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Is there a way to obfuscate client data so that employees can't view it?
I think the best thing is to avoid Ring products
I will never understand how it is that people are OK with installing surveillance equipment in their home that can be accessed by any strangers whatsoever.
Neither will I. Ring, Alexa & friends, "smart" devices made by mega corps, etc will never be welcome in my home. Any home automation will only be done with open-source or home-brew solutions.
I am in the same camp but we're assuming that the capabilities already present in our phones/laptops/TVs are turned off and stay that way.
Unfortunately, you are absolutely correct. Like most I have a smartphone (Android), use Chrome (technically chromium but close enough), and have a device or two infected with Windows 10. I do take measures to reduce the outflow of my personal data but with no real practical alternatives in some cases, I can only rely on blending into the background noise and avoiding flagrantly awful and thinly-veiled surveillance devices.
This is scapegoating. The employee worked for Amazon. Amazon watched customer video. You shouldn't get to use employees for responsibility laundering. I don't care what your policies are anymore than I care whether any criminal "didn't mean to" hurt someone. Your policies are your internal details. I care about your behavior.
All digital services (like Office 365 for example) have a limited number of privileged employees that can access customer data for various reasons, such as resolving operational issues. The allowance for this access is baked into virtually every Terms and Conditions out there. Tight permissions and auditing capabilities are important, but people are exposed to this type of risk broadly, orthogonal to Ring specifically or video surveillance products as a category.

Per the article sounds like Ring took steps to tighten access in response to these reports. I don’t really see a problem with this response. I don’t own any Ring products but personally I think it is reasonable to expect that someone at Ring would have some degree of access to customer content, and I think that it is a reasonable trade off in order to have the benefits of connected cameras, automatic backups, and their Neighbors feature.