Amazon admits giving police Ring camera footage without consent

https://theintercept.com/2022/07/13/amazon-ring-camera-footage-police-ed-markey/

by Pakdef • 4 years ago

818 496 4 years ago

TLDR:

Although Ring publicizes its policy of handing over camera footage only if the owner agrees — or if judge signs a search warrant — the company says it also reserves the right to supply police with footage in “emergencies,” defined broadly as “cases involving imminent danger of death or serious physical injury to any person.”

(…)

it has provided police with user footage 11 times this year alone.

I would actually be okay with this if it was more public when the standard was met. For example, there’s an armed shooter at the local elementary school in front of my house? Sure, scoop up my Ring footage.

But without more info I have to assume it’s whenever the police say it’s an emergency, which can be anytime they want.

BurningFrog3• 4 years ago

11 emergencies a year across the US sounds perfectly reasonable.

AlwaysRock4• 4 years ago

Sure. What were the emergencies though? Police knew a ring cam had evidence of a murder on it? Or police knew ring cam had some footage of where they dropped their keys last night?

Who defines emergency? If its the police then anything they need it for is an emergency.

fotta• 4 years ago

In your situation, the police should be asking YOU not Amazon for the footage.

I don’t have a problem with turning over footage, but not without my consent. I want to be able to decide when to give it to police.

BurningFrog3• 4 years ago

In an emergency, you might not be home, or you might be shot.

gjm11• 4 years ago

You might be off on holiday, or asleep, or in hospital under anaesthesia, and the police might not be able to get in touch with you quickly.

helen___keller3• 4 years ago

I’m saying that if the “emergency” standard was well described and followed consistently (and I agree with it), then I would OK granting amazon the power to manage this permission on my behalf.

Similarly, as a citizen of the country, I’m OK that judges can sign a warrant and manage permission on my behalf as well.

delecti• 4 years ago

Another big distinction would be whether they told people when they sent police their camera's footage. Nothing suggest they're doing that, which makes it harder to trust their judgement.

anigbrowl6• 4 years ago

As we saw recently, police/local government will often fight against the release of surveillance footage to the public in cases where it makes them look bad. The Austin Statesman had to fight in court for a month to get the footage from the school in Uvalde which showed police just loitering in a hallway for an hour, in the full knowledge that a gunman who had just massacred a bunch of young children was holed up in a room nearby.

I'm not using the term 'loitering' casually. There's one bit of footage showing an officer idly checking his phone, which has 'Punisher' wallpaper.

int_19h• 4 years ago

Police will fight the release of basically any information that sheds a light on their activities. In many states, there are no publicly available statistics on things like how much SWAT teams are used, and what for. When some states tried passing laws to require PDs to capture such stats, police unions pushed back hard.

jcranberry• 4 years ago

I think there was also similar reports with Apple recently. There was some kind of emergency hotline contact or something like that where authorities could request information where it was extremely time sensitive (I think the example given was human trafficking? although my memory was hazy), and they would be provided information without a warrant.

salawat5• 4 years ago

If the data is not on your hardware, it is not your data.

bsedlm• 4 years ago

what if my data is on my hardware as well as on the cloud hardware?

whose data is it anyways?

cddsadsa• 4 years ago

What even is "data"? If you mean "my data is the way in which I interact with a website. It is personal to me and is my property.", then surely you must also say "my mannerisms when I talk to you are personal to me, and you may not remember them without my consent".

dspillett• 4 years ago

It is shared data. You can use it for whatever you like, so can who-ever controls the other location it is stored at (unless encrypted and only you hold the keys).

rasz• 4 years ago

then the data is on "someone elses computer"

mdp20214• 4 years ago

I was also confused by that expression: the poster very probably meant: "what is stored in the hardware of somebody else you cannot control".

salawat5• 4 years ago

Then the data on your hardware is yours.

Your data in the cloud is the data of the cloud service's.

Your data is protected. Your cloud service resident data is not.

My rule is simple. If I cannot point at the drives my 0's and 1's are ultimately stored on, and the drives I point at do not belong to me, operating in in computers I own, it isn't mine. I don't have a fleet of lawyers to navigate the "technically mine" ToS/EULA minefield.

If I own the hardware, and I own the software on it, it is mine. Otherwise, short of levels of audit I find extremely unpleasant, it's an arms length arrangement I personally am intensely uncomfortable with given the track record humanity has demonstrated with prioritizing short-term self-interest against not doing questionable things in the long term.

I find this simplistic treatment of things, while making my life and software choices fewer in number, and less polished, tends to keep my friends and family out of trouble and harms way. They know the lecture is coming, and they still come see me anyway.

chickenpotpie5• 4 years ago

I dislike these beliefs that idealize a world with no trust or cooperation. Humans are social animals and we do our best when we work together. We don't need to throw the baby out with the bath water and private host everything on our own servers because one company is doing something shady. You can own your data on someone else's hardware with strong encryption and common sense legislation that regulates how its accessed.

anigbrowl6• 4 years ago

Reasonable, but your position if taken to extremes can lead to oppressive conformism - eg if you choose not to have or share footage from a security camera, you become an object of suspicion yourself. Relying on 'common sense legislation' assumes a level of probity which is often sadly lacking.

salawat5• 4 years ago

I dislike these beliefs that idealize a world with no trust or cooperation. Humans are social animals and we do our best when we work together.

I agree. Remember, cooperation and trust brought you such gems as:

  The Trail of Tears
  Jim Crow
  Standard Oil
  The Holocaust
  MKULTRA
  COINTELPRO
  The War on Drugs
  WWII internment camps
  The Rwandan Genocide
  The Uiyghur genocide
  Systemic Human Rights abuses
  Plenty of other bits and bobs   of nastyness no one wants to admit to.

The problem with cooperation without strict limits, is that cooperation is the "might makes right" of our time. Network effects are a hell of a superpower, and like all superpowers, there is a responsibility to really consider whether the world truly is a better place with it. When you build these social constructs, you're putting a lot of motive power into potentially only precious few hands.

Cooperation and trust is all good when you're the one watching the local outgroup get curb stomped.

Woe be unto the ingroup that becomes the outgroup due to lack of foresight.

I like humans that aren't focusing on targeting other groups of humans.

annoyingnoob• 4 years ago

When you pay for a service that includes storage, then its your storage.

throwaway0a5e5• 4 years ago

I wouldn't mind if the "traditionalist" SCOTUS that errybody seems to hate took a good look at the phrase "papers and effects"

mdp20214• 4 years ago

your storage

And factually available to others.

Pakdef12• 4 years ago

Are you saying that the movie studios don't own their movies?

npteljes2• 4 years ago

They own it legally, and they are absolutely unsuccessful in stopping unauthorized copies. Same with the Ring videos, no? The owner of camera owns the recordings, maybe, but they can't really control disclosure.

nomilk3• 4 years ago

It's often overlooked that users get happiness from privacy, and the mere risk of a breach (however small) makes risk-averse people unhappy, even if a breach never eventuates.

Law enforcement might catch some more bad guys with 11 extra ring videos, but now every ring user has to worry about local police sharing/laughing/perving at their home videos - is it worth it?

It might have been well intentioned, but Amazon's decision seems dubious.

fundad• 4 years ago

Privacy makes you happy but policing is a social program and its constituency are happy with more police invasion into the lives of others.

nomilk3• 4 years ago

Maybe it could be opt-in, or even opt-out, like organ donation, at least then the user has a say and it's not totally left to Amazon's discretion.

phailhaus3• 4 years ago

It's often overlooked that users get happiness from privacy

That's not true though, at all. Users prefer convenience over privacy by far, just look at how much people still use Facebook, Google, TikTok, etc despite having terrible privacy practices. Those videos are too addicting. Being able to monitor your home is too convenient.

nomilk3• 4 years ago

If forced to, users may forego privacy for convenience. But in the case of ring there's no reason users shouldn't be able to expect both.

kornhole2• 4 years ago

Many people like myself become quite agitated when they know they are under surveillance. I can't be happy when agitated.

karaterobot• 4 years ago

“If there is the infrastructure, if there is the channel by which police can request footage without a warrant or consent of the user, under what circumstances they get it is out of our control. I worry that because it’s decided by the police and by somebody at Ring, there will be temptation to use that for increasingly less urgent situations.”

Many people (I would argue anybody with common sense) predicted Ring would get used as a surveillance tool. This quote correctly states the nearly-inevitable next step, which will also be ignored.

buscoquadnary2• 4 years ago

So moved into a newly built house, by default everyone gets a smart doorbell in this house. They looked at me like I was crazy when I said I didn't want it or any of the other the "smart" devices.

This was the exact reason.

AlwaysRock4• 4 years ago

To be fair... If you carry around a smart phone or have a smart watch or a laptop you're at just as much risk. The ring is just one more device.

seanmcdirmid9• 4 years ago

I guess if you don’t have prowler or package theft problems, they aren’t really necessary. I personally have found my Nest cameras indispensable. Ironically, if police would just do their job on property crime, they wouldn’t be so needed.

chickenpotpie5• 4 years ago

I live in a community like yours and IMO you're just hurting yourself. Your home is probably already covered by everyone else's cameras and they can just pull the footage from them. It seems like the only person that doesn't have access to recordings of their own home now is you.

zionic• 4 years ago

I see stuff like this all the time, yet people are quick to call obvious extrapolation a “slippery slope fallacy”

mhaymo• 4 years ago

According to the article, users can opt-in to end-to-end encryption, so it's not true that this is "out of our control".

pdonis• 4 years ago

Yes, you can opt in, but the Ring mobile app insists on generating your passphrase for you instead of letting you choose your own. Which means Ring could still perfectly well know what your passphrase is, even though it's supposed to be "private", since it's their code in their app generating it. Sorry, not buying it.

Edit: Also, at least according to HowToGeek [1], you lose some significant features if you enable E2EE.

[1] https://www.howtogeek.com/741180/how-to-enable-end-to-end-en...

(Edit to edit: My Ring app gives me an even more comprehensive list of features that are disabled if you enable E2EE. Since among them is Shared Users, which is how my wife and I can both see our Ring videos, I don't see how this is any kind of actual support for E2EE. Surely a significant portion of Ring's customers have more than one family member who wants to have access to the videos.)

dionidium2• 4 years ago

My view on this is that we're not going back and it would be silly to try to do so. Once you have the technology to record, track, and ultimately apprehend criminals, simply not doing so in the name of ideological purity becomes increasingly obscene. What we need are courts that understand the technology, prosecutors who fear censure for overreach, and fair laws about standards of access to the data.

It's here to stay. We just need good rules around its use. The benefits are too compelling.

zamalek• 4 years ago

There are vendors who provide exactly the same service that Ring does, but allow you to retain sovereignty over the data. Ubiquity, for example.

banannaise• 4 years ago

What, we're just going to skip over the fact that the police can beat the shit out of you and throw you in jail for a few hours, largely consequence-free, before any of those parties even get involved?

pera• 4 years ago

This isn't about "ideological purity" nor technology: My home is literally the only place where my family and I still have some form of privacy, is it too hard to understand that we don't want random strangers having the power to lurk into our lives 24/7?

wslack• 4 years ago

By that logic, we should use illegally obtained evidence to record/track criminals. Not sure that's how the courts actually operate.

jdgoesmarching• 4 years ago

Did you just wave away all concerns and criticisms of an increasingly aggressive surveillance and police state as “ideological purity?”

People use that word because they think their own biases are realistic, but it doesn’t get more ideological than believing that giving police and courts more surveillance power has benefits that are “too compelling.”

allset_• 4 years ago

We just need good rules around its use.

Rules change. The people in power change. They may say "fuck those rules" in the future. The only way to prevent abuses like this is to not surveil unnecessarily.

bob1029• 4 years ago

I fear for the day when someone comes knocking on my door because my government-approved surveillance doorbell has been offline for too long.

The very first thing I did when I moved into my new house was completely disconnect/disable all networked security & "smart" home systems. I have a Ring doorbell, but it is not receiving any power. I figure the simple sight of it may still serve as a deterrent.

Most of the "smart" home things I permit today utilize bimetallic strips for their decision making.

remflight2• 4 years ago

Burglars are not deterred by cameras or alarm systems, especially in the age of face masks. They know they will only be in the house for 5 mins or less and face masks make it harder to identify them.

kcb2• 4 years ago

Many ring devices have sirens that I would think would be quite deterent when set off. The Ring Alarm can even act as a proper monitored alarm system.

jkubicek• 4 years ago

This makes me wonder, what is a burglar in 2022 stealing? We have no jewelry or cash in our house. We have a nice TV, but in the age of $250 4k TVs I can't imagine most burglars would chance breaking into a house to get a valuable TV. The kid's iPads are ancient and mostly worthless, we've got no game systems, no fancy cameras, no stereo.

The small handful of valuables we have are either stored in an obscure enough place that the thief would have to devote longer than 5 minutes to finding it, or so esoteric that I doubt a random burglar would recognize its value.

loudmax• 4 years ago

I fear for the day when someone comes knocking on my door because my government-approved surveillance doorbell has been offline for too long.

Don't worry, the plutocrats will come knocking on your door long before the government does.

mdp20214• 4 years ago

I fear for the day when someone comes knocking

https://www.cartooningforpeace.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/0...

(Jeff Danziger, cartoonist, NY)

from

http://www.cartooningforpeace.org/cartoonotheque/nouvelles-t...

archon8105• 4 years ago

How does one ring your door bell if it's there but without power?

unfocused7• 4 years ago

My next door neighbor (we share a wall) had their bicycles stolen twice, so they installed Ring (floodlight) cameras in both the backyard and the front porch. After a year, the cameras have yielded no added security, or caught any "bad guys" as far as I can tell and from what they told me.

What I realized, is they use it to keep track of their kids, funny cat videos that trigger the recording, and most importantly, as a 2 way radio to talk or listen to the kids. That last point, well, I found out they can also listen to my conversations an my kids.

I asked them to point their front porch camera so that it doesn't record my front driveway, just theirs. and they lost their shit. They confirmed they record audio and video. They asked if there was a problem. I said no problem with them. I'm not comfortable with the audio/video recording me or my friends conversations if company comes over to talk to me on my porch or driveway.

I really didn't need to tell them anything, it's self evident why someone wants a camera point away. Needless to say, after I asked them in the winter, one of them refuses to speak to me and crosses the street and avoids me.

These people use surveillance to supervise their kids, and don't care about the fact that their neighbors (me) could be recorded, and they could be hacked or footage access by random people, because Amazon isn't exactly the king of privacy.

I believe these cameras haven't decreased crime. They also don't really add more security. It's a shame though they are everywhere, with disregard for privacy right on people's property. So yes, I'm biased. I have no love for Ring.

MichaelZuo• 4 years ago

If your houses are close together I don't think it's reasonable to have an expectation of privacy on the driveway or front porch. After all sound at normal speaking volume can easily travel 100 feet on a quiet day, if there's nothing in-between.

doublerabbit• 4 years ago

Its more than reasonable. It's called respect.

Their house and their drive and just because voice could travel 100-feet sill doesn't mean they have the right to record it.

If the speed limit is twenty and someone is driving thirty, does that give you the right to drive thirty too?

heywot• 4 years ago

There's a huge difference between casually overhearing a conversation because you also are outside versus having actions/words recorded for eternity, and potentially analyzed by a third party (Amazon, Google, etc).

jakelazaroff• 4 years ago

I think there's a difference between "expectation to not be incidentally seen or overheard" and "expectation to not be under constant surveillance".

jiminymcmoogley• 4 years ago

Privacy doesn't have to be a binary, GP probably expected a modicum of it in that they assumed their conversations could be heard by their neighbours should they be listening in at the time, but is uncomfortable at the idea of a digital record of each audible outdoor conversation being kept in perpetuity, that the neighbours and any third parties with access the footage could use against them if their relationship went sour (which it now seems it has...). The "expectation of privacy" argument should really only be used when discussing whether recording should be legal, not when determining whether someone is a jackass according to social norms.

bckygldstn• 4 years ago

That’s probably legally true in the US, but is that the best we can do?

It’s valid to question the value of laws. Sometimes I wish I did have more privacy in public.

But more importantly, technology has completely changed what non-privacy looks like and is tragic to me that laws haven’t caught up.

There’s a huge practical difference between “someone within 100ft, probably a neighbour who I know, might hear me and probably instantly forget what I said, but 99% of the time no one is there” and “100% of your conversations are recorded, transcribed, and stored forever by a profit-maximising behemoth with various other unavoidable tentacles into my life, and also they might sell or give that data to other companies also the police”.

jrumbut• 4 years ago

Incidentally overhearing a conversation and recording 24/7 then uploading anything interesting to a third party's servers for them to do who knows what with it feels very different.

I'm curious what others think of the ethics of a non-internet connected camera? Does that really resolve the issue or do you still consider it wrong to have residential security cameras that capture the sidewalk/street outside the house?

unfocused7• 4 years ago

I really wanted to avoid any legal issues with them. We decided talking/texting is best. My wife is a litigator, and even she didn't want to go there.

If you share a wall with a neighbor, it's always best to try and resolve things through direct communication. Our kids still play together, and they still come over and vice versa.

I made my point, and they actually engaged in helping mitigate my concerns. I certainly can't ask them to remove their camera, so that's why we took this approach. They met us half way, but clearly felt something more when one of them over reacted.

balderdash4• 4 years ago

Laws are the lowest common denominator of social behavior. Not illegal - does not mean it’s not anti-social behavior.

I also the think there is a practical difference between occasionally/potentially being observed when entering/leaving your property, and having your comings and goings surveilled 24/7/365

_benedict2• 4 years ago

Depending where you live this might be illegal. In the U.K. you have an obligation not to record your neighbour’s property, and not to record conversations of members of the public.

mdp20214• 4 years ago

A related article appeared earlier, and I submitted it,

Dystopian doorbells: how the humble door buzzer turned into mass surveillance network

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32079896

https://www.standard.co.uk/homesandproperty/property-news/vi...

A very interesting piece of info is that «microphones that can pick up audio from up to 25 feet away». The Evening Standard is a British newspaper, and the article tackles the legal matters, but does not mention audio recording. Maybe an overlook, or maybe concerned people should check the audio related regulations further.

Video doorbell owners must be careful not to place their cameras in areas where they might breach neighbours’ privacy. Any footage detected outside of your property is likely to breach UK General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) laws

iso1631• 4 years ago

Yet every local facebook group is full of the curtain twitchers posting pictures of "person walking past, looks suspicious, keep save everyone x" in blatant disregard for the law, yet nothing happens

mdavis6890• 4 years ago

Yes that’s reserved for the government only.

dm3199• 4 years ago

I am also no fan of Ring or similar, though the reasons are slightly different. We lost our cat recently, and I went round my neighbourhood knocking/ringing on every door to ask around.

It was a strange experience as around 30% had these ring doorbells. It was unpleasant to know I was being recorded and judged, and often as a result, not answered.

I vowed at that point we would never consider one, if only because I don't agree that everyone should be treated with suspicion by default.

vorpalhex3• 4 years ago

I had two suspicious people come to my door (separate incidents) which resulted in me getting a video doorbell (I'm going to migrate from a cloud one to a closed circuit one).

I've also had two cases of salespeople who didn't understand the phrase "not interested". One escalated to me threatening a trespass call before he left. (This is with No Soliciting signs clearly visible)

I worry my wife would not get the same effect.

bogomipz• 4 years ago

"It was a strange experience as around 30% had these ring doorbells. It was unpleasant to know I was being recorded and judged, and often as a result, not answered."

Ugh, the idea that these things would be encouraging neighbors to become unneighborly by using Ring cameras as screening devices is truly dystopian. Helping neighbors with pets that have gone astray seems like one of the most basic neighborly and and potentially reciprocal interactions. I really hope you found your cat. I agree with commenter above that the prime utility of these for Amazon is as a form of delivery receipt mechanism for the army of Amazon's last mile contractors. The panopticon eye effect of the Ring network appears to be just another externality foisted on society by Mega Corp.

deltree73• 4 years ago

If you had a Ring, you would have most likely gotten clues about your cat.

If you had asked your neighbors nicely to view their Ring history, you would have mostly likely gotten even more clues or even found your cat.

googlryas4• 4 years ago

I find this viewpoint very strange. Why are you jumping to the idea that you're being treated as suspicious, and being judged, and being avoided as a result of that judgement?

What if people were just...doing something else? At work? At the movies? Driving? Pooping?

Do you feel judged when you walk up to doors with peepholes?

brokenmachine3• 4 years ago

You should keep your cat inside and not leave it free to roam the neighborhood killing wildlife, and then going to disturb your neighbors when it does exactly what a cat does and runs away.

vorpalhex3• 4 years ago

It would be a crime for you to use an air pellet rifle and sabotage the device. It would also be a crime if you used spray paint for the same end. I suspect the cameras are sensitive to IR light blinding them, but again, any kind of sabotage could be criminal.

kcb2• 4 years ago

Ring will gladly send them a free replacement.

lkxijlewlf• 4 years ago

I would be having some fun.

Friend: Have you any success bringing your neighbors on board.

Me: There's been a setback. They're currently not speaking with me.

Friend: That is unfortunate. We're talking a lot of money.

Me: I know. I'll fix it.

Friend: You better.

MerelyMortal• 4 years ago

"Have they found the gold that was burried in their backyard by the previous owners?"

treesknees2• 4 years ago

On one hand, it bothers me that I can't walk around the block without ending up on a dozen security cameras because everybody has a video doorbell. You can modify the motion and privacy zones to exclude certain areas such as the sidewalk, but I'm willing to bet most people do not do this.

On the other hand, I've personally had success with the police and court systems based on video evidence I could provide from my doorbell camera. Also, previously I had a long-lasting issue with a neighbor at my old house who would get really nasty about my yard and other issues (I suspected old age and mental issues) that completely ended once I put up a security camera to record the area he was doing this from.

If I do end up ever getting more security cameras, my plan is to show my neighbors exactly what angle they're recording and make sure they're OK with it. While I technically have the right to record whatever I want to in my state, I'd rather not make anyone feel uncomfortable. I recently came across a video where someone ended up pointing IR lasers at their neighbor's cameras and it was an effective way to disable the cameras without breaking any laws [1]

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RyYm2UwAaeQ

rootusrootus3• 4 years ago

You can modify the motion and privacy zones to exclude certain areas such as the sidewalk, but I'm willing to bet most people do not do this.

I have to do that or I get notifications constantly. I told my front cameras to only say something if someone shows up on my front step, or drives into my driveway. I don't want to get a notification every time someone walks down the sidewalk, or when the neighbors get home.

Although honestly, I get lots of notifications for the neighbors anyway. Because they seem to think a 30 foot wide road is narrow and they end up using my driveway regularly when getting into and out of their own. Not really a camera problem though.

rootusrootus3• 4 years ago

Ha, you'd hate me. I have cameras pointing out the front of my house that record my driveway, the road, and incidentally the neighbor's driveways and front yards and such. No audio, though.

But they're all cool with it, so there's that.

unfocused7• 4 years ago

I wouldn't hate you! :) Clearly you've engaged your neighbors if they are cool with it. You also mentioned no audio. I even told them it's fine with audio, now that I understood how the system works. Alas, no audio is obviously better as I don't have to ask my friends to walk further away from the line of side of the camera.

mtalantikite• 4 years ago

I live in a block-long grouping of condos in Brooklyn. Every so often the management company sends out exterminators and one day as I was talking to him he pointed to these environmental monitors installed on a lamppost on our block. He says “what’s with that, the government spying on us?” and I explained it’s just some environmental data collectors, but pointed to my neighbor’s Ring and mentioned “although that thing records me every time I enter or leave my condo”. He said “oh, I have one of those, it’s great”. He didn’t think there was anything wrong with the fact that Amazon was sharing the videos with law enforcement without consent. The cognitive dissonance was maddening but not at all surprising.

user_7832• 4 years ago

I hope you let him know about Amazon's stellar privacy?

CobrastanJorji• 4 years ago

The difference is that one of those things has a benefit. When there's a mysterious box that does some vague thing that you don't care about, it's safe to hate it. It's not helping you in any observable way, so opposing its existence is a safe, easy decision. But the Ring camera is providing him with a benefit, so evaluating whether to oppose it requires putting a cost on "spying on us" and weighing that against the personal benefits, which takes up a lot of mental load and consideration, so we ignore the vague costs against the concrete benefits.

People often care about these sorts of high level, idealistic concerns like "privacy" and "freedom" right until you offer them the smallest "concrete" benefit. Look at 23andme. Hey, can we take your blood, analyze your DNA, and send it to the police? No? What if we also told you what percentage Western European you are, would that convince you to pay us for the service?

antonymy• 4 years ago

It's explainable by looking at polls for how Americans feel about major institutions. Gallup did one for various public and private institutions: https://news.gallup.com/poll/394283/confidence-institutions-... and what they found is the only two major institutions that maintain a universal (across political affiliation and other demos) positive trust rating are small businesses and the military. Everybody else either varies a lot or just has universal low trust.

You'll note from this source that "big technology companies" score above all 3 branches of the federal government. Part of this is how partisan politics has become, so one party will have a majority of people expressing trust in an institution their party controls, the other hardly anybody, resulting in a fairly low score for the presidency and supreme court. Congress, it seems, is so universally despised it doesn't matter who controls it, it sits at single digit trust percentage.

In light of this it becomes understandable why somebody would be fine with big tech spying on them at the behest of the police (another institution with pretty high universal trust, though it does vary depending on political affiliation a bit it's considerably higher than any federal institutions), yet react with suspicion from something set up by bureaucrats from a federal agency.

paxys• 4 years ago

I feel the same way whenever people freak out about smart speakers, laptop webcams and doorbells – but have had a smartphone (with microphone, camera, GPS, OTA updates and unrestricted up/down connectivity) on them 24x7 since 2008.

CaptainZapp• 4 years ago

I would think (alas, I'm not a lawyer) that that's outright illegal in most of Europe.

RektBoy2• 4 years ago

Wild, don't you have any laws against this? Here in CZ(EU), you can't put camera facing public property just like that, I don't even mention facing private property of somebody else, lol. Even camera facing your property and like corner of view is public property, I can send formal complaint to "GDPR" bureau, they will warn the property owner, if nothing happens, fine incoming which can be pretty huge.

jimmaswell3• 4 years ago

Absurd. The right to record in public, which this is, should be respected.

cyral• 4 years ago

I just got a Ring cam and during setup it asks if you'd like to black out any regions to prevent recording neighbors, so that may be an option they just aren't aware of. Doesn't solve the audio issue if they aren't willing to disable it though.

wahnfrieden• 4 years ago

do we know this is respected for the material they eagerly/secretly fork over to piggies?

unfocused7• 4 years ago

Yes, in fact, during the engagement, they even showed us where the camera trigger zone is, which they reduced to their driveway, and even added the blackout region for when I'm on my porch, as the wide angle of the lens made it impossible to point it away from my front porch. They were really cooperative and I tried to ensure that I wasn't being demanding.

I even tried to meet them half way and said you can keep recording audio and video, now that I understand the trigger zone, but I was met with hostility the next day when I saw one of them in person.

Although, even with the trigger zone, they can just live stream it anyways, not that they are that kind of people, but clearly, I struck a nerve with them. I am still friends with one of them, and all their kids. So it's just one family member that sees things differently.

gist• 4 years ago

I believe these cameras haven't decreased crime. They also don't really add more security. It's a shame though they are everywhere, with disregard for privacy right on people's property. So yes, I'm biased. I have no love for Ring.

Impossible to believe with the ubiquity that they haven't decreased crime. Or at least certain types of crimes.

Prior to this type of video only a small amount of people had security cameras and generally they were easily spotted.

Today anyone committing (again a certain type of) crime knows that if they drive into a neighborhood or walk around they will be on a camera somewhere and multiple times. That has to have an impact even if there isn't data to prove it.

unfocused7• 4 years ago

I live downtown. The same "folks" that steal things, that I've seen for a better part of a decade, drug addictions and all, still steal stuff. It's just the police are not going to bother with it. One of them tried to steal our plant! Yes, our $5 plant. But I caught them in person, and they apologized, but they were high on some drugs.

No camera will deter someone like that.

daniel-cussen• 4 years ago

Their crossing the street to avoid you is a confession of having spied on you deliberately. It's their kame-hame-ha of scorn, they have to do it because otherwise you'll see what they've been peeking at, means they're guilty as shit.

unfocused7• 4 years ago

Most likely. I certainly didn't bring any of that up, nor will I. I've spoken to this person on a couple of occasions since then for some other matters that were urgent, and they didn't run away. But I'm not going to engage them to talk about the weather. So hopefully they mature and see that they overreacted.

ls1510• 4 years ago

I believe these cameras haven't decreased crime.

They are the crime

lmkg• 4 years ago

This type of thing is actually one of the cases were GDPR has been enforced, although it varies from country to country. Seems CCTV is most heavily enforced in Spain.

Go to https://www.enforcementtracker.com/ and filter by "CCTV," a few are for residential cases, e.g. https://www.enforcementtracker.com/ETid-1226.

kodah• 4 years ago

I don't mind people in my neighborhood running security cameras as long as they store the footage locally. I can't consent to the terms that a managed service provider presents them with respect to footage I am in or conversations I have. I am concerned that given a sizeable enough populace with locally stored footage, that it could become the target of robo-warrants for proxy-surveillance, but we're a bit off from that.

The reason I support people running their own security cameras is because I recently had a woman go off on some wild diatribe about how my property looked (which actually belongs to my landlord) and she became very upset to the point of trying to force my front gate open as I shut it. Since then she's gone on some proxy wars with other people in the neighborhood. Obviously her behavior will continue to escalate and because I have no cameras I have no way to show she was willing to use force and intimidation from step 1.

chrisBob• 4 years ago

I think you can set up a video camera pretty much anywhere you want, but there are a lot of laws about audio recording. I would check on your state's laws. I don't even think this would be covered by 1-party consent.

Domenic_S2• 4 years ago

The front porch is a "public" area, in the sense that there's no expectation of privacy. It's as legal as if you were taking an iphone video or live photo of your car in the driveway and happened to catch the neighbor in the background.

Ring does have the ability to set "blackout zones" in the camera's FOV, and as a good neighbor the ring owner could have excluded the neighbor's driveway/porch with a few clicks.

avgDev• 4 years ago

You cannot record voice in Illinois for example. I'm pretty sure this is the case for most all party consent states.

If you post a video with voice online you are breaking the law in Illinois, unless all parties gave you consent. I don't even know how something like RING camera is legal since it is being uploaded to the cloud and the parties don't consent to it.

Edit: Illinois actually made some changes to the law, that allows recording of voice in public spaces.

kyrra• 4 years ago

Depending on your state and country, you may have a legal angle here if you care, see: https://recordinglaw.com/party-two-party-consent-states/

I believe it's the reason Nest defaults to not recording audio, because the law various by state, and even mixed within some states. For 2-party (all-party) states, you can't record audio on security cameras (or at least it's a bad idea, and likely illegal).

lbwtaylor• 4 years ago

>For 2-party (all-party) states, you can't record audio on security cameras (or at least it's a bad idea, and likely illegal).

You can record audio in public, and a street facing audio recording is low risk, unless the microphone is so sensitive that there is an argument you are picking up audio from, for example, a neighbor's back yard. I think a sign indicating audio and video recording is sensible.

That said, a backyard facing camera has real risks about the video and certainly the audio coverage. A reasonable person would not use audio recording and would carefully manage coverage to exclude neighbor's private spaces.

dekhn10• 4 years ago

The camera may be acting as a deterrent (if they didn't have any additional thefts) without it being obvious.

I never would give a neighbor a hard time about a camera pointing at a publicly visible spot on my property- just into windows and other semi-private locations. That includes both audio and video. I ascribe to the "it's legal for journalists to go through your trash, so if you want privacy, shred your trash first" philosophy.

I added a new camera that includes the school across the street and if the cops come by and ask for footage, I generally provide it (they asked for a breakin across the street, but my camera wasn't pointed there).

One important details is that I buy fairly generic cameras that aren't talking to the outside world/cloud services although it's still a risk.

ls1510• 4 years ago

I never would give a neighbor a hard time about a camera pointing at a publicly visible spot on my property

In Germany people have successfully sued their neighbours for that and I fully agree with the courts. Filming others without consent is invasive.

hoorible• 4 years ago

Your trash analogy doesn’t hold up because trash becomes “public” once it’s on the street which isn’t part of your property. “Publicly visible spot on my property” is a meaningless phrase; it’s still my property, and I’m legally (here at least) allowed to raise an objection to the recording of it.

I can’t and wouldn’t object to someone recoding the sidewalk in front of my house. I can, and absolutely will, object to someone recording my yard. You might not see a distinction but there absolutely is one.

ocdtrekkie• 4 years ago

if the cops come by and ask for footage, I generally provide it

Yeah, I see nothing wrong with this: The law has to ask you, the owner of the camera, for the footage. No legal process can circumvent your knowledge of the footage request, and you can review the footage prior to handing it over. This is all possible because you made good non-cloud infrastructure decisions.

This is basically how it should work, but the fact that Amazon is a third party means the government can legally compel them separately from you being aware. There's no fix for this: Cloud storage is a critical failure of the design of the Ring system.

abeppu2• 4 years ago

It's not illegal for journalists to go through your trash, but can't we have a bar for treating our neighbors that's higher than not being criminals?

duxup• 4 years ago

Can confirm I use them to watch my kids. I don't think they provide any security / can't imagine they would.

Having said that the cameras only trigger recording action that happens on my property. Other places might appear in view but they don't trigger a recording.

noasaservice• 4 years ago

I asked them to point their front porch camera so that it doesn't record my front driveway, just theirs. and they lost their shit.

Wear a mask, and smear it with peanut butter. Or spraypaint.

Or, since they are wifi based devices, do a deauth attack against all devices on their network. The Rings don't have much of a local storage buffer.

anigbrowl6• 4 years ago

There are multiple homes near me that just point cameras straight out into the street, recording everyone else's comings and goings. This seems deeply anti-social to me, not much different from spying on the neighbors with binoculars. Meanwhile, police in San Francisco now propose that they should have realtime access to private networked surveillance systems: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32077528

l33t2328• 4 years ago

I understand your concern, but if it’s something that can be seen/heard from the next property over, I don’t know that you can reasonably expect such things to be private.

Although now I’m imagining this taken to the extreme, like if your neighbors set up a 24/7 HD video feed with a hyperbolic microphone etc aimed directly at your front porch. That sort of behavior is certainly weird.

koonsolo• 4 years ago

In Belgium that would be illegal. It's even illegal to point it at a public space such as the road.

Only your own property is allowed.

nedwin2• 4 years ago

Def sounds like shitty behaviour from your neighbours.

In terms of decreasing crime I live in Oakland in a duplex. Downstairs was empty and crooks broke in and stole a bunch of stuff over several hours earlier this year. We only had a camera doorbell for our upstairs unit and I have footage of one of the crooks walking around the corner with a crowbar, seeing the camera and immediately turning around and walking away. The camera was a huge deterrent for them and I believe the only reason our upstairs didn't get broken into where we were fast asleep.

We now have cameras on every door + a floodlight in the backyard.

tomkat0789• 4 years ago

A middle option could be to install a fake ring camera as a deterrent without the privacy hazards.

yomkippur• 4 years ago

Good idea on the flood lights have you thought of night vision as well because it can become very difficult to see in low light situation.

what i also suggest is play police radio. nothing scares this demographic than hearing police radio chatter describing what is happening

encryptluks22• 4 years ago

Shitty behavior how? There is nothing illegal about recordings your neighbors driveway.

gleenn• 4 years ago

Depending on the state you live in, e.g. California has two party consent to record audio, meaning if you don't consent then what they're doing is illegal.

gpt5• 4 years ago

These only apply to private conversation, and not ones occurred in public (i.e. it's fair game to record the driveway, but not the backyard).

thatfunkymunki• 4 years ago

are you certain this applies to things occuring in public? IANAL but it strains reason to believe it's illegal for cameras in public to have audio recording enabled.

joshu• 4 years ago

Extremely bright IR lamp that flickers randomly at night? They'll get a lot of notifications.

dijonman2• 4 years ago

Unfortunately this is a reason for single family homes on large lots. Privacy. I have large hedges between me and my neighbors which block visuals and all but the loudest noises.

wittyusername• 4 years ago

I wonder if this Ultrasound Directional Jammer would be the right mix of legal and proportionate.

https://www.tinytxs.com/products/ultrasonic-jammer

jonnycomputer4• 4 years ago

You made a reasonable request, and they should have complied with an 'oh yeah, sure, sorry.'

jonnycomputer4• 4 years ago

That said, my neighbors did catch a bike thief with one of those. Even got the bike back.

Miner49er2• 4 years ago

It's probably illegal too. It's illegal in most states to record conversations unless you have consent from one or all parties in the conversation.

mywittyname4• 4 years ago

But will anyone actually enforce the law?

I haven't been following this very closely, but my assumption is that the proliferation of recording devices have rendered these laws impractical to enforce, thus somewhat moot.

woofyman• 4 years ago

Single party recording is legal in 38 states.

https://fireflies.ai/blog/call-recording-laws-in-50-states-3...

bluefirebrand• 4 years ago

My guess is that only applies to private conversations? If you're talking with someone in public (and arguably the outside of your property is public) do they need your permission to record you?

mywittyname4• 4 years ago

Is there a way to trigger this so that it is always on? Something like a white noise generator?

odysseus• 4 years ago

I have a non-Ring doorbell camera and while I can't prove it has deterred theft, it's pretty useful in at least:

* Getting a partial face/partial vehicle ID of someone who stole our package

* Seeing the sneaky method in which they stole the package (allowing me to talk to neighbors warning them about the method used)

* Getting a private instant announcement of who exactly is at the door (if they've been here before and they're in my contacts)

* Notifying us while on vacation that someone out of the ordinary is at the door (and being able to speak to them as if we were home)

* Deterring raccoons (bright light on the front of the camera)

Not-so-useful things:

* Seeing the large number of cars that like to use our driveway to make a U-turn

There is an option to turn off audio recording and all footage is encrypted.

alasdair_• 4 years ago

Something to consider would be pointing a directed beam of sound towards the microphone. Bonus points if it’s an endless loop of you saying “I like to spy on my neighbors” over and over again.

heavyset_go9• 4 years ago

I've wrote about it before on HN, but a local busybody saw me committing the crime of walking down the street in my own neighborhood on their Ring camera and used that as pretext for calling the cops on me, who then harassed me for being "suspicious" without having actually looked at the footage themselves at all.

Unsurprisingly, I am not a fan of the surveillance state that's found itself at my literal doorstep.

shadowgovt4• 4 years ago

For what it's worth, that same neighbor could have called the cops to harass you after seeing you walking with their own eyeballs, or the ancient art of lying to the cops that they saw anything at all. The presence of the Ring in this story adds nothing to the risk scenario

MetaWhirledPeas• 4 years ago

Sounds like your real problem is your neighbor being a jerk. If they didn't have Ring that wouldn't stop them from calling the cops on a "suspicious" person.

shadowgovt4• 4 years ago

This is one of the perennial tug-of-wars in the general principle "Your rights end where my nose begins."

If you're emitting pressure waves or reflecting radiation flux and it crosses into my property, am I allowed to record and analyze it? And both the law and morality basically say "kinda, maybe, I dunno, depends." To wit: it's generally considered gauche to take photographs of you doing harmless things in your backyard, but if you're building a meth lab back there, you can be certain a neighbor will take photos and submit them as evidence. But how do they know it's a meth lab without looking in the first place?

The rights and responsibilities around data storage and analysis are context-specific and complicated.

Johnny555• 4 years ago

I asked them to point their front porch camera so that it doesn't record my front driveway

Ring also lets you set up privacy blocks on recorded footage, so you could ask them to black out your driveway.

I did that with the camera that shows my driveway, due to the curve of the driveway, it also shows part of the neighbor's house, so I blacked out their windows in the camera feed. I sent them a screenshot and asked if they wanted me to black out their entire yard, but they were fine with my video capturing any activity in their little used side yard.

pyuser583• 4 years ago

Amazon isn't exactly the king of privacy

Is there something specific you’re talking about?

IncRnd• 4 years ago

Robert Frost first coined the saying, "Good Fences Make Good Neighbors."

sizzle• 4 years ago

Floodlights are great for security and I like the cams to get a notification when packages arrive or to see if I closed the garage or if there v is any suspicious persons coming on my property, etc. Wyze has great AI person and package detection from my usage. I don’t actively monitor video unless something happened that warranted it. I also do not put it in places that it can pick up neighbors private moments.

krnlpnc• 4 years ago

If feasible a physical barrier on the porch along your property line might be the simplest option. Simply block the line of sight, and optionally install white noise generators on your side to mask noise.

alanh2• 4 years ago

I’m sympathetic to your privacy concerns (neighbors shouldn't be recording much of your space although some may be unavoidable if you are close by).

You really lose me with this, though:

I believe these cameras haven't decreased crime. They also don't really add more security.

Based on what?

5-more-minutes• 4 years ago

Did you steal the bicycles...

jimmaswell3• 4 years ago

You have no right not to be recorded in public in my opinion. You're the one shooting photons onto their property (the camera) that they should be able to do what they want with.

dieortin2• 4 years ago

So I should be able to peer through your bathroom’s window because you’re shooting photons outside?

14• 4 years ago

There is only one way to reach the mindset of a person like that and that is to install your own cameras on your property and face all of them at his house. Any of them that you can face directly into his windows the better. This may get negative attention here on HN but sometimes a pissing contest is the only way to get through to someone. You already tried the nice approach.

Tangurena4• 4 years ago

I asked them to point their front porch camera so that it doesn't record my front driveway, just theirs. and they lost their shit.

My sister has cameras on the outside of our house. When neighbors asked her to point them away from their houses, my sister also lost her shit. Even when the police came by, she got so upset that the police re-aimed her cameras when they got her distracted.

For some reason people who get involved in shootings try to hide their guns in our neighborhood (there are some unique cars and unique landscaping in this neighborhood). Her cameras have resulted in the police recovering about a dozen guns during 2021 and several arrests when the perps come by a few hours later to pick them up.

balderdash4• 4 years ago

Holy crap - that’s not the rAndom porch pirate!

twothamendment• 4 years ago

It sounds like it is time for a white noise generator, right on the property line and make sure they don't hear anything.

twawaaay• 4 years ago

I have this theory that cameras do not reduce crime because "amount" of crime depends on supply of people willing to do crime.

If you are a person that is willing to do crime and you see a camera, you do not stop doing crime. You find another target.

user00012-ab• 4 years ago

You could mount a small laser pointer in your window pointing directly into their camera.

NaturalPhallacy• 4 years ago

I see where you're coming from, but in the US at least there is no legal right to privacy outside/in public. That Amazon can and will turn over recordings - possibly without even a warrant - is horrifying. But that's basically the reality in the UK with CCTV.

Should something be done about it? Sure. But that's where we are.

autokad• 4 years ago

I'm pretty sure its against the law to have a camera pointed at someone else's property like that.

tpl• 4 years ago

Depending on where you live you might have recourse since they are recording audio.I would look into wiretapping laws for your state.

jiveturkey• 4 years ago

Why not take some active measures? Bright IR light directed at the camera. Maybe there's an ultrasonic noise that would effectively disable the mic. I assume there's an auto gain control so a loud enough (but inaudible to us) sound might do it.

MengerSponge3• 4 years ago

I'll change my tune when news like this breaks about Apple, but I paid extra for a HomeKit video camera because Amazon's data policies give me heebie-jeebies.

I get a notification and a live video on my TV when someone shows up on my doorstep, but not when someone walks by on the sidewalk. It's easy.

CubsFan10602• 4 years ago

Do you use HomeKit cameras or HomeKit Secure Video cameras?

MengerSponge3• 4 years ago

HomeKit Secure Video on a Logitech Circle View. It is decidedly aight. It's expensive, but it works well enough. The video was high enough quality that the local police could ID the guy who stole letters from my mailbox a few months ago.

But it's easy and reliable and notifies us when somebody drops a package on our doorstep.

Pakdef12• 4 years ago

Why wait? host your own...

MengerSponge3• 4 years ago

If I host my own, I know how to get openCV to only get notifications when a particular feature is detected, but can I get a live preview as a picture-in-picture on my TV while I'm watching NBA basketball? Or while my girlfriend is watching college basketball? I don't think there's a reasonable solution for that.

Buying a HomeKit hosted camera, and AppleTV, and the prerequisite WiFi network upgrade costs about two hours of my time. Could a standalone camera, ethernet/wifi connection, server, and software be stood up for fewer dollars or less time? I really doubt it.

2OEH8eoCRo03• 4 years ago

They don't need your consent to give police their footage.

orthecreedence• 4 years ago

Right, this is the issue. Don't install surveillance devices on behalf of a megacorporation and get butthurt when they use the footage for something you don't approve of.

How the fuck did people go this insane?

johndhi• 4 years ago

I mean, duh. The law obliged companies to turn over internet related data to law enforcement and not tell the data subject about it if law enforcement asks in the right way. This can be said of all data Amazon or any other tech company collects.

mabbo• 4 years ago

The full title of the article includes "WITHOUT A WARRANT".

The law doesn't oblige anyone to provide police with information without a warrant. Amazon is choosing to do this.

jazzyjackson• 4 years ago

IMO the primary utility of Ring is for Amazon to surveil their delivery contractors, without a doorbell cam it’s trivial for a delivery person to set the package on the porch, photograph it as “proof of delivery”, and then walk away with said package.

So the deterrent effect is good for the consumer in that it prevents theft, and good for Amazon because they can contract out to just about anyone to deliver packages, no trust required (or, “trust but verify”)

techdragon• 4 years ago

For bonus points they can then point the finger at the local thieves that happily try to identify and then shadow Amazon delivery contractors and steal valuable looking parcels based on whatever gut instinct they have for value based on size/shape/weight of the packages.

Amazon proves the delivery and now it’s the local Polive Department’s problem.

They are literally selling customers an excuse they can use later against the very customer that buys it.

jrh206• 4 years ago

In your example the thieves have nothing to do with Amazon or their drivers. I don’t understand how this could be construed as Amazon selling an excuse for something they’re not responsible for.

hansvm2• 4 years ago

In a lot of jurisdictions the seller is liable for the package till the consumer receives it, often explicitly calling out doorstep delivery as being insufficient to remove that liability. The seller might separately have a claim against a carrier or thief, but the law is on the side of the consumer regardless of whatever else plays out. Plus, legalities aside, it's usually cheaper to satisfy the consumer than to take the long-term PR hit of their goods sold being costly gambles.

jonnycomputer4• 4 years ago

That really does sound like one of their incentives for having these... never thought about that.

woodruffw7• 4 years ago

This will maybe be too snide, but I want to say it: what an utterly ridiculous system we've contrived for ourselves.

People want to live in suburbs, where their residences are separated from commercial areas. This starves city and town centers, leaving only big businesses that are capable of thriving on high volume sales.

But we still want the convenience of walking down to their neighborhood store, so we've constructed an entire economic system built on shipping things in disposable boxes around the globe and getting them to people's doorsteps within two business days.

But, it turns out, this makes it really easy for someone to walk up to your door and steal your package. So we pay the same companies that starve our neighborhood businesses for the privilege of being surveilled, in turn externalizing the cost of their haphazard practices onto law enforcement and the victimized parties.

More middlemen, more theft, more surveillance, more waste. What a farce.

mlyle10• 4 years ago

But we still want the convenience of walking down to their neighborhood store, so we've constructed an entire economic system built on shipping things in disposable boxes around the globe and getting them to people's doorsteps within two business days.

1. Generally they don't come from across the globe to your doorstep after your order, but from a nearby fulfillment center.

2. Getting things quickly from online shopping is just as nice in cities (actually nicer, because you can get a broader variety of goods quickly) as in suburbs.

kelnos4• 4 years ago

I don't think the urban/suburban divide really covers it, though. I live in a city, in a neighborhood with an okay amount of local retail, but I still order a lot of stuff online and have it delivered.

I usually get my groceries delivered. It saves me an hour of driving to the grocery store, shopping, paying, driving home, and making several trips up and down four flights of stairs to bring the items home. I'm totally happy to pay a delivery charge and a tip to not have to deal with that. Yes, I do walk to the local grocery if I just need a couple items, but I usually do a larger delivery grocery order around once a month.

Neighborhood stores can't stock everything, especially in a city where space is expensive. Looking through my last 3 months of Amazon orders (24 orders), I see only three items that I could have gotten by walking somewhere locally, and they were all things that were part of a larger order that was mostly stuff I could not get locally. And that's just Amazon; I definitely have purchases from other online retailers over the past three months, and for the most part I'd guess they're all things I couldn't get within walking distance either.

My neighborhood shines when it comes to restaurants, bars, parks, and personal services (hair cuts, mani/pedi, that sort of thing). A good variety of groceries are available within walking distance, and even some more exotic stuff (there's a high-end cake bakery a couple blocks away, for example), but otherwise most regular purchases aren't easily fulfilled with a short walk. Most of those other purchases would require a 45-60 minute bus ride, or a 15-20 minute drive (with no guarantee of finding what I want). And if I need to do that, I'll probably just order it online instead.

I do agree that the situation isn't ideal. I generate a lot of cardboard and paper recycling waste, though fortunately not that much plastic. I'm not sure about fuel usage: if I have to drive somewhere to buy something, it might be a wash compared to a delivery vehicle bringing it to me. And the package theft problem (and the "solutions") we've created for ourselves is ridiculous.

TuringNYC3• 4 years ago

> People want to live in suburbs, where their residences are separated from commercial areas. This starves city and town centers, leaving only big businesses that are capable of thriving on high volume sales.

What are you supposed to do really? I grew up in an urban environment (NYC) and embraced urban living. The reality was that it wasnt sustainable w/o being a multi-millionaire. I'll give real examples.

I take a 20min subway/bus to a store purchase a terracotta planter, or perhaps a box of cat litter. You then have to carry that 5 or 10 pound item. You realize the subway isnt working, today. You need to take an express subway. Now you have to switch trains but you realize the escalator and elevator also isnt working. So you drag it up the stairs, across the tunnel, and back down the other side. You could hitch a ride on a friend's car, but there is congestion pricing, or a $11 toll on the tunnel, and throw in another $40 for parking. These things used to work in the 1990s, also in the 2000s, but eventually things all failed in a big way (and the failure of public transport was a big part of it.)

Good luck if you are disabled, or have knee problems, or have a baby+stroller also.

I tried really, really hard to live in an urban environment, but it was eventually a failure. I now live in the suburbs. We order cat litter and have it delivered to our doorstep.

No, i dont want to live in the suburb. But I cannot afford to live in the city. If I could freely take cabs everywhere like a multi-millionaire I would live in the city. Short of that, i didnt see much option to stay.

People say crazy things like "oh you should just bike everywhere." OK, how does my mom with osteoporosis bike? How does a disabled person bike? Where on the bike do you place the 10lb cat litter box?

Cat litter is just one aspect.

justapassenger• 4 years ago

You're waaaaay overthinking it. Building whole system of analyzing that at scale is very costly, and totally unnecessary.

Amazon, as any other carrier, depends on the insurance (self-insurance in this case) and statistics. Some % of package theft will happen, and it's all priced in into their business cost.

pengaru• 4 years ago

Is this really all that effective until practically everyone has one?

They do seem common, but not that ubiquitous, yet.

My parents have a Ring camera, my sister has a Nest, and I have DIY raspberry pi cameras. My parents immediate neighbors have none.

troyvit• 4 years ago

Often when a story like this comes up I go off on a search for clothing and accessories that help disrupt the AIs these cameras use. The attempts at this fall into 3 categories: works of art, college projects, and organizations that are no longer selling. One exception might be https://adversarialfashion.com/, though it seems focused on license plate readers.

Pakdef12• 4 years ago

I think that they might be more likely to look at the pictures with a bunch of license plates on them

throwaway0a5e5• 4 years ago

Or you'd get miscategorized as a car which is probably the best case scenario.

eth0up2• 4 years ago

I tend to drop a link to Motion when such subjects arise. It's been a stalwart companion for years and is usually in Linux repositories.

https://motion-project.github.io/

Pakdef12• 4 years ago

My favorite one.

I run a script on_event_end to make a backup on my VPS and also, on_event_start, I record audio:

on_event_start ffmpeg -nostdin -f alsa -i pulse -c:a libmp3lame -ar 44100 -b:a 128k -ac 1 -f mp3 /home/user/motion/%Y%m%d%H%M%S.mp3 &

I just wish they would have chosen a different name, it can be hard to find in a web search.

eth0up2• 4 years ago

I just wish they would have chosen a different name, it can be hard to find in a web search.

It's an apt and good name, but definitely not search friendly.

lacker2• 4 years ago

What I would like to see is for the police to actually track down crime when people give them video evidence. Here's a video of someone stealing a car, stealing a bicycle, breaking into a house. Go arrest them! Instead, the police just ignore reports like this.

I think it would be fair to do something like, if you are convicted of a crime, the police keep your face and other biometric data on file for the next five years. Then if you get caught on video committing another crime, they can just use face detection to know it's you.

The way it works now, the power dynamics are all wrong. It shouldn't be Amazon listening to the police who ignore the people, it should be the police listening to the people, and Amazon just sells people a data service.

anigbrowl6• 4 years ago

If you get convicted of a crime, the police will keep your biometric data forever. What leads you to imagine they don't?

lacker2• 4 years ago

I am not an expert, but right now it seems like the police generally keep around your biometric data, but they don't keep it in a very useful way. I can't walk into the police station, show them a video clip on my phone of someone breaking into my car last night, they scan the video and it says "we found them, this is John Q. Smith". The data is on a piece of paper somewhere, or it's in a database that is rarely used for whatever reason. So in practice it's like they aren't storing it at all.

If the police did keep biometric data in a useful way, I think our society would have to be more explicit about what biometric data we want the police to keep. I don't know what the right answer is, but something like, if you are convicted by a crime then your biometric data is at least kept for a few years, that seems reasonable to me.

hedora• 4 years ago

Agreed. I've found the last group that gets access to invasive surveillance data is the local police.

For a while, Google was offering reverse GPS lookups of phones to the police. ("List all phones in this bounding box at this time in the past"). If you had Google Maps installed on your phone, then you were automatically opted in to sharing the data.

(I think this may be illegal in some US jurisdictions now; though Biden is talking about specific carve outs preventing sharing of GPS traces near abortion clinics with state governments, so who knows...)

Someone broke into a remote building at 2AM. We had video of them doing it with a precise start / stop timestamp for the event, and of no one else in the area. The police said they couldn't ask Google to query the database for them.

So, we're in a situation where the data exists on everyone, but only abusive law enforcement types and creepy marketers are willing to use it.

We can't even really have an argument about the tradeoffs between privacy and security, since the data isn't available for the benefit of normal victims of normal crimes.

kornhole2• 4 years ago

I worry less about the police than I do about Amazon having this surveillance in the first place. The former head of the NSA sits on the board of directors and they have multi billion dollar contracts for services to the intelligence agencies.

Please if you want to surveil your property and people nearby, choose devices that capture it locally or to your private cloud. You can then choose to hand it over to police when warranted.

throwaway0a5e5• 4 years ago

I worry less about the police than I do about Amazon having this surveillance in the first place. The former head of the NSA sits on the board of directors and they have multi billion dollar contracts for services to the intelligence agencies.

That's just being worried about the police with extra steps. An F15 doesn't stand on a street corner and a surveillance dragnet doesn't kick in your door.

anigbrowl6• 4 years ago

Those extra steps are important because they create legal deniability. For example, local jurisdictions (or judicial outcomes) tell police they can't do X, Y, or Z because it's government overreach. So police just look for corporations that engage in those activities and purchase the data from them, with your tax money. So instead of the Stasi you end up with Corpsec.com, but it's OK because there's a middleman making a dollar, good old capitalism.

dikaio• 4 years ago

To be fair, consent is given by these corporations constantly over any allegation so whether with or without consent you can safely assume these corporations are not on your side.

For me, I try not to get caught up in the day to day arguments of it all and just donate to organizations like the EFF.

silisili• 4 years ago

After years of avoiding 'smart home' bs, I finally caved on a doorbell camera and a few other goodies. After doing a lot of research, this is the reason I avoided Ring.

I ended up landing on Eufy as it stores data locally. You're free to back it up, and cloud services are completely optional(I don't use them). No complaints, feel free to ask if anyone has questions.

asojfdowgh• 4 years ago

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/may/18/amazon...

https://www.theverge.com/2021/1/31/22258856/amazon-ring-part...

Its not an accident, its the entire reason why they make the doorbells

gffrd2• 4 years ago

It blows my mind how quickly people put up home cameras with zero thought to

* (1) what gets captured

* (2) who gets what gets captured

Walk down the street of any middle-class neighborhood in a major suburb: a healthy chunk have cameras. Let's say 60%.

So, you and your family are being passively surveilled on a massive scale … for the benefit of someone who's not you preventing another someone from stealing their bike.

Is this a reasonable tradeoff? Is it fair to others?

Pakdef12• 4 years ago

In addition to that, they pay a lot for the service... someone I know just had 3 cameras installed and pays $80 a month for cloud storage...

Buying your own and hosting it yourself would pay for itself in just a couple months with something like Reolink RLC-510A and a cheap VPS https://www.lowendstock.com/.

helen___keller3• 4 years ago

Is this a reasonable tradeoff? Is it fair to others?

Devils advocate:

You word this in a way that implies it is negative, but the fact so many people do it suggests many or most people don’t agree with you. Maybe having cameras around makes the average person feel safe?

It sucks for you as a privacy minded individual, but ultimately who are you to tell your neighbors they can’t have cameras on their property? The street itself is public, there’s no implied right to privacy for what can be seen from the public road. Truthfully many American suburbs have only ever had privacy by chance, many places in more urban locales there’s always eyes from the public street. It’s just happened that because cars are efficient and convenient, nobody walks by or spends time on the sidewalk in the modern American suburb. That doesn’t mean they have no right to do so.

gffrd2• 4 years ago

Maybe having cameras around makes the average person feel safe?

Interesting point! Attempted interpretation: "I'm a person walking by a house that has a camera, and it makes me feel better knowing there's a recording of what's happening to me … in the event that I'm robbed/harassed/assaulted/etc." Also: no need for an alibi, when there's record of you being pretty much everywhere.

I wonder if anyone has studied whether cameras being present in communities increase the net level of trust with which people operate? I would assume the net benefit would be "everyone's less worried/suspicious, so operates with greater baseline trust."

This feels like similar territory as social media, where we (humans) tend to think the system operates with the same set of rules/principles as normal socialization, but vastly underestimate the scale in which we're now operating.

cm42• 4 years ago

I suppose it's a reasonable tradeoff to people who can't quantify risk and treat everything as uncertain, have too much money, too few problems, oh! - and whose neighbor just got one.

The same busy-bodies posting long Facebook screeds about how they narrowly avoided a pack of child traffickers at Local Suburbia Shopping Plaza with a picture of two hispanic dudes in work clothes and a work van buying diapers.

I find them to be generally unconcerned with anybody else except for the monthly PFP change.

UberFly• 4 years ago

All the more reason to keep the video footage within your own network. A Unifi system or similar.

shadowgovt4• 4 years ago

This is exactly the sort of thing that David Brin discussed in Transparent Society. In this case, people should be aware that Ring owns that footage, not them, so final decisions on how its used will rest with that company

robg• 4 years ago

Who would have thought that consumers would accept a surveillance state by absorbing the upfront costs?

at_a_remove3• 4 years ago

Looking at most Ring videos, they don't seem very useful for tracking anyone down, more of a "yes, a porch pirate stole your stuff." Their position is such that the license plate -- assuming they even come in via a vehicle -- is visible. Plate readers need to be in a different place, with a different aim.

Plus, Rings are wireless, and too many thieves are just using a wireless jammer.

darknavi• 4 years ago

too many thieves are just using a wireless jammer.

Is this actually that wide spread? I hardwire all of my cameras but I've never heard of wide-spread wireless jamming in house-hold crime.

Pakdef12• 4 years ago

They should cut off the power instead... it would take care of both.

at_a_remove3• 4 years ago

Around here, I have seen a few clips of it.

thewebcount2• 4 years ago

I just saw this article[0] about how the constant scams we're subjected to on a daily basis are a big problem for more than just monetary reasons. If companies weren't allowed to collect so much data, and weren't allowed to just share with whomever they wanted to, this would be much less of a problem. Many of these scams are possible because of the huge trove of personal information collected by companies like Amazon, Google, etc. Whether they lose control of their data to hackers or sell it to untrustworthy "partners" doesn't really matter. If they didn't have it, they couldn't sell it or lose it.

[0]https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/07/13/scam-fr...

RosanaAnaDana• 4 years ago

Does any one know of a privacy focused security camera?

I live in a rough neighborhood and am concerned about theft, but I have 0 faith or trust in companies like amazon.

If I want a security camera that I can check remotely, but I want to own my data and have complete privacy (no snooping by the company, no ability for them to give my data to some one else).

Do I have any options for this other than completely rolling my own?

MikeFez• 4 years ago

Rolling your own is probably your best bet as being able to check remotely typically means your camera streams are running through a company's servers.

Personally, I moved from BlueIris and I've been incredibly happy with Frigate which is configured to pull from my local IP cameras - none of which have direct access to the internet: https://github.com/blakeblackshear/frigate

You can check in via browser assuming you have some method of accessing your local network. Paired with a google coral device (or a beefy CPU) alongside local storage, it also has the ability to detect objects in real-time which often is a feature that requires video processing on a company's server.

tekeous• 4 years ago

If you believe what they say, Apple HomeKit Secure Video.

If you don’t, Ubiquiti makes a good remote system with on premise DVR.

wilg2• 4 years ago

I have a HomeKit doorbell camera which uses HomeKit Secure Video and is end-to-end encrypted.

abeppu2• 4 years ago

I get that privacy vs law and order issues get people worked up because they probe at a difference in values. And perhaps in many contexts reasonable people can take different abstract positions.

But with Ring etc, I think society gets a really poor law and order benefit in exchange for the privacy cost. We should at least be demanding that if our privacy is invaded we get something out of it.

I live in a dense city where minor property crimes are notoriously common. Last year, after multiple package thefts, one neighbor bought a blink camera for the building entrance. It recorded every time me or my neighbors entered or exited, and it recorded when later my neighbor had yet more packages stolen (thieves easily got through a locked gate and front door). But what do you do then? The cops aren't going to do anything with a video of a guy in a hoodie stealing $200 worth of goods. That stuff is never going to be recovered. Nextdoor in our area has tons of these videos. My neighbor still had to learn to be proactive and defensive. A cost in privacy was paid, but no reduction in crime was enjoyed.

Here are some proposals for potentially more equitable arrangements:

- if the police can have at-will access to our cameras, we should get at-will access to their bodycams. No more of this "10 days after a shooting, family members of the deceased were able to watch key clips of footage selected by the PD"

- if the police claim that having access to our cameras makes them more efficient in solving crimes, then let them put numbers on that efficiency so we can reduce police budgets accordingly

- if the police claim that having access to our cameras makes lets them solve more crimes, then anyone coming forward with footage of a crime should be able to demand that the police make a credible effort to investigate. Oh, not enough resources? My city is in the top 10 in per-capita police spending in the US, and I see _so many_ cops doing absolutely nothing all the time. If I'm going to live in a creepy surveillance state we could at least have an industrious and effective police force.

bedast• 4 years ago

Bear in mind that Amazon not only owns Ring, but also Blink.

ascendantlogic• 4 years ago

I'm shocked I tell you. Shocked that they would collaborate with the growing police state and just enable dragnet surveillance.

arwhatever• 4 years ago

Do you wonder if the SWAT team ever needs to bulldoze your wall in (rightly or wrongly), whether they might get a warrant to disable your cloud-based security camera(s) just beforehand?

Pakdef12• 4 years ago

Apparently they don't need a warrant for that... Amazon just demonstrated that.

base3• 4 years ago

I interviewed at ring before they were absorbed by Amazon. The hiring manager tried to close the deal with an inspiring story about using ring cameras to scare "gang bangers" who got too close to his girlfriend. I walked out. I'm white, but I remember Emmett Till.

robbywashere_• 4 years ago

Is this sort of thing a boiled frog type slide to surveillance powered totalitarianism or will everyone eventually catch on and demand ubiquitous privacy everywhere?

mike_hock• 4 years ago

The frog's been slowly boiling for decades now, so the former.

suddenexample• 4 years ago

I'm probably just being naive here, but can someone enlighten me to whether Google's Nest cameras have had similar issues? Ring seems to have had a long trail of issues with being hacked, collaborating with police, etc.

Not looking for hypotheticals here; I know most oppose the general principle of cloud-backed surveillance devices, but I personally (for better or for worse) have a better impression of Google's attempts to ensure user privacy and security.

Pakdef12• 4 years ago

We know that Google has a pipe going to the Government from Snowden's leaks... Apple too.

We are due for a new leak though.

Amazon admits giving police Ring camera footage without consent

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