[Catlady]

From WaPo's technology columnist Geoffrey A. Fowler:

Sidewalk raises more red flags than a marching band parade: Is it secure enough to be activated in so many homes? Are we helping Amazon build a vast network that can be used for more surveillance? And why didn’t Amazon ask us to opt-in before activating a capability lying dormant in our devices?

Sidewalk could massively increase the reach of Amazon’s thriving but controversial Ring security business, which police forces tapped for more than 20,000 requests for footage in 2020. Sidewalk would allow people and organizations to put Ring devices in places that weren’t possible before.

“It is slowly eliminating the notion of ‘off-the-grid,’ ” says Matthew Guariglia, a policy analyst at the tech-liberties-focused Electronic Frontier Foundation. Even though Amazon is a private company, that doesn’t mean the surveillance tech it sells can’t be dangerous.

“As long as Amazon is storing all that data … all of that can be accessible to police. It’s impossible to think of things as just private or public surveillance anymore.”