EFF Challenges Ring's Spokesperson Shaq To A Discussion About Police Surveillance

Shaq O'Neal was one of the greatest players in basketball history. But as a spokesperson for Amazon's Ring security cameras, the EFF also calls him the "one man at Ring who might listen to reason," challenging him to go one-on-one with the EFF's privacy experts:

In just a year and a half, Amazon's Ring has set up more than 500 partnerships with law enforcement agencies to convince communities to spy on themselves through doorbell cameras and its social app, Neighbors. The company is moving recklessly fast with little regard for the long-term risks of this mass surveillance technology. These partnerships threaten free speech and the well-being of communities, vastly expand police surveillance, undermine trust between police and residents, and enable racial profiling by exacerbating suspicion and paranoia.

So far, Amazon has not committed to making any changes. But we think one person at Ring might listen: basketball legend Shaquille O'Neal.

Shaq has been a spokesperson and co-owner of Ring since 2016, and has been nearly as much a public face of the company as its CEO, Jamie Siminoff. EFF would like to sit down with Shaq to discuss how Ring's partnerships with police can actually end up harming the communities that the company hopes to keep safe. If we wanted to learn how to dunk, we would go to Shaq. Before he promotes the sale of cameras that surveil neighborhoods indiscriminately, Shaq should come to the experts. Shaq, sit down with us and learn how these partnerships turn our neighborhoods into vast, unaccountable surveillance networks.