Ring cancels its partnership with Flock Safety after surveillance backlash

https://www.theverge.com/news/878447/ring-flock-partnership-canceled

by c420 • 5 months ago

585 311 5 months ago

theverge.com

minimaxir2• 5 months ago

Which Super Bowl LX ads haven't backfired yet?

ramuel• 5 months ago

The Anthropic one? Although I'm sure they'll put ads into claude eventually

rwc• 5 months ago

Early audience response suggested the message struggled to land. According to an iSpot survey of 500 viewers, the ad’s likeability score placed it in the bottom 3% compared with Super Bowl ads over the past five years. Its top-two-box purchase intent scored 24% below Super Bowl norms and 19% below ads in its category that aired over the last 90 days. Viewers most commonly described their reaction as “WTF,” signaling confusion around both the message and the execution.

https://www.adweek.com/brand-marketing/super-bowl-revealed-a...

crote3• 5 months ago

The Anthropic ads are heavily into the uncanny valley. The services they are demonstrating looks horrible - even before the ad.

A soulless psychiatrist who'll give you generic cookie-cutter advice about deeply personal issues? Why would you want that!?

Same with the personal trainer, the startup coach, and the professor. Any of them would be incredibly creepy in real life, with their fake smiling, uncanny repeated stock phrases, and fake positivity.

They are trying to spin it like the integrated ads are the problem, but the services are too far detached from genuine human behaviour for that to matter. "Our creepy ripoff psychiatrist doesn't have ads" isn't exactly a great message, is it?

mh2266• 5 months ago

pokemon?

minimaxir2• 5 months ago

A fail IMO because it exposed people as only liking Gen 1 Pokemon. Except that guy who liked Zygarde.

dredmorbius• 5 months ago

For someone out of the loop, which ones have backfired, other than Ring/Flock?

vgeek• 5 months ago

Spiderman pointing at Spiderman?

dgxyz8• 5 months ago

The tech industry is a bloody Spider-Man pointing orgy at this point.

culi• 5 months ago

The success case for much of silicon valley seems to be government contracts. Gov't is the polite way of saying military

RupertSalt2• 5 months ago

Daily Struggle over two buttons labeled "RECOVER LOST PUPPY" and "DEPORT NEIGHBORS"

bagels2• 5 months ago

Is it a struggle for them? Clearly they're pressing both buttons.

RupertSalt2• 5 months ago

Now whenever the cameras detect a lost dog, all your neighbors' phones begin playing "Angel" by Sarah McLachlan

throwway120385• 5 months ago

They also play this when the cameras in your house detect you using more than one square of toilet paper at a time.

dgxyz8• 5 months ago

This is a temporary rollback while there’s a choice to speak against it.

Cloud connected doorbells must die as well as dragnet surveillance.

ProllyInfamous6• 5 months ago

I worked in large union data centers, decades ago.

Cannot even imagine what is going on these days, inside & out.

ohyoutravel• 5 months ago

Can you elaborate? This is interesting

doctor_radium• 5 months ago

Agreed, but this would then inconvenience millions of non-techies.

Could a solution be forcing Amazon (and Google and Flock and...) to open their backend software either for self-hosting or for running on somebody else's "cloud"? So subscribing to such a device isn't that different from getting web hosting from Dreamhost or Hetzner?

Maybe there's a host or IP field in the settings that users can easily change?

dgxyz8• 5 months ago

I know this is not constructive, but fuck 'em and their convenience!

syntheticnature• 5 months ago

If there was an IP setting users could change, all the self-hosting etc. forums would be talking about how to change it instead of explaining other options. I'd expect not just fixed hosts and an ecosystem dependent on their proprietary protocols, but also pinned certificates and secure boot so you can't change any of it.

N.B. Flock isn't really targeting the consumer market.

dylan6046• 5 months ago

Cloud connected doorbells must die as well as dragnet surveillance.

I'd disagree and restate that cloud services willing to make these kinds of deals must die, painfully, in a fire after being stung by a million killer bees, after receiving a million paper cuts and having lemon juice poured all over them.

It is possible for a company to charge a monthly fee to provide a service and only that service without attempting to leverage their users and their data for any other form of income. Companies used to do it all of the time. It just takes a C-suite/board/founder to have the moral fortitude to not sell out their users.

antonvs• 5 months ago

It just takes a C-suite/board/founder to have the moral fortitude ...

Just for context, could you provide some examples of such people?

trinsic2• 5 months ago

The problem now is how can you trust any of these companies? The infrastructure is there to link this data if you have cameras that connect to the internet. How can you ever be sure this wont happen in secret? We have no guarantees that companies will follow the laws and laws are not even being enforced.

camillomiller2• 5 months ago

No it is not. Your mandate is to grow your company’s revenue and profits, not act according to your conscience as an executive, especially if something is not illegal.

This is why regulations are extremely important. There need to be a strong enough counterincentive or companies will eventually always follow the path of least resistance to growth. Ethics when present may create some form of friction along some specific paths, but it’s never enough for those to not become, eventually, that very path.

noduerme12• 5 months ago

How hard would it be to sell a solution that makes it easy for a consumer to set up on-site recording? Ship a small box loaded with Tailscale and some software that connects to cameras over a LAN, and runs a webserver that allows user logins through a web interface. Nothing needs to go into the cloud. Yes, then you sell it once to a customer and that's it. No subscription or planned obsolescence. Fine, so factor that into the price. Make your money and go on to do other good things.

SecretDreams3• 5 months ago

In America, whether a deal is publicly made or not, if your personal data is stored on the cloud, it is neither private nor your data any longer. Any belief to the contrary is just to help you sleep better at night.

dgxyz8• 5 months ago

Cloud services change. Politicians change. Once the data is in someone else's hands it is at risk.

Imagine our current data corpus in the hands of the Stasi for example.

roganp• 5 months ago

I hope everyone will remember how eagerly AMZN's subsidiary was willing to sell it's cameras to whomever was willing to pay.

murillians• 5 months ago

Meaning they’ll wait until about June and then quietly roll it out

ToucanLoucan• 5 months ago

Yep. Anyone got alternatives? I love the convenience of a video doorbell but I really really would like to not help the police or ICE or anyone else for that matter unless I decide it's a good idea.

dgxyz8• 5 months ago

We've got an analogue video phone on our apartment. Works flawlessly. No digital path other than the ring selection. Has a flat monochrome CRT which is kind of cool.

I made it half a century without a doorbell in my phone. I don't need it now.

andrewxdiamond• 5 months ago

you can use a company that is self hosted like Unifi and have complete control over your data, still have remote access, and not pay a subscription. “self hosted” scares people off but its literally a box you plug in and forget about. Pretty trivial.

I dont understand why anyone chooses Ring when the costs of Unifi are so much better.

The ring app also sucks imo and all their hardware is quite slow.

rtkwe2• 5 months ago

I use Amcrest's AD410. I don't pay for their cloud, have my own NVR, and can access them through Wireguard if I'm out of the house.

keraf• 5 months ago

Got the UniFi Doorbell from Ubiquiti and I'm really happy with it. It's hooked up to my Dream Machine, records video on disk and I access it via Tailscale. Not paying any subscription and it doesn't live in a cloud.

lightingthedark• 5 months ago

I have a Reolink doorbell. It records to a SD card and works great with my Home Assistant setup. So much better than the Ring it replaced.

baby_souffle2• 5 months ago

Yep. Anyone got alternatives?

The self-hosted and home-automation and home-assistant subreddits are _full_ of discussion threads on this. The good news is that you have a TON of options to pick from. The bad news is that they're all deficient in one way or another so you really do have to spend a bit of time to figure out who executes best on the things you care most about.

If you don't mind the lock-in, Unifi is nice. Reolink (and the other DaHua re-brands) usually leave a lot to be desired in terms of software / quality but they are cheap and they reliably spit out a regular video stream that can be used with just about any software. Just don't let them onto the WAN!

LazyMans2• 5 months ago

None of these agencies get your video data without your consent. The feature was designed so they have an easy way to present you the request for footage.

Unfortunately a portion of the information getting circulated is the complete opposite.

marricks• 5 months ago

Normal door bells are pretty great and have less overhead and maintenance...

All tech puts it's best foot forward, some of it's really nifty, but a camera on every street corner is always going to pose more risks than it's worth IMO...

It's work to go back to the old ways but I think this is one we step we should really all take.

righthand3• 5 months ago

Yi cameras are supposed to be local if you dont get a subscription.

jszymborski• 5 months ago

Reolink has doorbell cameras[0] that you can keep disconnected from the internet. They also have some pretty useful local recording hubs if self-hosting is not your deal[1].

[0] https://reolink.com/ca/product/reolink-video-doorbell-wifi/

[1] https://reolink.com/ca/product/reolink-home-hub/

nerdsniper• 5 months ago

Reolink with Frigate NVR. Can also put Home Assistant on the same box. Pretty much any 12+ gen intel CPU with QSV should be able to handle the encoding for streaming to your device. Probably will want to use tailscale so that you don’t have to open any ports.

roamerz• 5 months ago

I’ve been pretty happy with Reolink. No subscription required and uses local storage. Notifications are done through smtp which works pretty well. Mobile app is pretty solid as well.

acidburnNSA2• 5 months ago

Frigate is incredible. I have 3 instances of it (different homes across the family) running using various amcrest and reolink local-only PoE and Wifi cams. I access the remotely using wireguard. One is running on a 2017 miniatx box (Intel i7-7700T) using openvino to do local-only object detection with the 2017 intel CPU. One is using a Beelink EQ14 Mini PC, Intel Twin Lake N150, also using openvino for object detection (people, dogs, cars, etc). One is using a nvidia 5070 gpu. All notifications are processed via the home assistant integration.

Truly top-notch quality, full-featured, very low maintenance, easy to set up, cheap to operate. I'm glad so many people are using it now.

For video doorbell I just have a cam that can see the front door and I drew a box around the area I want notifications for. When a person enters the box, I get a notification and snapshot.

https://docs.frigate.video/

add-sub-mul-div2• 5 months ago

The difficult lesson is that getting off the treadmill of always chasing greater convenience is the only way to stop the bleeding of increasing dependence on technology.

Schiendelman7• 5 months ago

Apple's solution is e2ee and they don't have the keys. They publish privacy whitepapers about this.

andrei_says_• 5 months ago

No one being surprised at this statement is an indication of how much enshittification and betrayal we have agreed to accept.

I’d like to acknowledge the damage I carry as a human being as a result of the pressure to pretend that this is normal. Just because there doesn’t seem to be real alternatives in so many areas of this “free market” /s economy.

cal_dent• 5 months ago

We live in a world where the powerful deceive us. We know they lie. They know we know they lie. They don't care. We say we care but do nothing

ehnto• 5 months ago

It has been a long decent. I blame advertising, because I doubt we would have put up with as much enshittification if the majority of our digital lives wasn't free, paid for by advertising, like it currently is.

bwoah• 5 months ago

https://archive.is/oRWYE

mandeepj• 5 months ago

“Canceled” for now. Maybe it was just a video, they’ll continue with the “quiet” development and slowly launch it

BatteryMountain• 5 months ago

Definitely this. Now way they are saying no to that bag (and/or gag orders....). This isn't over.

sneak• 5 months ago

Following intense backlash to its partnership with Flock Safety, a surveillance technology company that works with law enforcement agencies, Ring has announced it is canceling the integration.

Ring (owned by Amazon, who runs a private airgapped AWS region for the CIA onsite at Langley) also works with law enforcement agencies.

mrcwinn• 5 months ago

An aside: The Verge’s paywall is ridiculous, especially given that they still live off slimy affiliate revenue and ads that run directly counter to their own editorializing. Their smugness and superiority given their business model makes me wish we had better alternatives.

donohoe2• 5 months ago

The writers and editors don’t dictate how the business side monetizes the content.

alehlopeh• 5 months ago

A lot of you won’t want to hear it but HomeKit + iCloud secure video is the only way to go. For one thing it’s end to end encrypted. You can also do ML stuff like face recognition which happens locally on your Apple TV. And you can set it to trigger HomeKit scenes if eg the person in the video isn’t recognized, or if it recognizes a particular person. Yeah Apple bad, blah blah. But they don’t have an incentive to sell your data.

willio58• 5 months ago

And there’s no subscription right?

righthand3• 5 months ago

Icloud subscription.

righthand3• 5 months ago

Apple totally sells your data, they just anonymize it first. Why do you think they shifted towards services?

They also can give the Feds access to your iCloud data through a NSL. Just like Prism.

mwambua• 5 months ago

Do you have evidence of that?

donohoe2• 5 months ago

Citation needed

macki02• 5 months ago

iCloud data can be end to end encrypted (https://support.apple.com/en-gb/108756)

nozzlegear7• 5 months ago

McDonald's can give my data to the feds through an NSL, yet I still buy their fries every now and then despite the risk.

p-e-w• 5 months ago

There’s actually another alternative: Just don’t install surveillance in your home. Approximately nobody had it 20 years ago. Before asking which unreliable, overpriced, invasive gadget to buy, think about whether you really need any of them.

Barrin92• 5 months ago

I always wonder what the overlap of this economically is. If you can afford all this home surveillance gear aren't you already likely to live in a place that's comically safe? Why are in particular Americans with their gated communities full of soccer moms and Labradors putting cameras on their house as if they're living on a US military base?

kulahan2• 5 months ago

Tons of people had cameras 20 years ago. It was 2006, not 1906. Besides, we've had pets for surveillance for hundreds of thousands of years. Literally nobody in history has thought "nah no need for security".

What a ridiculous way to try and be on a high horse.

ThatMedicIsASpy• 5 months ago

A 1080p cam with night vision a mic and speakers is 20 bucks. Baby monitors where more expensive in the past (audio only).

zamadatix2• 5 months ago

Approximately nobody was using everything x years ago. That's not really a measure of what's nice to have and what's not, it's a measure of how long the nice to have has been around.

nozzlegear7• 5 months ago

Why? I like to keep an eye on my dogs when we're away, and it's all done securely using HomeKit video. My iCloud is e2e encrypted and the camera doesn't upload anywhere besides there.

What's the invasive part? Not giving my dogs privacy when we're out of the home?

jonahx• 5 months ago

I would like to replace Ring with something fully local.

Local ML/face recognition would be a bonus. Ability to sync to a private owned server owned by me would be a bonus.

I'm assuming there are projects out there that would enable this -- does anyone have recommendations?

brewtide• 5 months ago

Frigate NVR tied to a home assistant instance has my phone getting proactive notifications about people, birds, and buses (in their select areas...). It's not the easiest thing to setup, but if you're using ethernet cameras it seems to work very very well. The few POS wyze cameras's I have on the system tend to cause some problems, but I know for a fact it's 100% a combination of a) wifi (no matter how 'quality') b) wyze.

So, yeah. Look into frigate.

zamadatix2• 5 months ago

When I got an Apple TV I never expected the main value I'd get out of it was being a smart home hub. I do wish the automations were a bit more programmable. Other than that it has been perfect, everything even failed over to my other Apple TV when rearranging the living room without having to think about setting either up as hubs.

dewey• 5 months ago

Also it's the perfect Tailscale exit node that's always online in your home (They have a tvOS app)

Marsymars2• 5 months ago

I'm a heavy Apple user (Apple TVs, Mac Mini, iPad), but we also have Android phones in my household, so HomeKit Secure Video is a no-go.

If Apple ever releases an Apple Home app for Android, I'd transition my entire home over by the time of my next Google Home Premium subscription renewal.

whatever1• 5 months ago

Unless you explicitly enable Advanced Protection mode for all your devices, Apple stores your key in their servers and will give it to whoever legitimate looking asks for it. Aka ICE etc will definitely be granted access.

nozzlegear7• 5 months ago

Unless you explicitly enable Advanced Protection mode for all your devices

This is very easy though, you just go to your iCloud account settings under the settings app and enable it. It should be on by default imo, but I understand the argument for why it isn't.

Either way, enabling it is not a barrier and ICE cannot be granted access once you do unless you yourself give them that access.

varenc• 5 months ago

I don't think that's true for HomeKit Secure Video (HKSV). Advanced Protection turns on E2EE for various iCloud services like iCloud backups and Apple photos. But HKSV is already E2EE'd and the decryption keys aren't part of the device's iCloud backup. At least that's my understanding. I believe health data and the iCloud keychain is similar.

devStorms2• 5 months ago

Home data is always E2EE https://support.apple.com/en-us/102651

digiown3• 5 months ago

I wouldn't trust E2EE implemented by an entity against itself that can also push arbitrary updates in principle. Also, any E2EE product that has a non-E2EE mode seems prone to accidental leaks.

radredgreen2• 5 months ago

And you can run open source camera firmware on a disconnected vlan if you don't want to trust a phone app or a camera with internet access.

https://github.com/radredgreen/wyrecam

aenis• 5 months ago

Huh? Just roll your own, thats hacker news after all.

Frigrate nvr + cameras that are confined to internal network. Easy peasy. And you get to set it up exactly as you want.

p.s. i am not saying going with apple is a bad idea (i dont have an opinion), i am just saying thats far from the "only way to go"

SilverElfin• 5 months ago

Too little too late. I’m cancelling prime and returning my ring camera, even past the return deadline. Andy Jassy funded that Melania documentary and is generally a spineless oligarchic friend of the Trump administration. Amazon is basically anti constitutional.

s0a• 5 months ago

Frigate NVR + Amcrest cameras. 100% local, private, on-device AI object recognition and classification. Can use a Google Coral USB TPU to speed that up. Runs on hardware as modest as a Raspberry Pi.

idle_zealot2• 5 months ago

Great. Now package that as a plug-and-play product so more than 1000 nerds will use it instead of participating in the largest dragnet in history ;)

geerlingguy• 5 months ago

This is only half the problem.

The other half, at least for Ring doorbells, is making it easy to get push notifications when button pressed, with instant two-way connection for chatting through the camera.

It's already hard enough as a "certified homelabber" to get these things set up and running.

ryandrake4• 5 months ago

I've found Reolink to be pretty much plug and play. Totally local. The NVR itself has PoE ports so all you have to be able to do is run a long ethernet cable.

GaryNumanVevo• 5 months ago

Security systems used to be 100x the cost (parts+install) before the cloud because you essentially needed a local NAS and to run a bunch of PoE enabled ethernet to each corner of your house.

izacus2• 5 months ago

Well, open Reolink and UniFi website and there it is.

(Yes, I know you did the post with "haha, this is too hard for average human", but it really isn't. Don't be a big corp shill.)

fblp• 5 months ago

Glad to hear an open source option getting more adoption

nijave4• 5 months ago

Empire Tech cameras are a bit better bang for your buck. The 4k models are great--be sure to read each model's strengths (low light, backlight, IR, near, far)

Frigate no longer recommends the Coral accelerator. I think Hailo is recommended now

Otherwise Frigate is great and integrates well with Home Assistant. I have a light on my office desk that comes on when a person is detected near the house, for instance

thinkingtoilet• 5 months ago

For a everyday person putting a camera on their front door, what does AI object recognition do for them?

jmuguy• 5 months ago

Without it, if you want to know when something is happening on camera, you have to use motion detection. Motion detection sucks. Everything sets it off. Shadows moving, insects... anything moving.

Object detection, and then human detection, is extremely useful. Thankfully thats become nearly trivia enough to happen on device, but even with just "dumb" cameras the open source, on network solutions are very good.

tencentshill• 5 months ago

I would suggest Annke - They appear to be rebranded Ubiquiti/Amcrest cameras with modified Hikvision FW, with fully local capability and great quality (The $30 2k camera sells for $130 from Ubiquiti)

dabinat• 5 months ago

Following a comprehensive review, we determined the planned Flock Safety integration would require significantly more time and resources than anticipated.

That doesn’t sound like “we’re cancelling this because our customers let us know loud and clear that they were ethically against this”. If the only thing keeping them from doing this is time and money, what guarantee do we have that they won’t do it again if time and money allow?

idle_zealot2• 5 months ago

You seem to be taking the company's words at face value and assuming good faith. I would caution against doing that.

riversflow2• 5 months ago

Amazing how often people do that. Corporations have very little incentive to be truthful and often have good reason to be dishonest. I notice it particularly wrt video games, gamers are always taking studio’s messaging as gospel and not corporate comms.

SecretDreams3• 5 months ago

Look, Amazon has our best interest at heart, alright? Surely they're not working on this still in the background.

AlecSchueler• 5 months ago

I took it more as holding them to their actual words and highlighting how they weaseled on the obvious ethical concerns and fear over backlash.

pseudohadamard• 5 months ago

In particular, they can publicly walk back their position now and then quietly reintroduce it later when the fuss has died down.

chmod775• 5 months ago

They're saying that because saying what they actually mean would paint flock in a negative light, which they likely want to avoid for various reasons.

stalfosknight• 5 months ago

So they'd rather lie in their press release.

BrenBarn• 5 months ago

We would never have any guarantee of that no matter what they said.

nomercy400• 5 months ago

That also sounds like the client came with list of additional requirements.

The ethical part you mentioned is still true.

kotaKat• 5 months ago

"The integration never launched, so no Ring customer videos were ever sent to Flock Safety"

Certainly sounds like "We have the integration and we successfully funneled test videos off of internal Ring cameras to Flock".

nijave4• 5 months ago

more time and resources than anticipated

It doesn't say for whom. That could easily be the legal and marketing department to cover the backlash

dv_dt• 5 months ago

That public statement could easily be an open negotiation tactic saying they'll do it, but want more money to do it. Especially if it is gov't money which would be paying for that feed.

nerdponx2• 5 months ago

It's saving face. It lets them bail out without actually badmouthing Flock or any related companies, which, yes, lets them do it again later.

dakolli• 5 months ago

Doesn't matter, I've come to the conclusion I'll never buy into one these networks. There's a reason "security" cameras were always on "closed circuit", there's no need give these companies money.

add-sub-mul-div2• 5 months ago

Same. The first thing I did when I bought my house was remove the Ring doorbell.

noduerme12• 5 months ago

I've had a couple Ring cams for years. I hate the network, hate having to pay for the cloud storage, I've just been too lazy to research self-hosted alternatives. Is there solution you'd recommend that's relatively polished and easy to use?

Cerium• 5 months ago

It is not really cheap, nor best "value for the dollar", but I am extremely satisfied with UniFi [0]. Nearly instant setup, decent mobile apps, web interface, basically just works as you need.

[0] https://ui.com/

Edit, update link.

kQq9oHeAz6wLLS2• 5 months ago

If you have a spare always-on computer, Agent DVR is excellent.

https://www.ispyconnect.com/

digiown3• 5 months ago

Frigate and some cameras that can stream to an NVR. No cloud, you can use a VPN for remote access.

https://docs.frigate.video/frigate/hardware/

SkyPuncher• 5 months ago

I just try to look for companies that are a bit smaller in the space. Some of these features only work when you have enough coverage. Small companies don't have that.

nielsbot• 5 months ago

Been using the HomeKit ecosystem. If you already pay for iCloud you get secure* cloud storage included.

* Apple says it’s end-to-end encrypted. I assume, maybe incorrectly, that they can’t view it.

https://support.apple.com/guide/icloud/icloud-homekit-secure...

allarm• 5 months ago

https://reolink.com

kristopolous2• 5 months ago

I've been looking for cheap optionally non-cloud camera recently and cycled through 15 different vendors on amazon buying, testing, probing, and returning.

Here's what I found.

If you don't want to pay a lot, there's something called "wansview" which is a white-label to a number of cheap amazon cameras (sub $20). You can do ONVIF and RTSP on any of the wansview firmwared devices and then knock them off the internet to keep it local.

Most recommendations of cameras for things like home assistant point to things at rolls-royce prices (~sometimes 20x the cost of the cheap consumer ones).

You shouldn't have to pony up a 2,000% markup for the feature "has tcp port open for rtsp"

Anyway, here's some wansview firmwared cameras

https://amazon.com/dp/B0CBBT5RMP $14

https://amazon.com/dp/B07QKXM2D3 $18

https://amazon.com/dp/B0B1T8T1WD $17

https://amazon.com/dp/B0DN1W3SWM $12.5

There's probably more

You can do on-device storage and stream over network ... no cloud subscription needed and no huge price tag.

If you're looking for others, you don't even need to buy the camera and check. Just scroll through the marketing jpegs on the amazon page. If they have screenshots with wansview you're good.

It's the only vendor I've found that does this.

This should be long term stable. If they decided to remove it you'd have to manually "upgrade" the firmware - which you won't have to do.

beAbU• 5 months ago

Ubiquiti Unifi Protect.

baggachipz2• 5 months ago

I have an Arlo, which allows me to put an SD card in the base station to record locally. No cloud bullshit. Of course, they still try to push you to their cloud bullshit, but keeping it local is free (from monthly fees). Works great, even integrates with Homekit.

coldpie• 5 months ago

Others have given suggestions, but I'd also like to suggest evaluating what value you are actually getting from these devices. Would your life be made vastly worse if you just, didn't have them at all? They may have some real utility for you, in which case don't let me stop you from putting the effort in. But I think it's worth a few minutes to think about whether the value you get from these devices is actually worth the effort for you.

Noaidi3• 5 months ago

Have you tried just using nothing? Can we all take a look inward and see how fear is selling us these devices we do not need?

Maybe it is just me and I have nothing left to loose, but the idea of people needing this surveillance is baffling.

tmerc• 5 months ago

I bought a house that had 2 ring cameras installed. After I heard about the flock deal, I simply removed them and have no exterior cameras.

I run frigate for some interior cameras (cheap esp32s) to watch my 3d printer, etc. It's been stable and easy to use for me, but I can't comment on using it for actual surveillance.

JKCalhoun2• 5 months ago

Currently Eufy, before that, Arlo.

But the goal posts are always moving so you have to be prepared to abandon and move on.

wmeredith• 5 months ago

I have a couple cheap Wyze cams aimed at my front door/porch at different angles. They record on a loop to SD cards. Qyze has cloud stuff, but you don't have to subscribe to it. They're like $30 each and supremely hackable.

FuriouslyAdrift• 5 months ago

SimplySafe can be use with or withut a cloud subscription. With cloud, you are really paying for the monitoring (the discount I get from home owners insurance for monitored fire/co detectors alone pays for the subscription).

nickthegreek• 5 months ago

aqara g410 can be setup so that it uploads to your private iCloud and is viewable within Apple Home. I found it to be the most polished setup that is also light work and alleviates some of the concern. Quality is great as well. But for a on prem setup, frigate and armcrest seems to get alot of love.

kevin42• 5 months ago

I've been working on an open source, fully self-hosted network video recorder for about two months now. https://github.com/kevinbentley/ronin-nvr/

It works with cheap, generic IP cameras over RTSP. It's pretty easy to get it working with a Raspberry Pi too.

I was using the synology surveillance app, but after their recent shenanigans, I wanted something I could self host and modify on my own.

I'm using it at my property with 14 cameras right now and I'm really happy with it. There's still some work to do, but it's integrated with ML object detection, and even integration with a VLLM to describe a scene when certain things are detected.

This was my first attempt at a large-scale application that is heavily AI assisted. I need to update the screenshots and feature list for the readme, but if you have any questions or want to get involved, let me know.

aarbor989• 5 months ago

Eufy C120 is $35 and you can put an SD card in it for continuous recording and no cloud subscription required. Can watch the camera and playback any time using the app, no cost.

RyanOD• 5 months ago

I feel this way about many such networks. We avoid networked appliances, garage doors, door locks, external cameras, etc as often as we can.

ncallaway2• 5 months ago

I've gotta say, I'm at my absolute most smug when the internet is out and my Roku TV warns me "Are you sure you want to open Jellyfin, it probably won't work without internet access".

digiown3• 5 months ago

Agreed. Doorbell is one thing, it terrifies me that people put these inside their homes. It's like 1984 but they're paying for it.

catapart• 5 months ago

Same. I've been wanting to get into a Frigate setup, but I personally can't stand all of the "tech bullshit" of it all. I would love an actual product that I could plug in, connect to local wifi, and then connect cameras to, using auto-detection, via that same wifi.

Since no one will build that (or at least not build one where I never, under any circumstances, have to touch their servers; or not one they'll prove never does), I've been gathering the specifications for how to build it myself. I don't really have the means to make it a mass produced solution, but I can certainly build a fucking server that does everything I want, and shove it in a public repo with a readme. Maybe some hero out there with a 3d printing farm will create a package out of it, but I won't hold my breath for that.

amelius• 5 months ago

"closed circuit" has a different meaning, since the internet.

bandrami3• 5 months ago

I still don't understand how otherwise sensible people can have an Alexa or Google Home. Like what part of that seems like a good idea to them?

croes• 5 months ago

Convenience.

Same with AI, the same people who fought against Google and Microsoft‘s data collecting now throw everything on data but the kitchen sink at their AI services.

bandrami3• 5 months ago

This is such a weird thing to wrap my head around. I don't even use Bluetooth.

tokioyoyo2• 5 months ago

Ability to “Hey Google, play Spotify” in every room and shower is pretty great. That’s literally the only reason I’ve been using it for 5+ years. Oh, and it was practically free.

ulrikrasmussen• 5 months ago

This is still unthinkable to me. Trading that much privacy for a little bit of convenience? How does it not make you uncomfortable to know that every conversation in your house is live streamed to someone else's computer?

askvictor• 5 months ago

I used mine for two things: setting a timer while cooking, and adding things to my shopping list, again, while cooking. I still miss that second feature a bit since I unplugged it, but it isn't too big of a deal

chankstein38• 5 months ago

I liked using it like this but my problem is that it wouldn't reliably respond to commands while music was playing. There were times I had to unplug it to get music to stop. And other times I'd want a song with an explicit word in the name and it'd pretend it didn't exist.. like wtf I'm an adult in my own house I think you can manage to play the song I asked for whether or not it has a big mean curse word in it.

Johnny5553• 5 months ago

Having an Alexa or Google Home doesn't seem any worse (or even less worse) than carrying a phone around everywhere I go. If you're worried that the device can be hacked to listen to you full-time (or that the provider is lying about it only listening to you after it hears the wake word), you should be worried about your phone for the same reason. Plus my Alexa isn't going to give google a map of everywhere I travel so they can see where I work, eat, shop, etc.

hydrogen7800• 5 months ago

Yes. I catch myself all the time when I wonder how people are so willing to place these spy devices inside their home. But, "oh yeah, I have a phone on my nightstand every night :-/".

nijave4• 5 months ago

Lesser technical people that don't know that you're the product with these items. They offer a lot of convenience if you want voice control and home automation and they're fairly affordable

i_love_retros2• 5 months ago

The worst thing is that a lot of people who are very smart techies have them. I've noticed they tend to have a very cynical (IMO) outlook of "well the gate was left open a long time ago, might as well embrace it and give them everything."

hollow-moe• 5 months ago

"Instead we'll partner with Fluck Security, a young and small company with 0 employee which surely has no ties to Flock Safety:TM:"

Johnny5553• 5 months ago

This should be a wakeup call for users of all cloud connected cameras that once they send their video to the cloud provider, they have no real control over how it's used.

Ring does support end to end encryption (which disables most of the cloud features), but users are still at the mercy of Ring to trust that it really is e2e encrypted and not the "fake" end to end encryption that some marketers have used to mean "Well it's encrypted from your end all the way to our end where we decrypt it". I don't trust that Ring doesn't have a law enforcement toggle to break the e2e encryption on demand if the police ask for it.

Schiendelman7• 5 months ago

Not ALL cloud connected cameras. Be careful saying things like that, there are large differences in the trust levels between them. For instance, if you're using homekit, I believe Apple doesn't even have the keys to the e2ee encryption, regardless of your "icloud advanced security" mode.

fragmede2• 5 months ago

*In the US. They had to disable that feature on the UK because the laws say they can't do that there.

Johnny5553• 5 months ago

I stand by what I said -- If you don't control the software stack, you have no control over whether or not your footage is available to the cloud provider (or law enforcement) no matter what the provider says. As I said in my post, you really don't know if they have a secret software toggle that disables e2e encryption for law enforcement demands.

elric• 5 months ago

Over in my neck of the woods, these cameras are illegal when they point at the street. They should also be accompanied by a clearly visible sign indicating the presence of a security camera.

Of course no one gives a fuck, and they're sadly ubiquitous. Police love them. Complaints about illegal monitoring are just ignored.

I've said it before and I'll say it again, but the 21st century main mode of operation is Distrust. We are constantly, actively fostering distrust in our neighbours and communities. Everyone is constantly suspicious of one another. When in reality the vast majority of us are very well behaved.

zombot• 5 months ago

But only for a few days. The scandal will be forgotten next week, and then they'll reinstate the partnership.

aroheir• 5 months ago

I think a "mood mesh ring" for Kotlin DSLs or Amazon Ring integration is an interesting concept,(e.g., "You seem stressed - verify this doorbell notification is important")? Or a Soul weight diet plan?

moralestapia• 5 months ago

I've never browsed the Flock Safety website [1].

1:58pm Police coordinate takedown
2:00pm Suspect apprehended

What a complete joke, lol.

1: https://www.flocksafety.com/

baggachipz2• 5 months ago

How long until Flock is a nationally toxic brand? They're just as bad, if not worse, than Ring. Difference being they're not a consumer brand I guess, but far more pervasive in everyday life.

Noaidi3• 5 months ago

The more wwe talk about Flock with our friends the faster t will happen. I like just pointing them to https://deflock.org/ for a start.

jofla_net• 5 months ago

Hey Flock, show me all toyota tacomas with a Raiders sticker who have passed any check point, in the last 35 minutes.... I dont even care about the license plate.

cmiles82• 5 months ago

Amazon knew exactly what they were doing… they’re just scrambling because they got caught and underestimated the public backlash from their actions. They made a calculated decision, and calculated wrong.

Every tech savy person I know is working up plans to rip these things out and go with solutions that have more rigorous privacy controls. For example the UniFi setups keep all your data on prem so you can avoid these scenarios where some company decides “maybe users won’t mind if we just start using the data for something else” games.

The fact that the backlash comes after spending millions on a Superbowl advert to promote the offending tech and use case is a pretty epic “own goal” by Amazon.

I have security cameras, and have always voluntarily shared footage with relevant authorities when there was a valid need, but that’s a decision for me to make, not some corporation.

petiepooo2• 5 months ago

What I don't understand is how they get blindsided by the public's reaction. Do they not have high-powered PR teams to do market research? Or did they fire them when they came back with news that the self-centered execs didn't want to hear?

cmiles82• 5 months ago

Amazon’s leadership culture is pretty low EQ and they often fail to see things that others would find fairly obvious.

The Amazon Go stores and “Just Walk Out” were a good idea on paper but terribly executed because Amazon leaders didn’t understand how customers think and the awkward aspects of the design. Same with the palm reader tech they just scrapped. Similar here where someone thinks this is a good idea but is completely out of touch with customer mindsets. It’s a recurring pattern for Amazon.

BlackjackCF• 5 months ago

The moment I heard about this feature coming out, I bought Reolink cameras with microSDs for local storage and a giant SSD for NVR.

I was worried it would be a lot of work to replace Ring stuff. While Reolink’s setup experience isn’t quite as smooth, it was still trivial to get working. Highly recommend it for everyone who wants a decent alternative.

wiseleo• 5 months ago

Nothing prevents them from having another meeting unless there's an act of Congress to do so.

petiepooo2• 5 months ago

Required reading: "The Circle" by Dave Eggers.

Skip the movie; the ending sucks and there's too much drama.

The book neatly lays out how little steps towards a better life (like being able to find your lost dog) lead to an oppressive surveillance state. Every step is a good thing and makes logical sense. The end result is not good.

noIdeaTheSecond• 5 months ago

People need to understand the power they have through their wallets

Ring cancels its partnership with Flock Safety after surveillance backlash

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