> All this raises a big question, however: will Prime customers trust Amazon to monitor their homes around the clock, and to know when it’s okay to unlock their doors for a stranger? And will the benefit of having your packages delivered quickly and securely outweigh any concerns about privacy and security customers might have?
Probably, but I wouldn't. The idea of giving a company full access to your locks is a bit wtf in my books.
Most things in life are a tradeoff. At various times, most people give access to their house to various service people. Arguably, random delivery people is a bit different but, on the other hand, their access is presumably logged.
And, at the same time, package delivery is a PITA for many. For me, it's simple. They leave packages by the door and I've never had an issue but that's not true everywhere. I agree that some sort of lock box outside is probably preferable most of the time but this option doesn't seem out of the bounds of common sense.
If this kind of service becomes common I could see homes being built with or retrofitted with "airlocks" so that you can give delivery services access to a secure area to deliver packages without gaining access to the whole home.
I wonder if you could outfit the smart lock on a shed or secure package box and let them deliver to that?
That was the main thing I was thinking of. Even on homes that currently have this, or a mudroom, normally the inner door is not secured or strong in anyway.
I also think having a general unlocked mail or package slot is problematic these days, as bad actors could use that to insert all kinds of nefarious and damaging items into your home.
Indeed, we've been planning to screen in our front porch for a while just so we have some security when opening the front door while the cats are on that side of the house.
It would also provide some security by obscurity for any packages we get; according to UPS, right now I've got three packages totaling about $500 of equipment sitting on my front porch in plain view to anyone going past the house. Thankfully the house sits nearly half an acre off the main road, with no sidewalk and in a semi-rural area. Still, Murphy's law dictates that today will be the first time I have a package stolen. I'll find out when I get home in a few hours, I guess.
(My regular UPS guy normally doesn't deliver to me until after 6pm, he knows my schedule and it lines up well with his driving route most of the time. I'm guessing this is a new driver, or else a really light day for my regular guy.)
I would not give Amazon access to my home, but I would purchase the equivalent of a small Amazon locker to be bolted to the concrete walkway on the side of my house.
EDIT: @vidarh: I was unaware. Thank you! Going to look for one that is weatherproof and I can paint Amazon Locker yellow.
You can already get that. Search for "delivery box" etc. and you'll find large steel boxes, at least some of which have locking mechanisms that lets the delivery person pull it shut to lock after putting a parcel in,.
Question for those more familiar with 4th amendment jurisprudence than I am: if you give a group of strangers access to your home, does that remove your expectation of privacy in that area? If so, does that make evidence against you gathered through warrantless searches of that area admissable in court? Or would it only expose you to evidence in plain view/hear/smell?
My intuition is that granting consent for some action to one group of strangers does not grant consent to a different group of strangers, but I am not a lawyer.
You only consent to allow delivery people into your home, not the police. The 4th amendment doesn't have a trickery loophole, your reasonable expectation of privacy is always with respect to the police, not to other businesses and people you give trust to. The police can't set up a fake carwash and then warrantlessly search all of the cars that show up just because you're handing over the keys and consenting to let strangers in. Your home would be no different.
Another, perhaps better example: a landlord typically has a set of keys and the right to access a tenant's apartment. In a commercial building, those keys could be held by any number of "strangers" on the maintenance staff. The police still need a warrant, they can't just ask the landlord for a set of keys. That's really not any different from having the "keys" held by Amazon staff members.
There are lots of instances where a person's expectation of privacy is low with respect to specific people/businesses but high with respect to the government, and that doesn't weaken their 4th amendment protections.
This is correct. Also a good overall note here is that the Constitution only applies between the government and the people. Private entities (businesses, for example) are not beholden to respect your rights.
A point to bring up with regards to landlords is that both State law and contract law (your lease) enable them to enter the dwelling under very special circumstances, usually such as an immediate threat to life. They may also enter to do various tasks such as inspections but laws usually mandate notice that must be given and how. Here in Texas, it's a minimum of 24 hours written notice for the latter.
For all those reading this, remember that you should never rely on Internet forums for legal advice, the poster above may or may not be a lawyer, but is certainly not your lawyer.
> You only consent to allow delivery people into your home, not the police.
However, IIRC, if the delivery people (or landlord, in your second example) choose to report to law enforcement anything criminal that they see in your home _of their own free will_ and without any prior arrangement with police, that evidence would be admissible and could be used to obtain a warrant.
It's not that much different from past cases where Best Buy technicians found illegal material on computers brought in to them for servicing and reported it to police and resulted in successful prosecutions.
>It's not that much different from past cases where Best Buy technicians found illegal material on computers brought in to them for servicing and reported it to police and resulted in successful prosecutions.
Those technicians were hired and trained by the FBI to seek out this information. There are ongoing lawsuits claiming this was illegal.
I think Minnesota Vs Carter settles this question. The court held that since they were not overnight guests, they were not entitled to Fourth Amendment protection, and that the officer’s observation was not a search under the Amendment.
How much do you know about the company that manufactured your door lock? In some parts of the world, electronic locks (eg. from Samsung) are quite common.
Maybe I'm seeing it wrong -- but "giving a company full access" isn't exactly right. Its more, you have "the ability to control who has access to your locks and Amazon is probably your biggest user".
Some other anecdotes:
When my townhome was broken into, I learned that windows are way less secure than smart locks. If someone wants in your home, they're going to get in.
When my house caught on fire, I would have loved to have been able to let the first-responder in remotely as we were an hour away, the fire company was 20 mins, and seconds count.
Then all the delivery service needs is one of these Halligan bars to ensure your rolls of toilet paper and Hawaiian themed mouse pad are safely delivered inside your home.
Windows are made of glass, and most deadbolts are installed into little more than a 1/4 - 1/2” of wood. In some places, they’re held by little more than mounding. Both are absolutely trivial to knock open, with the quality of the lock itself being far less important to the overall picture. Securing a door goes like this:
1) good deadbolt mounted into thick wood with a big strike plate and a sheet of sheet metal attached to the entire length of the stud with 3” screws, so you can’t just kick in the door. They sell kits like this oh amazon for usually sub100$.
2) good deadbolt.
3) steel door, because a 15lb mallet will knock through pretty much anything else and, if you have a door not visible to neighbors (like a backyard doors) no one will even notice.
4) an alarm system, because if no one is coming, steps 1-3 are irrelevant. Time defeats all security measures.
5) thorny bushes under all windows, motion-sensing lights on the entire perimeter. This keeps no one out, but if your house looks like a pain in the ass to get into, someone else’s will get hit. Outrun your neighbor, not the lion.
6) and if you’ve got the cash to spend, hurricane-proof glass and window stops will make it very unlikely anyone is getting in through a window either.
7) and that’s all still just to make you less attractive than a neighbor, ‘cause if I can get into your yard, cutting away some siding with metal snips and knocking a hole in your sheetrock is trivial. Walls are more psychological than structural in most modern home construction.
Way way back when, before I had a professional degree and respectability, I grew up in the sort of neighborhood where this information is... something approximating common knowledge. My father grew up in a similar environment and passed along a lot of wisdom on the topic as well. I parlayed it into some security work in undergrad, where I got to see the way small businesses address these issues.
I’ve never seen it written up anywhere, though I’m sure someone has to have spilled beans on this topic at some point.
If you have specific security concerns relevant to your personal situation (eg, I live In an apartment with a balcony...) feel free to leave an email address or some other contact info and I’ll happily give you some quick tips. Most residences, unless you’re a high value target, need very similar security.
I remember a story from years ago in the news where a family (I believe the father may have been a jeweler) had their house burglarized. They had a house fairly far away from their neighbors, and the suspect literally brought a circular saw and cut a hole in the side of the house.
Even that’s overkill. Even if someone sheathed their exterior walls in plywood, structural sheathing runs 5/16 - 1/2”, and seams are between studs. It’s for resisting shear stresses on the house and/or insulation. In terms of orthogonal force, it’s a far cry from requiring a saw to get in.
It’s definitely a different perspective. He’s oriented to getting past security; normal thieves are risk-minimizing opportunists, so the approach isn’t “how do I get past security”, it’s “how do I get past the minimum security I can expect, and identify those targets that will have that minimum.”
Yeah, targeted attacks like those are different from drive-bys - both in the physical world and in the digital.
On the other hand, targeted attacks are not just for industrial espionage; for example, a friend of mine caught his landlady stealing from him. Family members and friends are also not that uncommon either, unfortunately.
Yeah, people on here are talking like their front door is Fort Knox. For most it is not, and as mentioned in other comments, a window is much easier to get through.
The primary risk is in thieves entering your home without leaving any traces.
Breaking through a door or windows requires a certain amount of risk and commitment. If a malicious hacker gets remote access to a smart lock the risk is effectively zero.
> Amazon could certainly be coerced into unlocking the door
This is an extremely worrisome statement. Is there any precedent for this type of coercion from the FBI to businesses who have access to a home? My justice-sense is tingling to think that the FBI could get into my home by coercing any party that I give access (hypothetical maids, pool guy, cat sitter, etc)
The cam verifies the delivery person won't come further than a step in, not much to snoop there. Anything further would be easier and less noticed with a locksmith.
And would amazon want the cost of the background checks - I know this is done for some medical deliveries Baxter Health Care does this for home dialysis deliveries (over a 1/3 of a ton a month) but that's a small number of vetted drivers,
There's an approximately zero percent chance the police would be involved in that.
Many police forces charge each time they respond to a false alarm, and the cost generally goes up each time it happens. On top of that, an automated alarm signal (with no human confirmation) is pretty much considered the lowest priority call, and they may not even attend at all.
This is why most businesses have a private security company to respond to their alarms. They're generally significantly faster (and often have a guaranteed response time), and if a security guard shows up, sees a crime in progress and calls police, it's actually a very high priority call and will get immediate police response.
It's standard practice for cleaning/home-maid services and a number of food delivery services (e.g. Abel and Cole) already do this. It's just a matter of trust and reliability.
I actually like this idea for cleaning services and such. Now you don't have to arrange giving them a key and trying to track down that key when you're done with their services. Tracking down that key is the worst. They have no incentive to give it back.
I'd like to see how Amazon manages the access. Can access be revoked manually? Can you generate your own access permissions to give to a friend? Is this access code a one-time code?
There are tons of keypad locks out there already that let you give people temporary codes and then delete them. I don't use that feature a lot but I can see it being very handy if you have a lot of service people who need access to your house.
Especially since Amazon Logistics uses a gig-economy workforce. There's literally no telling who you'd be giving access to your home. Could be a burglar with a stolen identity who signed up for a 2-hour shift.
If someone really wants access to your home can't they just pick the lock or forcibly enter through other means? It doesn't seem very hard to access most homes.
They can, but the risk of being caught by neighbors and passers-by increases with forced entry. Show up in a delivery outfit, with a code that lets you in the house, and you look legit even to the police.
Well, they could conceivably watch as you enter/exit your home, but if you have Alexa already then I would think they could infer from silence or lack-thereof whether the home is occupied.
Or Bluetooth connections if you can use it as a speaker. Or the presence of other devices on the WIFI. There's a few ways you can passively detect human presence, I think.
If posters are not willing to read as far as the first sentence below the headline on the article's page, why should they be invited to discuss the article with those of us who have made the effort to read it?
Well, as usual, they have market in which people don't care. Convenience rules for them. On the other hand, when everything and everyone is tracked, there's no need to lock the home anymore.
I am not too concerned with Amazon, I am more worried about law enforcement using this ability via warrant to gain easier access to a home, recordings, etc.
I'd say it's most likely that insurers will just consider it falling under the current guest-exemption clause i.e. any damage or loss caused to your home or contents by people you invited onto the premises is not covered.
Truly caveat emptor, unless the retailers themselves start carrying third-party insurance like tradesmen often do.
>The courier then gets a prompt on their app, swipes the screen, and voilà, your door unlocks. They drop off the package, relock the door with another swipe, and are on their way.
Yah, except when they forget to re-lock your door. No thanks. If anything the door should auto-lock after the door is initially opened, but I still would not allow a delivery person access to my home. I'm sure most delivery persons are fine but I have not heard good things about the "courier services" Amazon has been using lately.
> If anything the door should auto-lock after the door is initially opened
No. If anything, people will hopefully realize this is probably the worst possible idea for privacy and security they could possibly do in their homes and tell amazon to piss off.
I was disagreeing with your one comment that implied this would be OK if they auto-relocked, by arguing that none of this is OK at all. I generally agreed with the rest of your comment though
Agreed. They have no quality control over their own deliveries. I live in a multi-tenant building and in my experience Amazon deliveries are hilariously unreliable. They have a hard time gaining access to my building and usually just leave packages outside where they are very often stolen.
The only way deliveries will work for Amazon without the use of drones is if they open up the delivery service like AWS so that other businesses can use it. The reason I believe that is that deliveries need to be reliable. In order for them to be reliable you need to have regular drivers, ie, full-time employees who drive the same routes everyday. But Amazon doesn't deliver nearly enough packages for that line of business to make any sense whatsoever, so the solution would be to let others ship via Amazon deliveries at a lower cost and faster rate than UPS, FedEx, or USPS and perhaps subsidize the losses from other lines of business or raise the price of Prime to offset it.
Ultimately, Amazon is trying to compete with USPS in this space, not FedEx or UPS who want no part of last-mile deliveries.
I have my amazon safe space set to my greenhouse, imagine my surprise when I found their delivery person had put my item in my green bin instead. Not a chance would let them have access to my locks to my house.
I once had an Amazon courier deliver to my bin! I don't think I set any safe space. I was expecting a redelivery. I only found the item by coincidence. I could easily have let it be collected and taken to the dump!
I am sure there is an auto lock logic in there. Like the driver cannot open the next lock if the last one is still open. Or like my lock automatically locks after 30 seconds no matter what. So even if they forget it will be fine.
Considering that the delivery codes to our apartment building were used to gain access and steal stuff, I'm less than inclined to create something like this for my home.
It only seems to be solving the problem of people stealing packages left outside, which I would rather just get re-shipped rather than have to deal with things stolen in my home.
In addition to letting them into your home, its outward-facing camera lets them into your neighborhood, setting the stage for feature-creep, facial recognition, immigrant surveillance, automobile surveillance, subpoena'd police access, poorly-managed data, etc.
We tolerate this from a security company's cameras because that's their specific intention and the quality costs a monthly premium. From cutthroat retailers like Amazon, Walmart, etc., I have no expectation of ideal behavior.
Nobody but the USPS is allowed to put anything in or remove anything from a mailbox.
If you're talking about a separate locker, not a bad idea but I'd assume that would be a lot more costly than replacing your lock and also would introduce all sorts of variability about size and where it would be placed.
Yes, or a strong-box that interlocks with a closed exterior door. Amazon's no longer content to just metaphorically want access to our homes and lives, now they actually want in..
I have used a few smart locks (until last year), and I must say the experience has not been anything close to good or amazing. Batteries are drained almost all the time, the lock can sometimes refuse to work.
For Amazon's Key service to work well, they need to have the locks work very reliably. The lock may be the Key's weakest link (not in terms of security, but in terms of reliability).
Nice. mine were initial versions of Lockitron. And then an August(didn't have much patience to test it, so returned it). Haven't tried Yale Z-wave (is it standalone? or is it bundled with a security service?). I'll give it a try when I move next time.
Yale and Schlage seem to be reliable (Dad has used both, his rental agency prefers the Yale on all homes for consistency).
Z-wave and Zigbee are two of the common home automation protocols. So, you'd use those locks (or other devices) in conjunction with an automation hub (I use Samsung Smartthings, Dad uses a Vera). Some will also integrate with the Nest system or Alexa, but I'm not sure if that's directly, or via one of the hubs I mentioned.
You can build your own "security" system with these. Quotes because adding cellular/phone support isn't usually directly supported, though there are ways to hack it together.
I have mine set with timers, motion sensors, a Nest thermostat, and light switches. I'll add cameras eventually - waiting to see how the Nest video doorbell works out (if it's good, I'll likely cough up the money and go all Nest camera).
I have a Schlage on my house, and just changed the batteries (4 AA) after a year. They read as '60%' in SmartThings, but they were getting sluggish. You could hear that it did not have enough torque to do its job as well.
This has been the opposite of my experience, but that's just an anecdote, go look at the most popular smart locks on Amazon.
I've been using mine for a rental home, and it has paid for itself multiple times over the years by not having to replace keys, not having to call locksmiths for locked keys, and not having to change locks when tenants leave. Why more people aren't using smart locks is beyond me.
Rental properties are a particularly good use case but they're handy in general. Many of us have various people who need access to our house when we're not around--or relatives/friends who we want to give access in case of emergencies, etc. It's nice to just be able to given them a code. Keyless entry more broadly is also nice because it means one less thing (keys) I need to take on trips when I'm not driving.
It'll be interesting how this works at homes with pets. I could see that being a major concern for a household that would otherwise be fine with an in home delivery. Will Amazon have couriers that are diligent enough to ensure an escaped cat is returned?
Amazon CloudKennel™ will lure your pet into the kennel before the courier arrives and keep it secure while the delivery takes place. Choose from an extensive range of pet-bait on Amazon Fresh and Amazon Video. Suitable for common domestic animals only. Monthly subscription and wifi connection required. Restrictions apply.
I'm not sure why this is being downvoted. The Amazon rules have an exception specifically for this case: if your pet can access the front door on delivery day. They've framed it slightly more positively and gently (I'd prefer, for my pet's sake, that they require the dog to be in a closed room), but that's exactly what it means.
I suppose some people might assume this means something silly like locking your cat in a broom closet of your one-room studio apartment, when many homes with dogs have a 'dog room' which is where the pet(s) stay when the owners are out of the house. Separating your pet from potential problems is a part of responsible pet ownership.
As the owner of a Newfoundland mix, I highly recommend it even without Amazon Key - not only does my dog appreciate having her own comfortable space in which she sleeps and to which she can retreat when there are too many people over, but it helps slightly contain the hopeless shedding and drool.
It's also worrying for households that have animals that are not particularly friendly toward strangers. Would the delivery person be able to press charges should a home owners dog bite them?
Yes, you are responsible if your dog bites somebody. They might not press charges, but they would likely sue you (or Amazon's insurance company would directly or through a subrogation company).
You should probably talk to your own home insurance company as well. Owning certain breeds raise your premiums already (at least ours does), and enabling strangers into your insured property to now potentially interact with those breeds probably needs coverage.
When Amazon deliveries are always left under sign "Don't leave your package here, leave it few feet away", I will trust some random dude to open my front door in order to deliver my package.
Err no. Whoever came up with this idea should simply be taken outside and shot. Actually whoever allowed it to get to this state of development should be shot. The ideas guy and the worker bees are just doing what they say.
There is nothing good that could come of this. Nothing even slightly at all.
It will be very interesting to see if this gets traction.
I would never ever give a company access to my home. But maybe the next generation will not have a sense of privacy at all. But rather accept that mankind kind of grows together into one huge brain.
From my perspective, I wonder: Are there not enough places where Amazon can drop off packages? In my street, all kinds of shops will accept parcels for you.
Are new houses these days built with "drop off" areas that can be opened with an access code?
Outside of mixed urban neighborhoods, is this really a problem that needs solving? I try to have packages delivered to my office for convenience, but still have plenty delivered to my home, where they sit on the front stoop until I get home.
Lot's of "nope" here. While it's okay in my neighborhood for a delivery service to leave my packages on my front deck, there are many others who would not be comfortable with this. For those people, I see this as a huge draw.
Initially, I saw this and thought it was an AWS service. Then, I realized how bad of an idea it is to allow third-party access to non-revokable private keys.
Edit: oh well I'm setting up my own home camera facing the door and hopefully with opencv can tell if it's not me but that's a dream/future goal at this time.
The bot net is an interesting question Cloudflare I guess or use high load design like node, will see.
Edit: will add I want this because I will be living by myself and maintenance people have keys/can open my door if I'm not there. Probably a dumb concern but oh well I'm poor too.
I realize proof is in the pudding, bought the parts, started the repo will see
Overall though sounding like a luddite, not keen on strangers having a key into my home despite liability on their behalf. If there was a second door with regard to package dropoff that would be something.
Let's think about this for a minute. (ignoring if the tech works)
1. For people without a security system, there are many simple ways to get into a house. If you are worried about people getting into your house, you might not want this, but you better also already have a nice security system (that is also not on a botnet).
2. At least for us, we generally recognize our UPS & USPS folk that deliver to our house.
3. This has a log and video of the drop off.
4. Who do you trust more? The people delivering your package or the random person driving around the neighborhood looking for packages that would imply you are not at home? (or just grabbing your package)
All that said, usually someone is at home when we get deliveries so I wouldn't buy it (also don't use Amazon much). But I don't see the reason for the backlash.
Yeah, Amazon seems to use a mix of USPS, FedEx/UPS, and private couriers. And because I'm in a townhouse complex with remote mailboxes, I wouldn't recognize any of them.
I regularly get deliveries from Amazon Logistics. It’s always a random person in their own car, no uniform. Indistinguishable from an Uber or Postmates driver.
I'm not worried about the normal, full-time delivery guy. I'm worried about the fill-in, all-the-regular-guys-were-sick guy. Someone who doesn't have a good job and reputation to lose.
You also have to think about it from the delivery person's perspective. They won't really know if someone is away from home or just lazy. They could be opening the door to an assault or any manner of sexual harassment.
I wonder if they'll get resistance from drivers after they really think about the situation they could find themselves in. There's some security in knowing where your attacker lives, but not much if we're talking apartments.
Finally, will Amazon let you participate if you're in an apartment complex that already has lockboxes? Wouldn't that kill the delivery efficiency?
In amazons bid to take over the last mile, they’ve done a measure to their reputation. They accept terrible drivers who have failed out of Uber and have been caught doing a number of things ranging from stealing to vandalizing to shitting in bushes and doing heroin on customers’ front porches. It’s hard to imagine how they could have gotten it any worse than some of their contractors like OnTrac, but they certainly did. And there’s no way in hell I would ever let an Amazon Flex driver in my front door.
Ok, so now I'm worried about the full-time driver almost as much as the fill in. I haven't followed any of the scandal on the subject since I don't think I'm in their delivery area -- I see a lot of UPS and USPS from Amazon.
I don't know that there has been a scandal, at least publicly. I'm speaking as a friend of someone who performs operations audits on Amazon Fresh and Prime Now facilities, who has ranted to me about how much they've had to deal with police reports and customer complaints about their terrible drivers. But needless to say I don't trust them. I won't even buzz them into my apartment building to drop off the package in the lobby if I'm not there to receive it directly.
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[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 272 ms ] threadProbably, but I wouldn't. The idea of giving a company full access to your locks is a bit wtf in my books.
And, at the same time, package delivery is a PITA for many. For me, it's simple. They leave packages by the door and I've never had an issue but that's not true everywhere. I agree that some sort of lock box outside is probably preferable most of the time but this option doesn't seem out of the bounds of common sense.
I wonder if you could outfit the smart lock on a shed or secure package box and let them deliver to that?
My apartment and several in the area, have a concierge, and they’ll act as a “porch” and even deliver it to your door later in the day
Some apartments have mail rooms, some with automated entry based on if you have a package or not
It’s largely a solved problem
dairy man
mailman
seltzer water man
whomever else delivered stuff man
but, they also probably had someone at home all day.
I also think having a general unlocked mail or package slot is problematic these days, as bad actors could use that to insert all kinds of nefarious and damaging items into your home.
It would also provide some security by obscurity for any packages we get; according to UPS, right now I've got three packages totaling about $500 of equipment sitting on my front porch in plain view to anyone going past the house. Thankfully the house sits nearly half an acre off the main road, with no sidewalk and in a semi-rural area. Still, Murphy's law dictates that today will be the first time I have a package stolen. I'll find out when I get home in a few hours, I guess.
(My regular UPS guy normally doesn't deliver to me until after 6pm, he knows my schedule and it lines up well with his driving route most of the time. I'm guessing this is a new driver, or else a really light day for my regular guy.)
EDIT: @vidarh: I was unaware. Thank you! Going to look for one that is weatherproof and I can paint Amazon Locker yellow.
http://www.eureka4you.com/home/MilkChute.htm
It’ll even be a convenient place to put letters and other small deliveries.
I guess since most mailmen are men and they will use it the most often, we can call it a malebox.
Now if only they could pick up and return my laundry too (like some other companies offer)
Or deliver fresh food (like Ocado)
Since they have a key, maybe they could go ahead and get started cooking it for us too.
My intuition is that granting consent for some action to one group of strangers does not grant consent to a different group of strangers, but I am not a lawyer.
There are plenty of people that grant access to their homes to service providers like cleaning services, dog walkers, etc...
Legally, I don't think there's much new here.
Another, perhaps better example: a landlord typically has a set of keys and the right to access a tenant's apartment. In a commercial building, those keys could be held by any number of "strangers" on the maintenance staff. The police still need a warrant, they can't just ask the landlord for a set of keys. That's really not any different from having the "keys" held by Amazon staff members.
There are lots of instances where a person's expectation of privacy is low with respect to specific people/businesses but high with respect to the government, and that doesn't weaken their 4th amendment protections.
A point to bring up with regards to landlords is that both State law and contract law (your lease) enable them to enter the dwelling under very special circumstances, usually such as an immediate threat to life. They may also enter to do various tasks such as inspections but laws usually mandate notice that must be given and how. Here in Texas, it's a minimum of 24 hours written notice for the latter.
However, IIRC, if the delivery people (or landlord, in your second example) choose to report to law enforcement anything criminal that they see in your home _of their own free will_ and without any prior arrangement with police, that evidence would be admissible and could be used to obtain a warrant.
It's not that much different from past cases where Best Buy technicians found illegal material on computers brought in to them for servicing and reported it to police and resulted in successful prosecutions.
Those technicians were hired and trained by the FBI to seek out this information. There are ongoing lawsuits claiming this was illegal.
Do you think the government is going to pass up the opportunity to do the same with Amazon employees?
That is, assuming Amazon hasn't already approached the government to offer it as a service.
http://repository.law.umich.edu/mlr/vol107/iss4/1/
https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/97-1147
Some other anecdotes:
When my townhome was broken into, I learned that windows are way less secure than smart locks. If someone wants in your home, they're going to get in.
When my house caught on fire, I would have loved to have been able to let the first-responder in remotely as we were an hour away, the fire company was 20 mins, and seconds count.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halligan_bar
Though I did find a 16" version for $80.00 - I'm thinking a tool like this might come in handy for off-roading use.
1) good deadbolt mounted into thick wood with a big strike plate and a sheet of sheet metal attached to the entire length of the stud with 3” screws, so you can’t just kick in the door. They sell kits like this oh amazon for usually sub100$.
2) good deadbolt.
3) steel door, because a 15lb mallet will knock through pretty much anything else and, if you have a door not visible to neighbors (like a backyard doors) no one will even notice.
4) an alarm system, because if no one is coming, steps 1-3 are irrelevant. Time defeats all security measures.
5) thorny bushes under all windows, motion-sensing lights on the entire perimeter. This keeps no one out, but if your house looks like a pain in the ass to get into, someone else’s will get hit. Outrun your neighbor, not the lion.
6) and if you’ve got the cash to spend, hurricane-proof glass and window stops will make it very unlikely anyone is getting in through a window either.
7) and that’s all still just to make you less attractive than a neighbor, ‘cause if I can get into your yard, cutting away some siding with metal snips and knocking a hole in your sheetrock is trivial. Walls are more psychological than structural in most modern home construction.
I’ve never seen it written up anywhere, though I’m sure someone has to have spilled beans on this topic at some point.
If you have specific security concerns relevant to your personal situation (eg, I live In an apartment with a balcony...) feel free to leave an email address or some other contact info and I’ll happily give you some quick tips. Most residences, unless you’re a high value target, need very similar security.
If they're going to get in that way, they're gunna work for it.
/at that point it would be easier for them to go thru the doors or windows (not even sure where you'd get hurricane glass in Arizona).
Even that’s overkill. Even if someone sheathed their exterior walls in plywood, structural sheathing runs 5/16 - 1/2”, and seams are between studs. It’s for resisting shear stresses on the house and/or insulation. In terms of orthogonal force, it’s a far cry from requiring a saw to get in.
It’s definitely a different perspective. He’s oriented to getting past security; normal thieves are risk-minimizing opportunists, so the approach isn’t “how do I get past security”, it’s “how do I get past the minimum security I can expect, and identify those targets that will have that minimum.”
Still, super interesting.
On the other hand, targeted attacks are not just for industrial espionage; for example, a friend of mine caught his landlady stealing from him. Family members and friends are also not that uncommon either, unfortunately.
Amazon could certainly be coerced into unlocking the door, but the FBI could also just use their boots to coerce the door into unlocking on its own.
Extra points for no curtains/blinds.
Breaking through a door or windows requires a certain amount of risk and commitment. If a malicious hacker gets remote access to a smart lock the risk is effectively zero.
Especially if said malicious actor can also control the camera that is meant to record anyone entering the home.
This is an extremely worrisome statement. Is there any precedent for this type of coercion from the FBI to businesses who have access to a home? My justice-sense is tingling to think that the FBI could get into my home by coercing any party that I give access (hypothetical maids, pool guy, cat sitter, etc)
https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2014/11/fbi_agents_po...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Foreign_Intellig...
E.g. a courier taps to unlock the door, within 30 seconds, they must tap to lock the door or the local police will be called.
Many police forces charge each time they respond to a false alarm, and the cost generally goes up each time it happens. On top of that, an automated alarm signal (with no human confirmation) is pretty much considered the lowest priority call, and they may not even attend at all.
This is why most businesses have a private security company to respond to their alarms. They're generally significantly faster (and often have a guaranteed response time), and if a security guard shows up, sees a crime in progress and calls police, it's actually a very high priority call and will get immediate police response.
I'd like to see how Amazon manages the access. Can access be revoked manually? Can you generate your own access permissions to give to a friend? Is this access code a one-time code?
What if Amazon accept full liability for use of the lock though their system?
"It's safe, you can trust us! We'll never spy on you!" -- Jeff Bezos
https://www.theverge.com/2017/7/6/15924120/amazon-echo-look-...
Truly caveat emptor, unless the retailers themselves start carrying third-party insurance like tradesmen often do.
Yah, except when they forget to re-lock your door. No thanks. If anything the door should auto-lock after the door is initially opened, but I still would not allow a delivery person access to my home. I'm sure most delivery persons are fine but I have not heard good things about the "courier services" Amazon has been using lately.
No. If anything, people will hopefully realize this is probably the worst possible idea for privacy and security they could possibly do in their homes and tell amazon to piss off.
The only way deliveries will work for Amazon without the use of drones is if they open up the delivery service like AWS so that other businesses can use it. The reason I believe that is that deliveries need to be reliable. In order for them to be reliable you need to have regular drivers, ie, full-time employees who drive the same routes everyday. But Amazon doesn't deliver nearly enough packages for that line of business to make any sense whatsoever, so the solution would be to let others ship via Amazon deliveries at a lower cost and faster rate than UPS, FedEx, or USPS and perhaps subsidize the losses from other lines of business or raise the price of Prime to offset it.
Ultimately, Amazon is trying to compete with USPS in this space, not FedEx or UPS who want no part of last-mile deliveries.
It only seems to be solving the problem of people stealing packages left outside, which I would rather just get re-shipped rather than have to deal with things stolen in my home.
To be fair, I feel the same about UPS, FedEx, USPS, etc.
We tolerate this from a security company's cameras because that's their specific intention and the quality costs a monthly premium. From cutthroat retailers like Amazon, Walmart, etc., I have no expectation of ideal behavior.
If you're talking about a separate locker, not a bad idea but I'd assume that would be a lot more costly than replacing your lock and also would introduce all sorts of variability about size and where it would be placed.
But in the US there are apartments that have something like a "Packstation" for residents only.
I have used a few smart locks (until last year), and I must say the experience has not been anything close to good or amazing. Batteries are drained almost all the time, the lock can sometimes refuse to work.
For Amazon's Key service to work well, they need to have the locks work very reliably. The lock may be the Key's weakest link (not in terms of security, but in terms of reliability).
Having had a Yale z-wave lock on my front door without issue for about 18 months and have had to change the batteries once.
Yale and Schlage seem to be reliable (Dad has used both, his rental agency prefers the Yale on all homes for consistency).
Z-wave and Zigbee are two of the common home automation protocols. So, you'd use those locks (or other devices) in conjunction with an automation hub (I use Samsung Smartthings, Dad uses a Vera). Some will also integrate with the Nest system or Alexa, but I'm not sure if that's directly, or via one of the hubs I mentioned.
You can build your own "security" system with these. Quotes because adding cellular/phone support isn't usually directly supported, though there are ways to hack it together.
I have mine set with timers, motion sensors, a Nest thermostat, and light switches. I'll add cameras eventually - waiting to see how the Nest video doorbell works out (if it's good, I'll likely cough up the money and go all Nest camera).
I've been using mine for a rental home, and it has paid for itself multiple times over the years by not having to replace keys, not having to call locksmiths for locked keys, and not having to change locks when tenants leave. Why more people aren't using smart locks is beyond me.
>Why more people aren't using smart locks is beyond me.
Because that's an entirely different use case. Do you have a smart lock on your own home?
I suppose some people might assume this means something silly like locking your cat in a broom closet of your one-room studio apartment, when many homes with dogs have a 'dog room' which is where the pet(s) stay when the owners are out of the house. Separating your pet from potential problems is a part of responsible pet ownership.
As the owner of a Newfoundland mix, I highly recommend it even without Amazon Key - not only does my dog appreciate having her own comfortable space in which she sleeps and to which she can retreat when there are too many people over, but it helps slightly contain the hopeless shedding and drool.
Can I receive in-home delivery if I have a pet?
We do not recommend using in-home delivery if your pet can access the front door on delivery day.
There is nothing good that could come of this. Nothing even slightly at all.
https://uk.trustpilot.com/review/www.airbnb.com
Anything based on abstracted trust is a disaster waiting to happen.
I would never ever give a company access to my home. But maybe the next generation will not have a sense of privacy at all. But rather accept that mankind kind of grows together into one huge brain.
From my perspective, I wonder: Are there not enough places where Amazon can drop off packages? In my street, all kinds of shops will accept parcels for you.
Are new houses these days built with "drop off" areas that can be opened with an access code?
i'd also like to see "don't deliver to my house option", meaning i'll come and pick it up from a depot the same day.
This almost exists in Portland, OR at least: many items have an option for "one-day pickup": https://smile.amazon.com/gp/campus?campusId=CAMPUS_POR
I say "almost" because it's not same-day: it's overnight.
Edit: oh well I'm setting up my own home camera facing the door and hopefully with opencv can tell if it's not me but that's a dream/future goal at this time.
The bot net is an interesting question Cloudflare I guess or use high load design like node, will see.
Edit: will add I want this because I will be living by myself and maintenance people have keys/can open my door if I'm not there. Probably a dumb concern but oh well I'm poor too.
I realize proof is in the pudding, bought the parts, started the repo will see
Overall though sounding like a luddite, not keen on strangers having a key into my home despite liability on their behalf. If there was a second door with regard to package dropoff that would be something.
1. For people without a security system, there are many simple ways to get into a house. If you are worried about people getting into your house, you might not want this, but you better also already have a nice security system (that is also not on a botnet).
2. At least for us, we generally recognize our UPS & USPS folk that deliver to our house.
3. This has a log and video of the drop off.
4. Who do you trust more? The people delivering your package or the random person driving around the neighborhood looking for packages that would imply you are not at home? (or just grabbing your package)
All that said, usually someone is at home when we get deliveries so I wouldn't buy it (also don't use Amazon much). But I don't see the reason for the backlash.
I would not recognize the Amazon subcontractors that visit my house/office. They are optimizing for least cost.
You also have to think about it from the delivery person's perspective. They won't really know if someone is away from home or just lazy. They could be opening the door to an assault or any manner of sexual harassment.
I wonder if they'll get resistance from drivers after they really think about the situation they could find themselves in. There's some security in knowing where your attacker lives, but not much if we're talking apartments.
Finally, will Amazon let you participate if you're in an apartment complex that already has lockboxes? Wouldn't that kill the delivery efficiency?
On the other hand, I wonder why the camera is a required part of this system.
1. To avoid the Amazon driver getting the blame for things done by your kids/partner/dog/whatever.
2. To keep the drivers honest.