Amazon quietly built the largest private surveillance network in America. You helped.

Tens of millions of Ring cameras. New Echo Shows with cameras pointed at your living room and no privacy shutter. A mesh network called Sidewalk covering 95% of the country. AI that scans an entire neighborhood for matches in seconds. Here's what's really happening at your front door.

⚡ TL;DR

Amazon’s Ring + Echo + Sidewalk stack now covers roughly 95% of the U.S. The largest private surveillance network ever built.
The new Echo Show 8 and Echo Show 11 have 13MP cameras pointed inside your home. The 2025 models quietly dropped the physical privacy shutter.
Familiar Faces facial recognition is rolling out everywhere except Illinois, Texas, and Portland. The three places Amazon would get sued. Three settings to flip today.ead time: 3 minutes

📖 Read time: 3 minutes

ChatGPT/Kim Komando

By Kim Komando

May 4, 2026

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Look, I’ve talked about Ring before. This is different.

Amazon isn’t selling you a doorbell. They’re enrolling you in something. I’m calling it what it is: the largest private surveillance network ever built in America.

I think I’m the only one.

🌐 Here’s what’s happening

Look at what Amazon has done. Countess millions of Ring cameras at front doors. The new Echo Show 8 and Echo Show 11 with 13MP cameras pointed at your living room. (The 2025 model quietly dropped the physical privacy shutter. They didn’t put that in the ad.)

Visual recognition uses that camera plus AI to identify whoever’s standing in front of it. A wireless mesh network called Sidewalk that already covers 95% of the country.

AI that scans every Ring camera in a five-mile radius for visual matches in seconds. And a fresh pipeline straight to police via partner Axon, the company behind Tasers.

🐾 Who is this for?

Last September, Amazon launched Search Party. Lose your dog?

Every outdoor Ring camera nearby auto-scans recent footage looking for a match. AI spots size, shape, color. Pup goes home. Cue tearjerker Super Bowl ad. (Search Party is on by default. Most people have no idea.)

Here’s what TechCrunch caught. Amazon told reporters its tech can’t track where a specific person has been spotted across the network, even if police ask. But Search Party does exactly that. For dogs. Swap “dog” for “person”? Zero engineering work. A single policy change. Yikes.

🤖 The face scanner Amazon won’t ship to Texas

In December, Ring rolled out Familiar Faces. Your camera scans the face geometry of everyone who walks up. Mom. The mailman. A passerby on the sidewalk. You can label up to 50 people. The rest get stored on Amazon’s servers for 180 days.

Amazon refuses to launch this feature in Illinois, Texas, and Portland, Oregon. Why? Those three places have biometric privacy laws strict enough to sue over. Google paid Texas $1.375 billion in 2024 for doing this with Nest. Amazon clearly remembers that.

🛡️ Three settings to flip today

Five minutes. I tested all of these myself. These are the ones I’m flipping.

Open the Ring app. Control Center > Search for Lost Pets. Off.

Same Control Center. AI Features > Familiar Faces. Off.

Open Alexa app. More > Settings > Account Settings > Amazon Sidewalk. Off. (You’ll lose nothing.)

Oh, and slap a piece of tape over your Echo Show camera. The shutter’s gone, but tape still works. Your front door used to greet visitors. Now it’s filing reports.

🗣 TEXT/POST THIS STAT: Amazon Sidewalk now covers 95% of the U.S. via Ring cameras and Echo speakers. The largest private surveillance network in America was built one doorbell at a time. GetKim.com

📩 Send this to someone who has a Ring doorbell or Echo Show. They thought they bought security. They actually joined a network.