Honestly, in the neighbourhood I grew up in, this would basically make having Amazon Ring a no-no. Noone in their right minds would want to have anything to do with it. You would be targetted and not just by the gangs.
Places where kids sell crack to their parents because the alternative is the parents going to some unrelated crack dealer that will treat them much worse.
And this is in the US.
PS- feel free to replace "crack" with meth, heroine, etc
No, not all the criminals are in the gangs. Nearly everyone in the neighbourhood was a criminal of some sort. Everyone else just kept their mouth shut.
"Everyone else" was probably a criminal too of some sort. They just hadn't received enough police scrutiny to make it official. It's basically impossible to follow all the laws (even ignoring the civil infraction stuff) all the time and live a reasonable life.
I'm aware you can be arrested for it in the US (which is to say I'm mistaken, it does fall under criminal law), but can it get you a criminal record?
Somewhat related: here in the UK, littering is technically a crime, but apparently [0] you'll only get a criminal record if you refuse to pay the fine.
Here in California, jaywalking is an infraction, not a crime. Jaywalkers (who are caught) have to pay a fine. It can basically be considered getting sued by the city for breaking the rules.
If you can't pay the fine, it can turn into a warrant that can get you arrested. Thus jaywalking actually is a crime, but only for poor people.
> If you can't pay the fine, it can turn into a warrant that can get you arrested.
Technically, inability to pay does not have this effect, only refusal. But you have to actually show up to court (as specified in the ticket, which is a summons to appear with bail that can be forfeited in lieu of appearance) and assert hardship to get a different penalty or payment arrangement set if you are unable to pay; if you just ignore the summons and don’t pay the bail set, then you are committing a crime.
Nobody in those examples was arrested for jaywalking.
All of them were arrested for bullshit "contempt of cop" type offenses. If they could arrest people for jaywalking they would have done that because arresting someone for something they've actually done makes for a much harder charge to beat. Jaywalking is just the pretext.
Where I live we have jaywalking laws but they only apply if you are within a reasonable distance to a cross walk. I think it's possible to have reasonable laws so long as you have relatively reasonable politicians. :)
Jaywalking is typically (i.e. I know of now jurisdiction in the west where it's not) a civil infraction. Though if the cops want to be dicks they can pretend not to know and arrest you but they can do that with any law or they can get you for a nebulous contempt of cop offense but they can do that anytime. It's on-par with a parking ticket, littering or not removing your trash bin from the street after trash day.
If you don't pay the fine (and don't show up in court to tell them why you can't afford it) that's the criminal infraction and that's when they put a warrant out.
> Jaywalking is typically (i.e. I know of now jurisdiction in the west where it's not)
In the UK it doesn't even exist. We look it up after hearing the word on N American 'movies'/TV 'shows'.
> a civil infraction
IANAL, but my understanding is that the key difference between criminal & civil law is that the latter always has a (an alleged) victim, and it is he who is the claimant.
Is that wrong? Or right but there's some supposed victim of 'jaywalking' (the state on behalf of drivers?!) who goes around suing 'jaywalkers'?
A criminal is not some who allegedly breaks laws but someone who is convicted of breaking the law. Even if you were arrested by police you still aren’t a criminal.
When witnesses give testimony in court, they simply relate what they saw. They do not need to couch it CYA language.
I did notice that your statement is pretty confident about what I think. No "allegedly" required. No "I suspect he believes X and Y". These imaginary rules don't seem to apply to you.
well, let's suppose your Ring catches someone loitering in your neighborhood that looks like the 'wrong sort' and the police come out to check on the 'wrong sort' and they just happen to kill them - and then to explain why they had to kill the wrong sort of people they say they found some drugs on them...
If you think not having the police around is better than having the police around, I hope you never have to raise children in a place like the parent was describing.
Spoken from a true position of privilege! There are many communities where the police and the criminals are both likely to cause you trouble somewhere between a mild hassle and a life-altering interaction. The only difference is why they might do it. Distrust of the police amount law-abiding populations is a thing for a reason.
In the places that the parent is describing, the police aren't your allies. The more dangerous the area, the more aggressive and hostile the police (at least to some degree by necessity), and the stronger the "presumed guilty" takes hold, and the more hostile the population itself is to the police.
In the worst of those areas, the gangs themselves take on the role of the police (offering services such as protection, policy enforcement, loans, etc).
Surveillance has other effects than helping to impede criminals (note also that this effect is dependent wholly on police initiative and competence, as well, two things often lacking in minor crime investigations).
Not everyone wants to be under surveillance 24/7, even if it does aid police sometimes in reducing crime, as it also aids police in doing the other things police do that are unrelated to law enforcement (harassment, theft, intimidation, extortion, et c).
There are streets in my neighborhood I don't walk down because almost everyone has a Ring camera. I don't want to be followed around by Ring when I walk the dog.
My doorbell camera isn't even a Ring, but the local teens still make a point to flip it off every time they see it come on. Makes me want to put up a sign that says "not a snitch!"
The best use case for Amazon is having drivers put packages within view of the ring cameras. Then ring will know when someone steals the package. The home owner on their ring app would do the work of confirming the package was stolen.
I've seen it used in my neighborhood for that purpose. Package is stolen, call the police and alert neighbors with suspect description. Quickly noticed a drop in porch pirates afterwards.
It would also ensure that the packages actually get delivered, instead of just being marked as so.
Granted, sometimes this happens because the drivers are being held to an impossible standard for the deliveries they must make; Amazon gets to have someone to point a finger at.
Yes, but the recipient is also the one who's installing the camera, so one of the two impacted parties has a vested interest in knowing and therefore it is useful.
If you knew it was stolen, then you can immediately act with that knowledge in mind. You don't have to worry about whether or not the postman scanned your package with the wrong device (falsely showing that it has been delivered when it will be tomorrow), or if they plopped it down at your neighbor's driveway by accident, or if the delivery driver hid it from porch pirates but also yourself.
It's just nice to know that yes, it was stolen, you're not getting it back, time to go to Amazon support/order a replacement/go to a physical store rather than being in a limbo state.
Seems to me that nearly every assertion in that Reuters story is wrong. Police agencies may be being given a new, additional way to request video data, but nothing Ring can do can prevent police agencies from using the old, legal methods of requesting video data. So now there are two separate data request systems:
1) "pretty please can people send videos"
2) subpoena, direct request, national security letters, etc. Anything built in to the legal system.
1) will be public and probably not too common - fishing expeditions by the police. 2) will not be public at all and will represent the bulk of data transfer from individuals to the police, and in general the public will never know it happened. 1) will be soft-represented as the totality of data transfer by Ring, if you (as an enterprising young reporter) happen to make the mistake of reporting it as the totality, Ring will definitely not call you up and correct the record.
Specifically, these paragraphs are both complete bullshit:
> "Public safety agencies such as police and fire departments now must request material from their communities through a new, publicly viewable type of post on the Neighbors app, Ring said in a blog."
They certainly mustn't.
> "It said no information would be shared with agencies without users choosing to do so and that requests can be issued only by verified agency profiles and that request history will be logged online, so users can see how their police force is using the posts."
Complete bullshit as well. Ring doesn't make the rules.
This was my reaction as well. Maybe it relies on redefining "sharing" information with agencies as distinct from furnishing information in compliance with a subpoena. The optimist in me sees this as a way to push departments to prefer the methods of the legal system to obtain this info, but then why even make it available without a court order in the first place?
2 things: of course if there is a subpoena they will need to turn over the footage + ring supposedly has e2e encryption where they would actually have to get the footage from you.
i have a ring camera and: 1) I did not let their app use gps and i did not give them an adress (ie ring does not know, in theory where the camera is) 2) i straight up disabled requests from law enforcement (yes there is a setting for that) 3) i opted out of the neighbors thing (you cannot be in a neighborhood if you don’t have an address + explicitly opting out).
it’s sad that there isn’t a product on the market that actually respects user’s privacy
Amazon/Ring is certainly eliding over the subpoena path to getting information. However, that path does require a warrant, and a judge's sign-off. The "just ask" approach doesn't, so I think both have their place. Given the paucity of information about the latter, I don't think we can say which will "represent the bulk of data transfer from individuals to the police." There are certainly a lot of subpoenas issued each year, but there are also a lot of times a police officer stops at a business or home that has a security system with cameras, asks for copies of the footage, and gets it easily.
> 1) will be public and probably not too common - fishing expeditions by the police. 2) will not be public at all and will represent the bulk of data transfer
I don't think that's correct at all.
To the contrary -- how often does a regular resident get a subpoena? Practically never.
On the other hand, how often do cops check CCTV footage? All the time. If cops are trying to follow the path a suspect took to drive through a neighborhood and where they wound up, then this 1) option is amazing and will frequently be used.
I can't imagine why you're perjoratively calling it "fishing expeditions". That's ridiculous, there's zero evidence police are using this, or want to use it, to catch petty crimes they don't know about in the first place. It's to track suspects' routes and confirm alibis, that type of thing. Both common and legitimate.
> They certainly mustn't.
The obvious context here is Ring requests. Not things like subpoenas.
> Complete bullshit as well. Ring doesn't make the rules.
You're wrong. Ring does make all the rules of what Ring shares through this program.
You're acting like the existence of subpoenas makes this all a bunch of song and dance, but they're entirely different things for entirely different purposes. Your pessimism and cynicism isn't just unwarranted, it's simply factually incorrect.
I like how technology is making crime harder to get away with. CCTV has probably lead to convictions in 100,000's of cases over its lifetime and deterred many more. I can't think of many negative outcomes to society from CCTV systems. My hope is that AirTags will make petty theft harder to get away with too.
CCTV only deters blue collar crime. White collar crime still has no equivalent deterrent. In a sense, CCTV helps us punish those who are already desperate. While not necessarily a negative in the abstract, in concrete terms one has to wonder why there's no CCTV cameras in executive offices, no screen recordings of everything they do on their computer.
Maybe not exactly the same thing, but there are tax auditors, tax audits, access logging (for some administrative systems), "know your customer" bank regulations and public insider registries for example.
If we imprison the lower class, we can get them to work for free. There's no downside for the upper class. Cracking down on white collar crime is rife with downsides for the upper class, so we defund the IRS, EPA, etc
Just because something doesn't solve all problems doesn't mean it's still not incredibly useful for the problems it does solve. And plenty of crimes aren't out of class-based "desperation" at all -- e.g. rape or stalking.
So I'm not sure why you're acting like there's some intentional effort to target the lower class but not upper class. The US goes after white collar crime heavily as well -- you'll find out quickly if you try to embezzle funds from your employer.
Obviously, CCTV is effective against physical crimes. White-collar tends to be caught with digital records like bank reporting, e-mails and texts, and so on.
So I don't know what you mean when you say white collar crime has no equivalent deterrent. In a nutshell, databases are the equivalent.
Cops around here (a US city) routinely opt not to investigate property crime well into the five-figures, even when there's extensive video & other evidence. Like, they don't even give it a cursory attempt. I'm not sure adding more cameras will help.
I'm pretty sure it's most (US, at least) cities, really. It's like if it's not hassling poor people or writing traffic tickets (the two things I actually see them do, regularly) the cops just don't care, at all. Catching speeders and driving off homeless people. That's about it.
I’ve always wondered if they or one of their friends/family get robbed, would they actually investigate it? I’m just wondering to what extent their hypocrisy extends.
Around my small city / burbs - crime is still rampant with cams everywhere. Many criminals now don hats/hoodies / masks.. but many do not.
I've got video or a dozen different people breaking into cars in the neighborhood - cops don't care, DA ain't gonna do nothing if they are caught - now I know some of the thieves in the area on sight, but can't do anything to them.
There are negative outcomes - they just aren't not in the news as much as they could be.
When people are less free and feel like everything they do is being recorded, they act less free. Chilling effects ripple over the years and people forget when being non-chilled was like.
AirTags aren't meant to recover stolen items, since they make noise to indicate they're not around their owner. The thief also gets a notification on their phone that they're carrying an unknown airtag with them
100'000's of cases of drug overdose deaths are at the direct hands of Purdue Pharmaceuticals and the Sackler family. Let's hope CCTV finds a way to punish them too. Oh wait...
I think I don't even have words anymore to describe the sense of repulsion and disgust that only reading the name of that company originates in me, I think it is a very good indicator of the shallowness and ignorance of our society the fact that it keeps growing, no matter how much taxes they dodge despite using the publicly paid for infrastructures (at least here in EU), not matter how they treat their employees and customers, we don't care "they offer a good service and low prices"
We deserve the extinction and amazon was built to make humanity understand how much it's not worth existing
I feel a little less repulsed knowing that the (too petty to go through the legal channels and get a subpoena) requests made to view footage will be available to (and subject to audit and scrutiny by) the public.
I somewhat agree with this take, although this isn't the result of the shallowness and ignorance of our collective society, but rather the shallowness and ignorance of the people at the top of society. Most people just want to get by, we don't "allow" amazon to keep growing, they keep growing because of the monopolisation mechanics of our capitalist society. You can be repulsed by amazon all you like, but until there's a viable competitor they'll continue to do what they do.
Perhaps we need to hit the reset button on capitalism altogether and reevaluate what it means to be a company, to have human centred capitalism rather than profit focused capitalism. Maybe we'll be forced to move in that direction anyway, because of the social and environmental affects that we see today.
Agreed that it's difficult to responsibility of these companies on the individual. There's a background assumption that "if they exist in this form, they are allowed", otherwise, what are the US government (regulatory functions) doing?
Another reason it's difficult to impossible to collectively fight back is when you read articles about how Amazon strongarms companies into never undercutting the price on the Amazon storefront. It adds an insidious reason to "wow the manufacturer is so silly, it's cheaper on Amazon with free shipping than on their own website!" when in reality it's a dark pattern we don't control and a vast majority don't think about as they "get by".
I agree with you on the part of the regulators allowing certain entities to exist in a determinate way. But I also feel the need to be responsible towards what Amazon does, if it is making employees pee in a bottle, it is making me pee in a bottle because I am part of this society. If its truck to transport stuff around are destroying the roads and not contributing back with taxes, it is destroying MY roads.
So I make the choice to dodge anything that is even slightly related to that company, and it is a choice that doesn't take bravery, it is not that they are the only source of water and I can't live without it.
I think we as individuals need to make the choices to detach ourselves from certain entities, without expecting third party to make the choice for us or protect us, which if it happens is good, and we should vote for it, but if it doesn't we are still responsible to hold ourselves accountable for our own choices and what those choice enable to exist
And I would put the responsibility of certain things to exist on the individual, because it is the individual that makes these entities to exist and evolve, each one has to be true to its values and do things it feel are worthy to be true to itself
Sorry for grammar I am italian and english is not my first language
Everyone is different. Some people think that device and what it offers to them is useful. If you have a large house and get the occasional visitor that doesn't just come in anyway, I can see how this might be a convenient setup. And it's all about convenience. And non-tech people don't care about the "Amazon server" part at all.
I'm in the US and I agree. I was never a huge fan of Ring, and when they were acquired by Amazon that made it a deal-breaker. Amazon already knows enough about me.
It's probably no accident that Amazon doesn't tout Ring devices as being Amazon-owned. I imagine there are others who would be less likely to purchase if they were aware of the connection.
Amazon knows exactly your credit cards, your names, your addresses, your front porch, your wifi SSIDs and pre-shared passwords, your purchases and their frequencies and amounts, your voices and accents, your photos, your music, your visitors and their frequencies ...
It's difficult to find a thing Amazon doesn't know about you.
Yes, so let's just also install their own security cameras and microphones in our homes for marginal benefits at best.
I'll make you an offer: i'll send you one of my microphones and cameras. Let's just assume that I already know everything about you, so let's don't worry about it. You won't even notice it's there. Would you have problems letting me see and hear your life?
No one buys a ring doorbell for the express purpose of being closer to Bezos or something. They do it because they want to be able to answer their door remotely - that it's on Amazon's server is a side effect of both not caring enough and not knowing how to host it locally.
> that it's on Amazon's server is a side effect of both not caring enough and not knowing how to host it locally.
Those situations happen, but I they're actually a significant minority. For most, how these things work is completely magic. It's not that they don't care, it's that they have no knowledge of how the tool works. They know that they press a button on their phone and their door unlocks, and so are satisfied that it works as intended. That there is anything more to consider isn't on their radar.
Many people would like to be able to record snippets of people approaching their door. Good to know what's going on when you're not there so you can calibrate your fears with reality. Now you need to send the recording somewhere.
You have two choices: maintain your own recording equipment, or upload. The former is a major hassle. Ring smartly found an opportunity to make a simple service people want.
You say the "US is such a bizarre place" but that is simply untrue. Petty theft is a part of many cultures. For example, petty theft in the UK is far more common than the US.
Cameras linked to the database of a grocery store are not.
This is Douglas Adams level bizarro world.
Like Amazon Keys (can't remember the exact product name) to receive packages when you're not in, by letting total strangers inside your house with their own key.
Which is such an hysterical solution to a such a simple problem (retrieve undelivered packages at the post office) that makes me wonder if I'm the one taking crazy pills.
Simple problem? Not sure what you mean. In my neighborhood, the chance of an Amazon package being stolen is very high. The post office is not involved in many of the deliveries.
Because of my house's location, I have not yet lost a package. But I'd like a camera to see if anyone is checking out my porch when there are no packages just to see if I should worry. Previously, the idea that the police could just grab my video made me personally concerned about privacy. Ring providing logs alleviates that concern for me.
Your position is that it is "hysterical" that people don't want to be deeply inconvenienced by petty theft. I cannot fathom such an outlook on life, so I won't address this point.
On the facts though, you again misunderstand. I'm frequently not home to sign for things. I live near the Silicon Valley, yet my post office is a six mile round trip. My UPS delivery office is a 40 mile round trip. Amazon lockers do not accept large packages.
I feel that at this point you are clutching for straws to justify your original position.
Is there a cheap alternative to Ring that is easy to set up , cheap and can store on a local Linux server / but is also private and doesn’t have any data leaving my network unless it’s direct to an app on my phone?
I did a quick search for a doorbell solution for the home automation system of my choice and it seems like people came up with solutions [1]. It doesn't look trivial to set up but definitely possible.
I now use a piece of software called Frigate, alongside Home Assistant, to do this. It works extremely well, surprisingly. I can watch clips and live streams via the Home Assistant apps on my phone, and for outside the house I have a Wireguard VPN to connect back. Works with any camera models with RTSP streams, which I put on a subnet with no internet access in case they phone home.
Edit: doorbell-wise there are a few models that would work with this setup but I don’t have one at the moment - my doorbell wiring is a really weird voltage and I haven’t gotten around to fixing it yet.
Years ago my extended family bought one to monitor a remote camp. I created a little PHP script that would grab the latest images uploaded via FTP and make a photo gallery. Set up was difficult but it worked reliably. They have a Ring now ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Sorry about that. That's the first result both DDG and Google are giving me. The website does look super old so maybe it's been neglected and compromised? No warnings for me.
You have to remember that Ring has outdoor battery-operated stickup cams. When you compare this with what else is available on the market, where often times you have to run a hard wire and have a proprietary NVR then Ring is a great option. Some devices like Swann will go on sale that are wireless or PoE and allow you to use open source applications, but running a wire through the wall in my apartment was a non-starter... the convenience/price of alternatives to Ring isn't that great.
"convenience/price of alternatives" - blinkxt is pretty great - but I think they also go to amazon's servers? so in the context of the discussion I guess it's not really alternative.
Arlo does good from videos I've seen shared - I had the V1 they came out with and the battery life was terrible - but I did notice some sort of open source license on the router thing. Not sure it's still a thing, and I think the price is higher, and the battery life is better, with newer versions - but may not be amazon servers?
I initially tried Blink, but video quality was substantially worse than the Ring cameras I ended up replacing them with and you couldn't view the videos on a desktop computer without removing the USB drive. I had to use a mobile app for Blink. Blink is also owned by Amazon as you noted so if you use their cloud service then the videos are stored on Amazon servers, but they do have an option to save to USB drive.
Arlo looked good too but they were pretty pricey compared to Ring. I'm not that happy that Ring is associated with Amazon, but they do have quite a few privacy settings when configuring them. I download my videos from Ring almost daily and store them in my own encrypted cloud storage, so unless Ring keeps a copy after they are deleted then law enforcement would likely need to ask me for a copy.
I've personally had a mostly good experience with Ring. If you want 4k videos and long-distance night mode then I would avoid them and go with Swann PoE 4k bullet cameras if you can find them on sale, or another brand since they are just re-branded cameras.
While most of the comments are negative towards the general concept of internet connected doorbell/cam , I want to take a moment to congratulate Amazon on an uncharacteristic move towards the positive. Transparency for these kinds of requests will help give data for watchdogs. So just a +1 and thankyou from me today.
112 comments
[ 4.5 ms ] story [ 164 ms ] threadAnd the police harassing you because they know you have a Ring equipment but they never got footage from your camera's angle...
And this is in the US.
PS- feel free to replace "crack" with meth, heroine, etc
/s
edit: This is mistaken.
https://www.wxyz.com/news/local-news/investigations/stopped-...
https://www.aclu.org/blog/criminal-law-reform/reforming-poli...
https://www.redmond-reporter.com/news/redmond-police-arrest-...
Somewhat related: here in the UK, littering is technically a crime, but apparently [0] you'll only get a criminal record if you refuse to pay the fine.
[0] https://www.redbridge.gov.uk/roads-and-pavements/fines-and-o...
If you can't pay the fine, it can turn into a warrant that can get you arrested. Thus jaywalking actually is a crime, but only for poor people.
Technically, inability to pay does not have this effect, only refusal. But you have to actually show up to court (as specified in the ticket, which is a summons to appear with bail that can be forfeited in lieu of appearance) and assert hardship to get a different penalty or payment arrangement set if you are unable to pay; if you just ignore the summons and don’t pay the bail set, then you are committing a crime.
So it's still a crime for poor people only.
All of them were arrested for bullshit "contempt of cop" type offenses. If they could arrest people for jaywalking they would have done that because arresting someone for something they've actually done makes for a much harder charge to beat. Jaywalking is just the pretext.
Like walking your dog in a park that has a no-dogs sign.
If you don't pay the fine (and don't show up in court to tell them why you can't afford it) that's the criminal infraction and that's when they put a warrant out.
In the UK it doesn't even exist. We look it up after hearing the word on N American 'movies'/TV 'shows'.
> a civil infraction
IANAL, but my understanding is that the key difference between criminal & civil law is that the latter always has a (an alleged) victim, and it is he who is the claimant.
Is that wrong? Or right but there's some supposed victim of 'jaywalking' (the state on behalf of drivers?!) who goes around suing 'jaywalkers'?
If I see them murdering someone, I'm not going to say to myself "That person is allegedly a criminal".
I am allowed to think, to have an opinion about reality.
There's also no need to call them a suspect if you just saw a person committing a crime.
When you haven't yet proved that a specific person did it, they're a suspect. The crime is alleged.
But not when you KNOW it. I'm not saying newspapers should say that or a court should say that. I'm saying I have no problem describing what I see.
Maybe you saw wrong? Hmm?
I did notice that your statement is pretty confident about what I think. No "allegedly" required. No "I suspect he believes X and Y". These imaginary rules don't seem to apply to you.
What kind of bizarro place is that?
In the worst of those areas, the gangs themselves take on the role of the police (offering services such as protection, policy enforcement, loans, etc).
Not everyone wants to be under surveillance 24/7, even if it does aid police sometimes in reducing crime, as it also aids police in doing the other things police do that are unrelated to law enforcement (harassment, theft, intimidation, extortion, et c).
Granted, sometimes this happens because the drivers are being held to an impossible standard for the deliveries they must make; Amazon gets to have someone to point a finger at.
Except that no one other than the recipient and maybe Amazon care about that. Certainly not law enforcement.
If you knew it was stolen, then you can immediately act with that knowledge in mind. You don't have to worry about whether or not the postman scanned your package with the wrong device (falsely showing that it has been delivered when it will be tomorrow), or if they plopped it down at your neighbor's driveway by accident, or if the delivery driver hid it from porch pirates but also yourself.
It's just nice to know that yes, it was stolen, you're not getting it back, time to go to Amazon support/order a replacement/go to a physical store rather than being in a limbo state.
1) "pretty please can people send videos"
2) subpoena, direct request, national security letters, etc. Anything built in to the legal system.
1) will be public and probably not too common - fishing expeditions by the police. 2) will not be public at all and will represent the bulk of data transfer from individuals to the police, and in general the public will never know it happened. 1) will be soft-represented as the totality of data transfer by Ring, if you (as an enterprising young reporter) happen to make the mistake of reporting it as the totality, Ring will definitely not call you up and correct the record.
Specifically, these paragraphs are both complete bullshit:
> "Public safety agencies such as police and fire departments now must request material from their communities through a new, publicly viewable type of post on the Neighbors app, Ring said in a blog."
They certainly mustn't.
> "It said no information would be shared with agencies without users choosing to do so and that requests can be issued only by verified agency profiles and that request history will be logged online, so users can see how their police force is using the posts."
Complete bullshit as well. Ring doesn't make the rules.
Well, they may. (Hard to imagine they will, agreed.)
i.e. if 'must' is the function m(x), then 'must not' is m(¬x); not ¬m(x).
Here it's 'not the case that they must', that is, ¬m(request through Ring app).
i have a ring camera and: 1) I did not let their app use gps and i did not give them an adress (ie ring does not know, in theory where the camera is) 2) i straight up disabled requests from law enforcement (yes there is a setting for that) 3) i opted out of the neighbors thing (you cannot be in a neighborhood if you don’t have an address + explicitly opting out).
it’s sad that there isn’t a product on the market that actually respects user’s privacy
I don't think that's correct at all.
To the contrary -- how often does a regular resident get a subpoena? Practically never.
On the other hand, how often do cops check CCTV footage? All the time. If cops are trying to follow the path a suspect took to drive through a neighborhood and where they wound up, then this 1) option is amazing and will frequently be used.
I can't imagine why you're perjoratively calling it "fishing expeditions". That's ridiculous, there's zero evidence police are using this, or want to use it, to catch petty crimes they don't know about in the first place. It's to track suspects' routes and confirm alibis, that type of thing. Both common and legitimate.
> They certainly mustn't.
The obvious context here is Ring requests. Not things like subpoenas.
> Complete bullshit as well. Ring doesn't make the rules.
You're wrong. Ring does make all the rules of what Ring shares through this program.
You're acting like the existence of subpoenas makes this all a bunch of song and dance, but they're entirely different things for entirely different purposes. Your pessimism and cynicism isn't just unwarranted, it's simply factually incorrect.
Such as wanting what other people have. Such as vengeance.
If only we had to worry about people who were desperate, paying them off would actually work.
So I'm not sure why you're acting like there's some intentional effort to target the lower class but not upper class. The US goes after white collar crime heavily as well -- you'll find out quickly if you try to embezzle funds from your employer.
Obviously, CCTV is effective against physical crimes. White-collar tends to be caught with digital records like bank reporting, e-mails and texts, and so on.
So I don't know what you mean when you say white collar crime has no equivalent deterrent. In a nutshell, databases are the equivalent.
Uyghurs being arrested and sent to concentration camps after (western) facial recognition software singled them out from CCTV camera footage.
One cop told a buddy "You've got insurance for a reason..."
A lot of people escape persecution from dictatorships by committing "crimes" and only get away with it because the system isn't perfect.
China is a good example of nazi-like concentration camps but with modern technology.
Around my small city / burbs - crime is still rampant with cams everywhere. Many criminals now don hats/hoodies / masks.. but many do not.
I've got video or a dozen different people breaking into cars in the neighborhood - cops don't care, DA ain't gonna do nothing if they are caught - now I know some of the thieves in the area on sight, but can't do anything to them.
There are negative outcomes - they just aren't not in the news as much as they could be.
When people are less free and feel like everything they do is being recorded, they act less free. Chilling effects ripple over the years and people forget when being non-chilled was like.
We deserve the extinction and amazon was built to make humanity understand how much it's not worth existing
Another reason it's difficult to impossible to collectively fight back is when you read articles about how Amazon strongarms companies into never undercutting the price on the Amazon storefront. It adds an insidious reason to "wow the manufacturer is so silly, it's cheaper on Amazon with free shipping than on their own website!" when in reality it's a dark pattern we don't control and a vast majority don't think about as they "get by".
So I make the choice to dodge anything that is even slightly related to that company, and it is a choice that doesn't take bravery, it is not that they are the only source of water and I can't live without it.
I think we as individuals need to make the choices to detach ourselves from certain entities, without expecting third party to make the choice for us or protect us, which if it happens is good, and we should vote for it, but if it doesn't we are still responsible to hold ourselves accountable for our own choices and what those choice enable to exist
And I would put the responsibility of certain things to exist on the individual, because it is the individual that makes these entities to exist and evolve, each one has to be true to its values and do things it feel are worthy to be true to itself
Sorry for grammar I am italian and english is not my first language
US such a bizarre place.
It's probably no accident that Amazon doesn't tout Ring devices as being Amazon-owned. I imagine there are others who would be less likely to purchase if they were aware of the connection.
A small unknown company on the other hand, I'm more reticent to hand over my information to.
It's difficult to find a thing Amazon doesn't know about you.
I'll make you an offer: i'll send you one of my microphones and cameras. Let's just assume that I already know everything about you, so let's don't worry about it. You won't even notice it's there. Would you have problems letting me see and hear your life?
I promise i won't send you spam emails.
Those situations happen, but I they're actually a significant minority. For most, how these things work is completely magic. It's not that they don't care, it's that they have no knowledge of how the tool works. They know that they press a button on their phone and their door unlocks, and so are satisfied that it works as intended. That there is anything more to consider isn't on their radar.
Are you saying there are end-to-end encrypted home surveillance cameras for 1/5 of the price?
Or that there are cheap cameras uploading your videos to some shady server?
Unfortunately they are buried among 50 other completely incompetent competitors which are complete insecure garbage.
You have two choices: maintain your own recording equipment, or upload. The former is a major hassle. Ring smartly found an opportunity to make a simple service people want.
You say the "US is such a bizarre place" but that is simply untrue. Petty theft is a part of many cultures. For example, petty theft in the UK is far more common than the US.
Cameras linked to the database of a grocery store are not. This is Douglas Adams level bizarro world.
Like Amazon Keys (can't remember the exact product name) to receive packages when you're not in, by letting total strangers inside your house with their own key.
Which is such an hysterical solution to a such a simple problem (retrieve undelivered packages at the post office) that makes me wonder if I'm the one taking crazy pills.
Because of my house's location, I have not yet lost a package. But I'd like a camera to see if anyone is checking out my porch when there are no packages just to see if I should worry. Previously, the idea that the police could just grab my video made me personally concerned about privacy. Ring providing logs alleviates that concern for me.
Why leave packages in the open when you're not home? How's that not hysterical?
On the facts though, you again misunderstand. I'm frequently not home to sign for things. I live near the Silicon Valley, yet my post office is a six mile round trip. My UPS delivery office is a 40 mile round trip. Amazon lockers do not accept large packages.
I feel that at this point you are clutching for straws to justify your original position.
[1] https://kleypot.com/fully-offline-video-doorbell-for-home-as...
I wrote a little about my switch to this setup, if it's useful: https://senryu.pub/afternoonrobot/articles/replacing-unifi-v...
Edit: doorbell-wise there are a few models that would work with this setup but I don’t have one at the moment - my doorbell wiring is a really weird voltage and I haven’t gotten around to fixing it yet.
This is great info, thanks!
Years ago my extended family bought one to monitor a remote camp. I created a little PHP script that would grab the latest images uploaded via FTP and make a photo gallery. Set up was difficult but it worked reliably. They have a Ring now ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Arlo does good from videos I've seen shared - I had the V1 they came out with and the battery life was terrible - but I did notice some sort of open source license on the router thing. Not sure it's still a thing, and I think the price is higher, and the battery life is better, with newer versions - but may not be amazon servers?
Arlo looked good too but they were pretty pricey compared to Ring. I'm not that happy that Ring is associated with Amazon, but they do have quite a few privacy settings when configuring them. I download my videos from Ring almost daily and store them in my own encrypted cloud storage, so unless Ring keeps a copy after they are deleted then law enforcement would likely need to ask me for a copy.
I've personally had a mostly good experience with Ring. If you want 4k videos and long-distance night mode then I would avoid them and go with Swann PoE 4k bullet cameras if you can find them on sale, or another brand since they are just re-branded cameras.
You've always had a responsibility to educate your friends about the dangers of closed software but now failing them can severely cost you.