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SAFETY ADVISORY: No Ring for ICE this Halloween

To preserve human rights and community safety, all people in the United States are advised to turn off their Amazon Ring cameras this Halloween to avoid complicity with ICE surveillance and deportation of our immigrant neighbors.

What’s happening?


Amazon has a long history of working with law enforcement, and in light of the ongoing attacks by ICE on our communities, it’s critical that we do everything possible to minimize Amazon’s surveillance of our neighborhoods.

Just last year, Amazon Ring announced a partnership Flock, making every doorbell and porch a tool of ICE surveillance. Amazon has since canceled the partnership following enormous backlash, including widespread public outcry against the company’s Super Bowl ad promoting its “Search Party” feature that blankets entire communities with invasive AI surveillance.

But threats remain—Ring has added AI facial recognition that can scan every face that comes to your door and maintains a partnership with surveillance company Axon Enterprise with known ties to Customs & Border Patrol.

As surveillance devices like Ring doorbells are increasingly being weaponized against marginalized groups, Fight for the Future is raising awareness ahead of this Halloween so that trick-or-treating kids and families, and all our neighbors, stay safe.

What’s up with the new encryption setting on Ring cameras?

Ring recently announced an update called Throw Away the Key Encryption (“TAKE”) that it is starting to roll out to all Ring cameras this fall. This update will encrypt all Ring video footage, and the only way to access footage will be with an encryption key. Doorbell owners will have this key via their account, and Ring will have the key for 24 hours. This is a big security improvement from Ring’s previous process of collecting and retaining all user footage. TAKE will significantly limit the possibility of Ring employees accessing users’ footage, as well as opportunities for police and other law enforcement from accessing this footage via Ring. This is absolutely a victory for all of us who organized and have raised alarm bells over the years around Ring’s heinous practices that have put people in serious harm.

However, the best way to secure Ring doorbell footage (short of not having a doorbell camera at all) is with end-to-end encryption. End-to-end encryption is the only way to make sure that the doorbell owner is in full control of the video footage. Even when TAKE is fully rolled out, there is still a window where police can request footage, hackers can still access recent videos, and Ring employees will have access to doorbell recordings.

If Ring actually wants to fully secure users’ data, the company must make end-to-end encryption the default, and in the meantime we highly encourage users to turn on end-to-end encryption on their own Ring devices.

What do we do?

In addition to the one-time Halloween advisory, we also encourage the following steps:

  1. Share the advisory widely.
  2. If you have a Ring camera, at the very least, turn it off ahead of Halloween, but ideally dump Ring surveillance cameras for good. 
  3. We know dumping Ring can feel like a big and difficult ask. If you’re not ready to part ways with your camera just yet, please take a few extra minutes to activate the camera’s end-to-end encryption feature. 
  4. Have a conversation with your neighbors individually, within your HOA, and in neighborhood community meeting spaces about this community safety issue.
  5. Fight for the Future has put together a printable door hanger to spread awareness about this dangerous Ring partnership and gently encourage your neighbors who have cameras to take precautions to keep their footage out of ICE’s reach. It can be downloaded below.
An image of a door hanger that shares some information for neighbors that you have already learned on this page, and invites them to learn more.
Get the door hanger print file here

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