ABSTRACT

Amazon’s Ring relies on infrastructural obfuscation to hide their infrastructures through urban camouflage (as doorbells, floodlights, sensors) while simultaneously expanding the carceral state and extending the industrial police-surveillant state. Through a critical analysis of the Ring surveillant assemblage, this paper reveals the way Ring and its associated apps produce fear and paranoia of the racialized Other, promote community buy-in that more surveillance will improve safety, while obscuring private partnerships with local law enforcement. I argue Ring cannot be viewed in isolation from its entangled corporate owner, Amazon, which relies on an ever-expanding infrastructural network, including surveillance of their highly prized package delivery service. Ring is more than individual community members installing doorbells with cameras that extend beyond their property into public space; it is the blurring of boundaries between police work and civilian surveillance, the reliance on obscured digital infrastructures that hide to whom and what users are connecting when they install a Ring device, and the expansion of Amazon’s vast infrastructural power. By recentering critique on the infrastructural backbone, made up of discourses and fixtures, this paper argues for the need for infrastructural accountability from companies such as Amazon, who not only profit from fear, but actively reproduce structural violence through their data infrastructures.

摘要

亚马逊之戒（Amazon's Ring）依靠基础设施混淆，通过城市伪装（如门铃，泛光灯，传感器）隐藏其基础设施，同时扩大了患癌状态并扩展了工业警察监视州。通过对Ring监视程序组合的批判性分析，本文揭示了Ring及其相关应用程序对种族化的Other产生恐惧和偏执的方式，促进了社区认可，更多的监视将提高安全性，同时使与地方执法机构的私人伙伴关系蒙上阴影。我认为Ring不能与其纠缠不清的企业所有者Amazon分开看，后者依赖一个不断扩展的基础设施网络，包括对其极为珍贵的包裹递送服务的监视。Ring不仅是个人社区成员，他们还安装了带摄像头的门铃，摄像头延伸到他们的财产之外，并延伸到公共场所；这是警察工作与平民监视之间界限的模糊，依赖于模糊的数字基础架构，这些数字基础架构在安装Ring设备时隐藏了与谁和用户连接的用户，并扩展了亚马逊强大的基础设施。通过对由话语和装置组成的基础设施骨干进行最近的批判，本文认为需要来自亚马逊等公司的基础设施责任制，他们不仅从恐惧中获利，而且通过其数据基础设施积极再现结构性暴力。