Amazon shuts down customer's smart home for a week.....

[MechAg94]

Amazon shuts down customer's smart home for a week after delivery driver claimed he heard racist slur through Ring doorbell - even though no one was home
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12189915/Amazon-shuts-customers-smart-home-week-driver-claimed-heard-racist-slur.html

For some reason, I think this will generate "I told you so" comments from multiple people.  I believe this was one of the outcomes many predicted when this idea came up even if the reasons were not mentioned exactly. 

Brandon Jackson, of Baltimore, Maryland, came home on May 25 to find that he had been locked out of his Amazon Echo, which many devices, including his lights, are connected to.
...............
A representative directed him to an email he received from an executive that provided a phone number to call. When he called the number, he was told in a 'somewhat accusatory' tone that the driver had reported 'receiving racist remarks' from his doorbell.

'This incident left me with a house full of unresponsive devices, a silent Alexa, and a lot of questions,' he wrote on Medium.

After reviewing the doorbell footage, he learned the device had given an automatic reply, saying: 'Excuse me, can I help you?'

He also said the video showed the driver had been wearing headphones during the interaction and 'must have misinterpreted the message.'

'Due to this experience, I am seriously considering discontinuing my use of Amazon Echo devices and will caution others about this incident.'

The University of Maryland graduate said he is now considering using Raspberry Pi devices, rather than those connected to Amazon.

Maybe he should consider going manual instead of just switching to a different company.  I imagine they all have policies that could result in the same outcome.

[Ben]

At some point, being technologically savvy means knowing when not to use technology.

[K Frame]

And another reason on the list of MANY as to why I will never have Amazon, Google, or other IoT devices controlling my house or my life.

[dogmush]

It must have been harrowing for him to have to walk over and actually push a light switch for a couple days. The lawsuit will be enormous.

[Nick1911]

His proposed RPi replacement is probably FOSS, so that would hopefully eliminate stupid corporate muckery.

But yea, if you outsource control of things to an outside party.... then an outside party has control of those things.

[HankB]

It must have been harrowing for him to have to walk over and actually push a light switch for a couple days. The lawsuit will be enormous.

Hopefully he'll be successful in a lawsuit, and people who were dumb enough to cede control of their homes to someone else will learn from his experience. (I DON'T have Siri, Alexa, Cortana, or any other "digital assistants" and I keep a shutter over my webcam lens except when I'm doing a web conference.)

[MechAg94]

I don't mess with that stuff, but would an internet outage do the same thing?  I figure Amazon freezing everything is different. 

[dogmush]

I don't mess with that stuff, but would an internet outage do the same thing?  I figure Amazon freezing everything is different.

Which was kinda the point of my sarcastic response.  I have several smart devices in my home and I don't need Amazon's purposful tomfoolery to have Alexa drop conections or lock them out. When that happens I have to......turn the lights on at the switch, or deal with the thermostat not automatically changing the temperature when I come home.  Sometimes.......I even have to look at the water heater to check the temperature.  I can't do it on my phone.

Privacy issues aside, pretending like his house went HAL9000 and locked him out because Alexa dropped his devices is hyperbole.

[RocketMan]

A Raspberry Pi running HomeAssistant and the appropriate interfaces will control your home via a LAN.  No outside services are necessary.
I will be shifting our home over to this as soon as I get caught up on the rest of the retirement projects my wife has me doing.

[Pb]

I think it is disgusting that Amazon takes it upon themselves to punish supposed racists instead of minding their own business.

Who invited them to be the thought police?

[Ben]

A Raspberry Pi running HomeAssistant and the appropriate interfaces will control your home via a LAN.  No outside services are necessary.
I will be shifting our home over to this as soon as I get caught up on the rest of the retirement projects my wife has me doing.

When you do this project, it would be great if you posted procedures and how it's working. This sounds like something I'd be interested in. There's a lot of home automation stuff that I think I would find useful if it's all on an intranet.

[MechAg94]

I think it is disgusting that Amazon takes it upon themselves to punish supposed racists instead of minding their own business.

Who invited them to be the thought police?

The main thing that jumps out to me is they did it without allowing the homeowner a chance to respond.  If they had bothered to do that, it would have been cleared up.  Instead, they jumped the gun, made a mess of it, and lost a customer (and it became an internet article).

[RocketMan]

When you do this project, it would be great if you posted procedures and how it's working. This sounds like something I'd be interested in. There's a lot of home automation stuff that I think I would find useful if it's all on an intranet.

I'll do it.  I've already done some preliminary playing around with the project here at home.  I need to buy another Raspberry Pi 4B for a similar project at church.  I'm automating the lighting in the sanctuary and all I lack is the Raspberry Pi 4B.  Supposedly they will be back to normal stock levels and MSRP at the end of this month or into July.
Some new voice control options that work with HomeAssistant have come out in recent months.  I need to check those out.  Supposedly they are a cleaner implementation than what has been previously available.

[WLJ]

Louis Rossmann who runs a computer/phone repair channel on YT says Amazon canceled his channel account after he reported on this on YT.

 Amazon cancels my account after exposing account lockout for "racist doorbell"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kcohq313q00