Infrastructural obfuscation: unpacking the carceral logics of the Ring surveillant assemblage

ABSTRACT

Amazon’s Ring relies on infrastructural obfuscation to hide their infrastructures through urban camouflage (as doorbells, floodlights, sensors) while simultaneously expanding the carceral state and extending the industrial police-surveillant state. Through a critical analysis of the Ring surveillant assemblage, this paper reveals the way Ring and its associated apps produce fear and paranoia of the racialized Other, promote community buy-in that more surveillance will improve safety, while obscuring private partnerships with local law enforcement. I argue Ring cannot be viewed in isolation from its entangled corporate owner, Amazon, which relies on an ever-expanding infrastructural network, including surveillance of their highly prized package delivery service. Ring is more than individual community members installing doorbells with cameras that extend beyond their property into public space; it is the blurring of boundaries between police work and civilian surveillance, the reliance on obscured digital infrastructures that hide to whom and what users are connecting when they install a Ring device, and the expansion of Amazon’s vast infrastructural power. By recentering critique on the infrastructural backbone, made up of discourses and fixtures, this paper argues for the need for infrastructural accountability from companies such as Amazon, who not only profit from fear, but actively reproduce structural violence through their data infrastructures.

KEYWORDS:

• Carceral logics
• policing
• infrastructure
• obfuscation
• accountability
• industrial surveillance

Acknowledgement

The author wish to thank the colleagues at the Center for Advanced Research on global Communication at the University of Pennsylvania for their insightful and timely comments, the Association of Internet Researchers for recognizing an earlier version of this paper, the anonymous reviewers, and the editors, Dr. Jonathon Hutchinson and Dr. Aphra Kerr, for their stewardship of this special issue.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 As at October 28, 2020. See Ring’s ‘Active Agency Map’ (Ring, n.d.).

2 Both SiteJabber and Trustpilot rated Ring 1.4 and 1.5 out of 5 stars respectively, while Amazon’s reviews ranged from 4.2 to 4.6 out of 5 for different Ring products. BBB are only complaints.

3 One customer reported ‘Would not recommend!!! … 1/10 time it connects to live view … I found this to be a very insecure and unreliable product. It causes more anxiety rather than peace. (Ring Is Rated ‘Bad’ with 1.5/5 on Trustpilot, n.d.).

4 See full guidelines: Ring Neighbors’ Community Guidelines. (n.d.). Ring Help. Retrieved November 2, 2020, from https://support.ring.com/hc/en-us/articles/115004851266.

5 See full letter exchange from Senator Mackey to Amazon CEO, Jeff Bezos (Office of Senator Markey, 2019).

6 Phoenix Police Department increased the number of requests from 17 for the Q2 2020 to 63 in Q3 2020. In the same period, Milwaukee Police Department increased its requests from 197 in Q2 to 249 in Q3 2020 and both Tampa PD and Calcasieu Parish Sheriff’s Office saw declines.

7 For an explanation on evidence laundering, see Levine, K., Turner, J. I., & Wright, R. F. (2017). Evidence Laundering in a Post-Herring World (SSRN Scholarly Paper ID 2558737). Social Science Research Network. https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2558737.

8 For discussion on the legal authority of police oversight committees, see (Raffish, 2021).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Lauren Bridges

Lauren Bridges is a PhD candidate at the Annenberg School for Communication, University of Pennsylvania. She researches the material and discursive entanglements of digital infrastructures in the (re)production of state and corporate power and pays particular attention to the stories we tell about technology and its imagined futures. Bridges has published in New Media & Society, Big Data & Society, and received awards and honorary mentions from International Communication Association, National Communication Association, and the Association for Internet Researchers. She holds a MA in creative writing, publishing, and editing from the University of Melbourne and a BA in business from Queensland University of Technology. Prior to Annenberg, she worked in academic publishing and the nonprofit sector with a focus on social policy.