premise of a dystopian futuristic movie where corporations have us all in a goldfish bowl to pluck video from at will to line their pockets.

Except, it’s true.

MGM Entertainment (along with production company Big Fish Entertainment) recently announced plans for a show called “Ring Nation,” which will use video footage taken from Ring doorbells across the country and put it together for viewer amusement. All to a voiceover by comedienne Wanda Sykes, who will presumably make us all feel like the absolute idiots we are – when we thought we were in the privacy of our own property. MGM is owned by Amazon, which also owns Prime Video – the perfect place to air everyone’s dirty laundry.

Forty civil rights groups have filed an open letter pleading with MGM Television Studios to cancel the upcoming reality horror show. The letter partially reads that the show is “normalizing and promoting Amazon Ring’s dangerous network of surveillance cameras.” They add that the show, along with the Neighbors app, will “violate basic privacy rights, fuel surveillance-based policing that disproportionately targets people of color and threatens abortion seekers, and enables vigilantes to surveil their neighbors and racially profile bystanders.”

Because remember – Amazon doesn’t just steal your video footage to use for the world’s amusement. They also hand it over to the police readily.

So the private property you thought you were safeguarding with that ever-present little camera? It is now public domain.

 

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A post shared by Sam Tropili (@tinfoilhatpod)