Jamie Siminoff, CEO of Amazon subsidiary of Ring, is stepping down from the role this month, the company announced Wednesday.
Siminoff will become the inventor on March 22, and Elizabeth Hamren will replace him as CEO. Hamren was most recently the COO of the chat app Discord, and has held executive roles at Microsoft‘s Xbox division and Meta’s Oculus virtual reality unit.
In addition to Ring, Hamren will also oversee Amazon Key, the company’s home delivery service; Amazon Sidewalk’s connected network service; as well as Blink, another home security camera maker that Amazon acquired in 2017.
“Discovery is my true passion. I’m constantly looking at how we can adapt to deliver our neighbors, which is what we call our customers,” Siminoff wrote in a blog post. “That’s why I decided to switch roles as Chief Inventor and bring in a new CEO.”
The move comes five years after Amazon acquired Ring for $1 billion in 2018. The deal helped Amazon grow in the home security and smart home category.
At the same time, press reports have examined Ring’s security protocols and the technology’s threats to consumer privacy.
In 2020, Ring said it fired four employees for viewing customer video feeds after reports from The Intercept and The Information found that Ring staff in Ukraine were given unlimited access to video from Ring cameras around the world.
The company is strengthening its security measures after several incidents where hackers gained access to some users’ cameras. In one case, hackers were able to watch and communicate with an 8-year-old girl. Ring blamed the problem on users reusing passwords.
Ring has also drawn criticism from privacy and civil liberties advocates over its controversial partnership with thousands of police departments across the country. The program allows police and fire departments to request video footage recorded by Ring cameras.
Privacy advocates have expressed concern that the program, and Ring which accompanies the Neighbors app, has heightened the risk of racist profiles and turned residents into informants, while giving the police access to its length without warrant and with some guardrails around how they can use the material.
Ring in 2021 will start requiring police to make video or public information requests in the Neighbors app.
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