Privacy Concerns Over Amazon’s New Indoor Drone 

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Amazon’s new Ring Always Home Cam, a security camera is also a drone that flies around the inside of your house shooting video that it then can stream or upload to the cloud. It provides the owner with alerts if motion has been detected in the house. But should you be concerned about letting in the flying security camera in your house?

The new technology is generating buzz from both smart home aficionados and privacy advocates. Wi-Fi security cameras are nothing new, but the Ring Always Home Cam will combine familiar tech with a wildcard new feature — in this case, an indoor drone. 

The device raises more than a few privacy questions, not the least of which is how Amazon plans to keep people’s personal data secure. If someone was able to obtain your login details, would they be able to fly the drone around your house while you aren’t home to find items to steal or map out your house for a swift robbery?

According to cnet.com, Ring would prefer you think of the Always Home Cam as more like a “purpose-driven security camera” (in marketing-speak) that happens to be mounted on a drone, rather than as a drone with a security camera. 

The idea is to capture surveillance footage of your entire house with just one security camera that pilots through your rooms. You program a flight path by literally carrying the Ring Always Home Cam through your house. Once it’s learned the route, the camera can fly for up to 5 minutes before it has to recharge, which takes about an hour in the included dock. You can view either a live feed of the Always Home Cam’s rounds in the Ring app, or a recording saved in Ring’s cloud.

The device works with a Ring Alarm security kit and should respond to unexpected activity while the system is set to “away” mode by leaving its dock to fly around and see what’s going on. Amazon says onboard “obstacle avoidance technology” keeps it from flying into unexpected objects.

The physical camera is covered when the device is docked, so it can’t record or stream video while it’s charging. It only patrols when it senses you’ve gone. It will only fly along a predetermined path, and can’t be manually controlled.

It should only begin to record when it starts flying around your home, Amazon said. If it flies while anyone is home, Amazon says the engine is designed to hum loudly enough that anyone in the same room will hear the drone passing by. In its launch presentation, Amazon referred to this as “privacy you can hear.”

Ring expects to have end-to-end encryption available for the security drone. End-to-end encryption is also expected to roll out to Ring’s other security cameras later this year, adding a layer of protection designed to deter hacking and security flaws. That means, at least in theory, that you and only you will be able to access your data saved to Ring’s servers, including video recordings.