Five years after Amazon Ring was acquired, its CEO steps down

The CEO of Amazon subsidiary Ring, Jamie Siminoff, will leave his position later this month, the business announced on Wednesday.

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On March 22, Siminoff will assume the position of chief inventor, while Elizabeth Hamren will take over as CEO. Hamren previously held managerial positions at Microsoft's Xbox division and Meta's Oculus virtual reality subsidiary. He most recently worked as COO of the messaging application Discord.

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Together with Ring, Hamren will be in charge of Amazon Key, the company's in-home delivery service; Amazon Sidewalk, a shared network service; and Blink, a different manufacturer of home security cameras that Amazon acquired in 2017.

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"My genuine passion is invention. Siminoff noted in a blog post, "I am continuously thinking about how we might adapt to provide for our neighbors, which is what we've always termed our clients. This is the reason I made the decision to become the Chief Inventor and hire a new CEO.

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Five years have passed since Amazon purchased Ring for an estimated $1 billion in 2018. The agreement has aided Amazon's expansion in the smart home and home security markets.

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Press investigations have also drawn attention to Ring's security procedures and the risks to customer privacy posed by the technology.

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Following investigations by The Intercept and The Information, which revealed that Ring employees in Ukraine had unrestricted access to footage from Ring cameras all over the world, Ring claimed to have dismissed four employees for looking into client video feeds.

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After a string of cases where hackers were able to access several users' cameras, the firm tightened its security procedures. In one instance, hackers had access to an 8-year-old kid and were able to interact with her. Users that reuse their passwords were to blame, according to Ring.

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Ring has also come under fire from privacy and civil rights campaigners for its contentious alliance with numerous police departments around the nation. The program enables Ring cameras to record video that can be requested by police and fire services.

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Privacy advocates are worried that the program and Ring's companion Neighbors app have increased the possibility of racial profiling and converted locals into informants, while also granting police access to footage without a warrant and with minimal restrictions on how they can use the data.

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Police demands for cameras or information had to be made public via the Neighbors app starting in Ring 2021.