[HN Gopher] New Report Shows Cops Used Ring Cameras to Monitor B...
___________________________________________________________________
New Report Shows Cops Used Ring Cameras to Monitor Black Lives
Matter Protests
Author : DiabloD3
Score : 142 points
Date : 2021-02-16 18:51 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.eff.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.eff.org)
| option wrote:
| nothing wrong if police asks user's permission to view the video.
| nostromo wrote:
| Public demonstrations are by definition public. They are designed
| to be highly visible.
|
| Who cares if you're caught on camera demonstrating in the public
| square? That's kind of the point: to be seen by as many people as
| possible.
| [deleted]
| nickff wrote:
| The current zeitgeist seems to be that the 'good' protests
| should be completely unmonitored and unrestricted, and the
| 'bad' protests should be tightly monitored and heavily
| sanctioned. The same is of course true for speech.
| ketzo wrote:
| I think to call that feeling "current" is to be a little
| ignorant of history; people have always held double standards
| for their own causes. We're humans, after all.
| nickff wrote:
| I never said it was 'novel' or 'recent', though it does
| seem to be more prolific these days.
| worker767424 wrote:
| And "good" protests are the ones you agree with.
| tw04 wrote:
| The current zeitgeist seems to be that peaceful protestors
| should be left alone and treated like the law abiding
| citizens they are, and that violent protestors should be
| punished accordingly.
|
| Nobody in those Minneapolis neighborhoods (neighborhoods that
| were predominantly populated with african americans) wanted
| idiots burning down their local grocery stores or causing
| violence in their neighborhoods. Just like no sane person
| wanted a bunch of morons to break into the US Capitol
| building.
|
| If you want to make a claim, own it instead of being coy.
| gotoeleven wrote:
| All of these protests, the BLM ones over the summer and the
| one on January 6th in DC were "mostly peaceful" by any
| definition of mostly and peaceful. Only the BLM protests
| got the "mostly peaceful" treatment from the media.
| knowaveragejoe wrote:
| The protests in 2020 were the largest protest movements
| in US history:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_protests_in_the_Uni
| ted...
|
| From a purely statistical standpoint, they were
| overwhelmingly peaceful.
| thrwaway2day wrote:
| > From a purely statistical standpoint, they were
| overwhelmingly peaceful.
|
| From a purely statistical standpoint, WWII was
| overwhelmingly peaceful and Covid is only a serious risk
| to the compromised and elderly.
| nawgz wrote:
| Why make such a weak strawman? If you have a point to
| make, do it with information and not ridiculous analogies
| thrwaway2day wrote:
| What is the strawman? Using statistics in this way is
| meaningless. Hell, I'd bet by area the capitol hill riots
| were mostly peaceful. The capitol complex is a large
| place and I'm certain 51% could be defined as peaceful
| under a similar definition that burning neighborhoods
| were this summer.
| thrwaway2day wrote:
| > The current zeitgeist seems to be that peaceful
| protestors should be left alone and treated like the law
| abiding citizens they are
|
| Even CNN, with it's masterful use of euphemistic language
| could only manage describe the protests last summer as
| "mostly peaceful" whist standing in front of a burning
| building.
|
| https://thehill.com/homenews/media/513902-cnn-ridiculed-
| for-...
| skybrian wrote:
| The question is how you know they're peaceful in advance.
| Do you just trust them? Often, many of the protesters don't
| know what's going to happen either. (Some do, and use the
| crowd as cover.)
|
| It seems like some preparation for security at large events
| is necessary? But then the security is a target. Sometimes
| they try to keep a low profile to avoid this.
| ncallaway wrote:
| Sure, but that's not really relevant to the conversation.
|
| The ring doorbell footage isn't used for intelligence in
| advance of an event. It's used for dragnet surveillance
| after an event has taken place.
|
| My question about such after the fact surveillance: Is
| there a specific crime that they are investigating, or
| are they doing an investigation _seeking_ a crime?
| nawgz wrote:
| This isn't an "in advance" though. From TFA:
|
| > EFF shows that the LAPD asked for video related to "the
| recent protests"
|
| Given that the protest was against the LAPD's power, more
| or less, you can imagine that this looks much more
| retaliatory than it does investigatory.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| You're not capturing all of the hypocrites (on both sides)
| who only care when the bad thing is done by the other team.
| nawgz wrote:
| I think this sort of false equality being constructed
| between peaceful protests against abuse of power and a
| seditionist insurrection against certifying election
| results is quite abhorrent, and your comment is certainly
| trying to normalize that equivalency by my reading.
|
| Why would I say this? I don't think "the bad thing" of
| insurrection and lying about election results has been
| done by both sides, and so I perceive your comment that
| says "but both sides" to be reductionist, in a biased
| fashion. Surely, one can condemn an insurrection against
| democracy without needing to condemn peaceful protests
| against abuse of power and extrajudicial murder which
| were coopted by violent antagonists and opportunists.
| lolinder wrote:
| The equivalency is not being drawn between the people who
| stormed the capitol and the people who were peacefully
| holding Black Lives Matter signs last summer. The
| equivalency is being drawn between the people who stormed
| the capitol and the people who smashed in the door to a
| federal courthouse and threw fireworks inside. [0]
|
| [0]: https://www.oregonlive.com/crime/2020/07/federal-
| courthouse-...
| nawgz wrote:
| Which is being defended and condoned by who? That is
| clearly a criminal act and should be punished.
|
| The insurrection on the other hand has a hearty crew of
| deniers / supporters / it didn't happen but if it did it
| wasn't violent. Again, this is still a false equivalency
| being constructed.
| tharne wrote:
| That reminds me of the way my company and others frequently
| urge employees to bring their "whole selves to work", meaning
| of course, bring your whole self to work so long as your
| whole self espouses views that are confined to an exceedingly
| narrow window as defined by the NY Times Editorial Page.
| nostromo wrote:
| "Speak your truth" and "say the thing" are other fake
| axioms from these people.
|
| I attended a DEI seminar at work where someone "said the
| thing" as he was encouraged to -- but it was the wrong
| thing apparently -- he was then humiliated by the
| organizers for wrongthink for about an hour in front of his
| coworkers.
| da_big_ghey wrote:
| What are they encouraging with bringing your "whole self",
| talking politics at the office or wearing t-shirts with
| slogans, stuff like that?
| happytoexplain wrote:
| Surely the controversy is that the police requested the
| doorbell videos of private citizens, and further, the suspicion
| is that they are looking for anything, rather than
| investigating a specific crime. That's what the first couple
| paragraphs say.
|
| I have no idea if that's totally normal and legal police
| behavior, and neither am I commenting on the morality of it -
| I'm just pointing out that the concern is obviously not "the
| police are able to observe a public protest", with no other
| context.
| test6554 wrote:
| I would be more than happy to send my footage to the cops.
| Ideally for those "mostly peaceful" protests, we can catch
| the people who are the reason why it is not a "completely
| peaceful" protest.
| tharne wrote:
| People with home surveillance cameras can give the footage to
| whomever they want, including the police, so long as that
| footage was obtained lawfully.
| tpxl wrote:
| Not if it contains other people's space they can't.
| cheschire wrote:
| I'm unsure why you're being downvoted, it's illegal to
| film other people's space in Germany, so it seems
| certainly possible to me that this is the case in parts
| of America as well.
| dghlsakjg wrote:
| It's being downvoted because the US, with some very
| narrow exceptions, does not recognize a right to not be
| filmed in public (or filmed in private if the filming
| location is from public property). As gross as it is, if
| you leave your front curtains open, I am (legally)
| allowed to film through your windows from the sidewalk.
|
| Since this is an article about a US movement, US police,
| a US company and US laws, it is fair to downvote
| contextually wrong information.
| judge2020 wrote:
| > (or filmed in private if the filming location is from
| public property).
|
| > if you leave your front curtains open, I am (legally)
| allowed to film through your windows from the sidewalk
|
| Well that's obviously situational - filming private
| property that isn't yours from a public space isn't legal
| if that's your intent. There's a difference between
| filming an intersection and happening to capture what
| happens through a window and pointing a camera across the
| street at the neighbor's window with the intent to record
| them. I won't look up every state's laws, but for
| Georgia:
|
| > It shall be unlawful for: (2) Any person, through the
| use of any device, without the consent of all persons
| observed, to observe, photograph, or record the
| activities of another which occur in any private place
| and out of public view; ...
| sokoloff wrote:
| I'm not sure that citation reads as strongly to me.
|
| "and out of public view" being the key element that
| suggests if you record from a public place, that the
| recording is probably legal. If I can see something from
| a public place, it seems like it's not "out of public
| view". (I'm not arguing it's _right and proper_ to do so,
| of course.)
| tharne wrote:
| A public protest is, by definition, in public. There
| isn't what the Supreme Court would call a "reasonable
| expectation of privacy".
| tpxl wrote:
| Yes, however a surveilance camera cannot simply be
| pointed in the street to record everything.
| leetcrew wrote:
| isn't that essentially what a ring camera is, assuming
| your door faces the street? if so, where are all the
| legal challenges?
| OminousWeapons wrote:
| Ring cameras don't have continuous recording, they will
| only record on motion events. To my knowledge, there is
| also no way to set up alerting and capture preferences
| separately (ie if the camera detects motion and starts
| recording, you are getting alerted unless you turn off
| alerts for the camera entirely). If someone set their
| camera to record a public street they would literally get
| DOSed with alerts, so this is not what people do.
|
| Also, to my knowledge there are very few restrictions on
| recording people in public.
| jdminhbg wrote:
| Of course it can: https://www.weatherbug.com/traffic-cam/
| devchix wrote:
| I feel like replies in this subthread that asserts: "a
| person has no expectation of privacy in public space
| therefore recording a person in that space is
| unsurprising, expected even", is flippant and pat. The
| existence of the camera changes the space and the
| behavior of the subject. If you would imagine your Ring
| camera faces a Planned Parenthood entrance, or a homeless
| shelter. You've recorded a woman entering PP. Several
| people come and go at the homeless shelter. There's no
| other context for these images. I would not argue that
| these are not public spaces, but the people making
| entries and exits here are in probably in a part of their
| life needing the most protection of privacy. The camera's
| existence now provides a record, one that may live on
| without the subjects' knowledge. That record + ML +
| facial recognition + $future_tech will sketch a different
| future for these people, vs. one without the recording.
| Surely you can see that?
|
| I don't know what the answer should be. It's all going
| that way it seems. Cams recordings go to the cloud, it's
| harder and more expensive to install a system with only
| local storage. Ease of use is funneling society into an
| exploitable place.
|
| Bruce Schneier in one of his posts a long time ago
| exhorted his readers to resist ID'ing people in images. I
| wonder how he feels now, after the Jan6 incident.
| Bellingcat and crowd-sourced Twitter are ID'ing rioters.
| I'm not making the comparison of PP/homeless shelter
| visitors with the rioters, to be clear.
| qwertycrackers wrote:
| I don't see how you can have an expectation of privacy
| when moving through the street and entering / exiting
| buildings. How is this morally different than if a
| busybody lived across the street from PP and make a habit
| of keeping an eye on the door so (she?) could gossip
| about her observations at book club. This behavior is
| most certainly rude, but legal. It seems strange to argue
| this is immoral but hold the underlying crimes being
| recorded as immoral. The anti-reporting stance seems to
| be a veiled argument that the entire law is illegitimate.
| DanBC wrote:
| > I don't see how you can have an expectation of privacy
| when moving through the street and entering / exiting
| buildings.
|
| http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/3689049.stm
|
| > Miss Campbell had objected to the publication of
| pictures of her leaving drug addiction treatment in early
| 2001.
|
| > Lord Hope, who voted in favour of Miss Campbell, said
| on Thursday: "Despite the weight that must be given to
| the right to freedom of expression that the press needs
| if it is to play its role effectively, I would hold that
| there was here an infringement of Miss Campbell's right
| to privacy that cannot be justified."
|
| (This is about fees, but contains links and references to
| the previous cases) https://www.bailii.org/cgi-
| bin/format.cgi?doc=/eu/cases/ECHR...
| [deleted]
| judge2020 wrote:
| You could make a better argument if, instead of saying
| "you cannot do this" when it is both physically and
| legally possible to do so, you said why you think U.S.
| law _should_ disallow continuous recording in public
| spaces. @devchix below has not been downvoted because
| they make such a case.
| notyourday wrote:
| > Yes, however a surveilance camera cannot simply be
| pointed in the street to record everything.
|
| Yes it can.
| rascul wrote:
| The laws around recordings can vary widely from one
| jurisdiction to the next.
| ketzo wrote:
| That's honestly not a bad point, but it doesn't help me shake
| the skeeziness I feel about this story.
|
| Maybe it's the fact that these are ostensibly _home_
| -protection devices, not public surveillance devices? But
| really, I could see how you could make the argument that that's
| a very-narrow-bordering-on-pedantic distinction.
|
| Maybe it's just general Big Brother heebie jeebies.
| fitblipper wrote:
| I think the Big Brother heebie jeebies are justified. Amazon
| gives Police officers a script and coaching[1] to use to try
| to endorse their surveillance products and to maximize
| participation in the "Ring as Big Brother feature".
|
| Requesting video for law enforcement is automated to the
| point that all a police officer has to do (even without any
| judicial over-site!) is to drag and drop a square over a map
| on their computer and press a button. This sends the email
| identifying themselves as with the police and requested video
| data. Yes, this is voluntary for the person to grant access
| to that video but research[2] has shown that the VAST number
| of Americans will submit to a "consent search" simply because
| the Law Officer is in a position of power and people want to
| be seen as cooperative.
|
| That is also just 1 way that police can get the footage, they
| can also easily go to Amazon themselves and get it without
| notifying the user.
|
| [1]https://www.vice.com/en/article/43kga3/amazon-is-coaching-
| co...
|
| [2]https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/01/so-called-consent-
| sear... and
| https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3369844
|
| (edit: update reference number)
| mywittyname wrote:
| > people want to be seen as cooperative.
|
| Or they are implicitly threatened. What will happen if
| refused? Will a warrant be obtained for the footage? Is
| non-consent considered obstruction? Will a local LO come by
| to try and convince me to consent.
|
| Most people don't know their rights and it not unusual for
| cops to blatantly disregard civil liberties anyway.
| bonestamp2 wrote:
| This is a good point and raises a good point: There's a
| big difference between cooperating to provide footage of
| a crime vs providing a surveillance tool.
|
| I'd be more than happy to provide my camera's footage of
| a timeframe when a crime was committed. But, providing
| real time access to my camera before any crime is
| committed? That is exactly the big brother scenario I
| don't want my kids to grow up in.
| AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote:
| The article isn't clear what is meant by "request" here. If
| they are merely asking private citizens to give them access
| to the video, and those citizens have a choice to do so or
| not, then it's essentially the same as anybody just uploading
| phone footage to youtube.
|
| If it turns out there is coercion in getting these videos
| then that line of reasoning goes out the window, however.
| ketzo wrote:
| Very true. And maybe that's where my discomfort is coming
| from; the potential for police obtaining this footage
| through coercion or even in secret is deeply disturbing to
| me.
| throwawayboise wrote:
| When a couple of large guys with badges and guns are at
| your door asking for video, it would take a very self-
| confident person to say "no." There's certainly adequate
| plausible deniability of coercion, but it would be a very
| different feeling than if, for example, a reporter were
| asking, or an insurance company investigator, etc.
| ketzo wrote:
| Or even just the police on the phone vs. the police at
| your door.
| fitblipper wrote:
| Any time someone identifies as a cop, people will do what
| you tell them to.
|
| Here is just one extreme example: https://en.wikipedia.or
| g/wiki/Strip_search_phone_call_scam
|
| People will do stuff without thinking because someone
| with authority asked them to.
| AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote:
| From what I can gather looking at the emails shared in
| another thread, Ring was the go-between for the police
| and explicitly stated that sharing was optional. It also
| gives the detective's name and an incident number.
|
| I'm really not sure how the process could be made less
| intimidating or more transparent than that.
| [deleted]
| stefan_ wrote:
| Police surveillance of constitutionally protected activities
| have a _chilling effect_ that might prevent people from
| exercising their rights and can therefore be illegal.
| AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote:
| Police regularly monitor protests, and frequently use footage
| from security cameras in investigating and prosecuting
| crimes. I'm not seeing a problem here on those grounds.
| stefan_ wrote:
| You don't see a problem when a constitutionally protected
| activity summons a police brigade? What exactly is police
| doing watching people exercise their rights?
|
| I think you can understand that people who have thought
| about this a lot more than you can realize the problem
| here.
| AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote:
| Protests are monitored by police because mobs are a very
| real threat whenever a large group of people assemble for
| a cause. The mere existence of police surveillance in a
| public demonstration is not at all unreasonable in my
| opinion.
|
| Case in point, if there was no police presence whatsoever
| at the Capital protest there's a very real possibility a
| few senators might be dead right now.
| Fogest wrote:
| And let's be fair, it's not uncommon especially at larger
| protests for their to be conflict that requires police
| intervention. Just like how police forces will have the
| bad people that bring down the rest of the force, groups
| of protestors also face similar problems. Different
| people in the protest have different perspectives and
| ideas of what makes a good protest and what is effective.
| Some people think violence and destruction is needed and
| often these people have mob-like effect. If one person
| starts doing it often that spreads through the group and
| more people are breaking laws. Without some law and order
| in there things get out of hand pretty quick as we have
| seen in many protests in America, but also across the
| world.
| ggreer wrote:
| The police weren't using Ring to do any sort of blanket
| surveillance of protesters. They were investigating
| crimes. All requests from the LAPD referenced specific
| case numbers. See page 22 of this pdf[1] for an example.
| I've transcribed one:
|
| ---
|
| > Dear Neighbor,
|
| > Ring is contacting you on behalf of Detective Alex
| Giron of the Los Angeles Police Department, who is
| seeking videos recorded between [redacted], in connection
| with the investigation of an incident (Incident
| #[redacted]) near your home.
|
| > A message from Detective Giron:
|
| > Hello Ring neighbors. We are looking for any video that
| may help us identify a suspect that [redacted]. Any
| information would be appreciated.
|
| > Sharing your video recordings with the Los Angeles
| Police Department is entirely optional and will not
| provide the department with access to your Ring
| device(s). If you choose to share your Ring video
| recordings, the Los Angeles Police Department will also
| receive your email address and street address. Click the
| button below to review and share select Ring video
| recordings.
|
| > If you do not wish to participate, simply ignore this
| request and nothing will be shared with the Los Angeles
| Police Department, including whether or not this request
| was sent to you. If you do not wish to receive requests
| like these in the future, click here to opt out.
|
| ---
|
| The request then gives some contact info for the
| detective in case the recipient has any questions.
|
| I see nothing objectionable about this request. It looks
| to be entirely opt-in. It protects the privacy of Ring
| users while also making it convenient for citizens to
| help the police solve crimes. That the EFF is making a
| big deal of this only serves to reduce my respect for
| them. I now worry that they're going down the same path
| as the ACLU and SPLC.
|
| 1. https://www.eff.org/files/2021/02/11/nr20-5328_emails_
| redact...
| kbar13 wrote:
| I see a couple gray areas:
|
| 1) when people buy a doorbell cam they may not expect it to
| be used by the police in unrelated investigation (not a
| crime actively committed against the owner of the camera)
|
| 2) motive for investigation of a crime like theft is clear-
| cut, investigation of who was at a protest is not as clear
| (why do we need to identify who participated in a protest?
| there shouldn't need to be identification unless there's an
| actual crime committed)
| AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote:
| 1) The article is unclear what is meant by "request", but
| the impression is that the police are merely _asking_
| private citizens for access to video which they are under
| no obligation to provide. If that is the case, then I see
| nothing wrong here.
|
| 2) Agreed, however it is not unreasonable to expect to be
| identified when taking part in a public activity. You
| could just as easily be identified by police who were
| there, or via someone's phone footage uploaded to
| youtube. You have no expectation of privacy in public.
| Further, I see no reason to expect that the LAPD intends
| to do anything other than investigate criminal actions
| with this footage [0].
|
| [0] Although the history of the LAPD would suggest they
| might use it for harassment.
| bratbag wrote:
| I disagree. The police should not be asking for blanket
| surveillance in the first place.
|
| It should be on a per-crime basis, with specifics.
| notahacker wrote:
| The emails suggest this is actually the case: owners were
| emailed with a specific request linked to a specific
| incident number and a message from a named detective.
| They were free to choose whether to share or not and
| given that I'm sure residents could spot the BLM protest
| connection I'm sure some were more willing to share than
| others.
|
| Emails (with actual incidents and location details
| redacted) are apparently here https://www.eff.org/files/2
| 021/02/11/nr20-5328_emails_redact...
| kbar13 wrote:
| agreed on #1
|
| i think for 2, you've identified why it's a little
| iffy... yes if you're out in public you should have no
| expectation of privacy. however the context of where you
| are matters, and the frame of why the police is trying to
| identify matters. ideally most people who are
| participating in a peaceful protest should have no fear
| of being identified, but that isn't the case rn. in a
| sense, the surveillance discussion is a proxy for "the
| police have too much power and not enough oversight"
| AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote:
| > "the police have too much power and not enough
| oversight"
|
| On this general point we agree.
| threatofrain wrote:
| This isn't simply police surveillance; this is citizen
| surveillance using a common technology, and the citizens are
| voluntarily offering information to the police. They could've
| just as easily uploaded it to YouTube.
| mywittyname wrote:
| Something can be _technically_ legal but also have a
| devastating effect on civil liberties.
|
| There's a lot more information available here than would be
| on, for example YouTube. The most salient is that YouTube
| lacks timestamping. So a video pulled from YT might not be
| credible evidence because there's no way to prove when the
| video was recorded. It can also be difficult or impossible
| to determine where a video was recorded.
|
| My contrast, Ring contains all of the metadata necessary
| for video evidence to be admissible in court. There's all
| the who/what/when/where information along with chain of
| custody guarantees.
| threatofrain wrote:
| I wasn't focusing on what's technically illegal. I just
| don't want the conversation mixing up police with citizen
| surveillance.
|
| The admissibility of evidence in court sounds like an
| issue related to minor details in the implementation of
| recording technology at the user end. But the final link
| that is really impactful is when citizens cooperate with
| police.
| tharne wrote:
| And yet if the police weren't present, these very same
| protestors would likely accuse the police of "institutional
| racism" for failing to protect the protestors.
| sixothree wrote:
| You have evidence of this happening in the past?
| ropeladder wrote:
| "Who cares if someone roofies your drink? Your goal was to hook
| up with somebody anyway." /s
|
| You are drastically oversimplifying the situation here. The
| goal of a protest is not to be seen, or to be harassed by
| police. The goal is to effect change, and surveillance is a
| tool of the powerful that the United States has long had a
| healthy skepticism for.
| marshmallow_12 wrote:
| speaking from London here. Clearly news of the invention of
| CCTV has only recently spread across the pond. It's pretty
| much a fact of life here that everything you do is being
| surveilled by multiple lenses. Maybe in the us the
| distribution of power makes it more likely that such
| information will be abused? (and btw usa data privacy laws is
| inferior to european law, stricter privacy laws=less
| surveillance. (Maybe its to compensate for more CCTV?))
| smolder wrote:
| Don't EUs privacy laws stop applying to UK since brexit?
| whiddershins wrote:
| I hate the panopticon.
|
| I sympathize with police wanting to identify bad actors within
| protests, as they really can terrorize an entire neighborhood and
| often undermine whatever just cause was being fought for.
|
| I also think the road to the surveillance state will always be
| paved with 'good reasons.'
|
| I think criminals need to be held accountable.
|
| I think endless footage of protestors could be used to at some
| point retaliate against people who are peacefully protesting.
| This has already happened to people who peacefully attended Trump
| Rallies, I see no reason why it couldn't just as easily be used
| to discriminate against BLM organizers if that movement ever
| falls out of favor.
|
| So I am conflicted.
|
| Mostly I am still sad we've had so much violence in our protests
| over the 8 months or so.
| [deleted]
| 7174n6 wrote:
| I hate to see this. There are so many legitimate causes for the
| EFF to fight for and they choose this? The police trying to
| identify people who turned a legitimate protest into riots filled
| with looting and criminal mischief? It seems to me the police are
| just trying to identify the bad actors, nothing more. I support
| the EFF but this effort is misguided and the article is
| disingenuous.
| mleonhard wrote:
| Society is better off when police show probable cause before
| getting data of private citizens. In the article, EFF
| highlights two cases where police made unspecific requests for
| data of large swaths of people. Such requests have a chilling
| effect on our society.
|
| I think this is exactly what EFF should be doing. It's why I
| support them.
| darawk wrote:
| No, society is better off when police don't have the right to
| take data without consent unless they have probable cause.
| They have consent here.
| dkdk8283 wrote:
| Ring should not help contribute to the surveillance economy.
| Once a surveillance mechanism is in place it will be abused.
| There is no exception to this.
| basilgohar wrote:
| The government getting around regulations of state surveillance
| by using private equipment owned by individuals but likely
| without their knowledge in partnership with large corporations
| to monitor the public sounds like exactly the kind of thing I
| want the EFF to use my donations to fight so that it does not
| become more pervasive. The fact that today it was used for
| something you do not object today is just temporary. The EFF
| looks down the path to what this means for the future and
| fights to prevent _that_.
| elil17 wrote:
| > It seems to me the police are just trying to identify bad
| actors
|
| My concern is that the expanded subpoena powers of the police
| allow for excessive amounts of parallel construction. Say
| (hypothetically - this obviously isn't what is happening here)
| a cop wants hit someone with as many traffic violations as
| possible because of a personal grudge. If they found an
| unrelated crime near an area where the person typically drives,
| they could then subpoena all the Ring videos from that area and
| use them to go after the person they were originally interested
| in.
|
| The problem is that when you grant police power in one case,
| they get to keep that power and use it whenever they want.
| cwhiz wrote:
| >LAPD should tell the public how many hours of surveillance
| footage it gathered around these protests, and why.
|
| Gee I wonder why. Maybe to find all the people who were burning
| down buildings, looting, destroying property, throwing rocks and
| other projectiles, and stealing?
| TheRealSteel wrote:
| To see people protesting the consistent and systemic murder of
| citizens of a particular race and the constant turning of a
| blind eye towards it by citizens and the system, and then to
| deliberately turn a blind eye towards it, proves precisely our
| point.
|
| Well done. YOU'RE the reason the protests needed to happen. YOU
| are the reason we have to march in the streets.
|
| Cops murder black people and get away with it. People have said
| we've had enough, we're protesting this. And out of those two
| things the only part you have a problem with is the people
| standing up to the murders? The only part you pick out to get
| mad at is the protests?
|
| Congratulations. You're the problem.
| da_big_ghey wrote:
| He didn't say the protests were wrong. He talked about
| policemen doing their jobs and tracking down the crime. I
| would think that peaceful protesters would support this, as
| the criminals ended up tarring all protesters with the same
| brush and de-legitimizing the point the protests were trying
| to make.
|
| And no, I don't think that someone who is mad about crime is
| the reason that the protests happened. As I recall, it was
| because a policeman murdered a black, not because someone
| said that criminals should be found and arrested. An original
| objective was to ensure that Chauvin et al. faced justice for
| their crimes, so punishing those who commit other crimes
| seems consistent with the principles behind the protests.
|
| It is ridiculous to characterize criminals as "the people
| standing up to the murders". Cwhiz clearly stated that his
| problem was with the crinimals, not the protesters. You have
| gone past an uncharitable reading to responding to points he
| simply did not make.
| eplanit wrote:
| I thought that after 1/6, the consensus shifted to be that
| "burning down buildings, looting, destroying property,
| throwing rocks and other projectiles, and stealing" are again
| _not_ acceptable forms of protest?
| mhh__ wrote:
| You provide a good counterpoint to an extremely common
| narrative on hackernews, thank you.
|
| One simple point that shows the point being argued is too
| simplistic, is that most of the looting was done at night or
| at least after dark, most footage of protests was broad
| daylight.
|
| Police beating up journalists and protestors is just
| masturbation and has nothing to do with their ability or
| failure to apprehend looters.
| bitwize wrote:
| Chaos is only a problem when the right causes it. The chaos
| under discussion was born of justifiable anger and should be
| supported by morally conscious citizens. /s
| Fogest wrote:
| While you're being downvoted, you're also not wrong. I have
| seen lots of people across reddit in large subreddits who are
| highly upvoted saying exactly this and not in a sarcastic
| manner. You also see it throughout Twitter.
|
| There are many people who actively think it is okay for these
| protests to be violent and destructive because of what they
| are fighting for. But then these same people will ostracized
| people on the right who have wild protests.
|
| It's like either violence and destruction is wrong when
| you're fighting for what you believe in, or it is right.
| People do often feels like breaking the law is okay when it
| is for their movement, but when it is for a movement they
| don't personally agree with it suddenly is not okay.
|
| But this is exactly why protests, especially larger scale
| ones need to be monitored.
|
| We have seen protests in many areas in America where
| destructive mobs start to descend on neighbourhoods at night
| to "protest". They will use things that make nose such as
| horns and cowbells and go through these neighbourhoods at
| night and cause a lot of conflict with the people in the
| neighborhoods.
|
| I can completely understand why police are getting this
| footage, because oftentimes a lot of petty crimes gets
| reported along the path a "protest" took place.
|
| You can find plenty of examples of these protests through
| neighbourhoods where someone has a Trump sign or American
| flag. Often those properties got some kind of vandalism or at
| the very least a mob chanting outside their house.
|
| While it may seem controversial what the police are doing, it
| seems completely reasonable to request camera footage from
| people as some of the people in the protest committed crimes
| at some point during the day and that footage could be used
| to help identify them.
|
| Protesting is one thing, but someone committing a crime
| should still face the consequences regardless of what they
| are fighting for.
|
| Unfortunately if the police were requesting footage from
| protests that happened from Trump supporters I doubt we would
| see any news articles about it.
| TheRealSteel wrote:
| >someone committing a crime should still face the
| consequences regardless of what they are fighting for.
|
| This was literally the entire point of the protests. Way to
| miss the point.
| Fogest wrote:
| The point of the protest is that they should be allowed
| to create destruction and violence and not have the
| police monitor them when they do that?
|
| You're not making a point here you're just dismissing me
| because I don't hold a view in support of protests that
| turn destructive.
| furr wrote:
| > if the police were requesting footage from protests that
| happened from Trump supporters I doubt we would see any
| news articles about it
|
| Police (and the FBI) requested footage of the Trump
| supporters' protest at the Capitol that left one police
| officer dead.
|
| There were LOTS of news articles about it.
| Fogest wrote:
| I mean that's a bit of a silly comparison is it not?
| You're comparing a capital being stormed to a protest
| through a neighbourhood that I am referring to.
|
| Please don't use strawman arguments like that.
| furr wrote:
| That protest wasn't a protest? Let me know where the
| goalposts end up.
|
| What about the murderous right-wing protest in
| Charlottesville? Police and FBI also requested video, and
| it was widely reported. Does that count?
|
| Other examples include the anti-abortion protests,
| protests defending Confederate statues, and White
| supremacy protests if you're _really_ that out of the
| loop.
|
| Left-wing protestors are 10X as likely to be arrested
| than the right. That inequality upsets you too, right?
|
| https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/soc4.128
| 33
| Fogest wrote:
| Again you're using a strawman. Please stop replying to
| me. You are now comparing a riot where people got killed
| to a protest. Again, this is not what I am talking about
| nor is it what the OP's article is talking about. They
| are talking about a regular protest, not one where
| someone got killed or the capital was taken over.
|
| Also you decided to focus on a single line of my post and
| your argument is a strawman. If you're going to engage in
| a discussion at least be genuine about it rather than
| letting your political bias derail a good conversation we
| could have had.
|
| > Left-wing protestors are 10X as likely to be arrested
| than the right. That inequality upsets you too, right?
|
| And don't use stupid stats like this. This does not upset
| me because you are inferring causation from statistical
| data that supports your bias. I could draw a different
| conclusion and say that the left are 10x as violent and
| thus arrested 10x as much. However I am not going to
| infer the cause of such stats as I don't know that is the
| reason, nor do you.
|
| You should try and be a bit more open minded and not let
| your bias affect your ability to look at statistics
| online. Just because a stat says something, doesn't mean
| it immediately supports your cause. It may just mean
| further research is needed to determine what is the
| actual cause.
| pessimizer wrote:
| It's terrible that the police are getting access to a bunch of
| cameras pointed at the street, but not very notable that they're
| using the tools we're giving them to do the job we're telling
| them to do.
| elil17 wrote:
| > EFF and ACLU of Northern California filed a lawsuit against
| the City and County of San Francisco on behalf of three
| protesters, asking the court to require the city to follow its
| Surveillance Technology Ordinance and prohibit the SFPD from
| acquiring, borrowing, or using non-city networks of
| surveillance cameras absent prior approval from the city's
| Board of Supervisors.
|
| It seems like they're actually ignoring laws which are supposed
| to put checks and balances on their ability to acquire
| surveillance data.
| throwawaysea wrote:
| Why is this a problem? If customers are sharing footage either
| voluntarily or in response to a legal request driven by a court
| order, then I don't think anything wrong is happening. Filming
| public spaces is totally legal. And those acting illegally
| outside the bounds of what is allowed under the right to assembly
| should be brought to justice. There's nothing wrong with that.
| It's unclear to me why the EFF is even picking this fight.
| bhauer wrote:
| I am a self-hosted partisan, so I obviously avoid Ring. But this
| article feels disingenuous in implying that there is something
| uniquely nefarious about Ring here, aside from perhaps the
| relative ease by which the authorities are able to request video.
| The police also can and do ask those who run self-hosted
| surveillance systems for video of events; I know because I've
| been asked before for video from mine.
|
| So, yes, it's very easy to request video from Ring users. But
| they still do need to ask. The only way I am going to be
| genuinely upset about this is if they are able to get video
| without asking the individual owners.
| conception wrote:
| Owners have to op into "Neighborhood Watch" for their
| neighborhoods but they are opting into package thieves, not
| protest monitoring. And it's all or nothing, not a per video
| request.
|
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2019/08/28/doorbel...
|
| By tapping into "a perceived need for more self-surveillance
| and by playing on consumer fears about crime and security," he
| added, Ring has found "a clever workaround for the development
| of a wholly new surveillance network, without the kind of
| scrutiny that would happen if it was coming from the police or
| government."
| kodah wrote:
| When someone says, "perceived" I usually receive that as,
| "someone thinks they need this but they don't"
|
| Just some hasty research:
|
| https://www.crresearch.com/blog/2019-package-theft-
| statistic...
|
| https://www.security.org/resources/stolen-packages-survey/
|
| https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2020/01/10/package-theft-how-
| amazon...
|
| > With one single package potentially containing hundreds of
| dollars worth of goods, package thieves, or "porch pirates,"
| see an Amazon box as a ripe opportunity to steal. More than
| one-third (36%) have been a victim of package theft. Of
| those, 44% have had a package stolen at least twice. Most
| package theft victims (83%) said they contacted the seller or
| Amazon immediately after finding out their package had been
| stolen, while only 13% called the police right away. Overall,
| very few (11%) said the porch pirate was caught, but
| thankfully, 73% of package theft victims said they eventually
| received a refund.
|
| This seems to substantiate that package theft is at the very
| least a common problem for the people they polled. Whether
| Ring engineered a national surveillance network on purpose
| sounds like something that needs to be proven. Just talking
| about outcomes without examining what (legitimate) problem
| they're trying to solve does not help inform the public.
|
| The way I end up reading the situation is that some people
| want to aid the police to find package thieves but they don't
| want to aid police in finding people suspected of crimes
| during protests.
|
| Personally, I'll take this debate a step further: I don't
| think it should be legal to film anyone without their consent
| because that practice will _always_ be abused by bad actors.
| Whether you 're antagonizing people by recording them in
| public or you're surveiling a protest. My idea would be to
| craft laws saying you can't capture any video for anything
| _off_ of your property. You could also encourage users to
| relocate their cameras to positions that _only_ capture the
| front door vicinity.
| skissane wrote:
| > My idea would be to craft laws saying you can't capture
| any video for anything off of your property
|
| Which would mean no more dashcams. Dashcams are very useful
| in assigning blame in accidents and helping to determine
| their causes (not only in cases of human negligence, but
| even accidents due to mechanical failures/design flaws/etc)
|
| And dashcams do pick up pedestrians on the sidewalk, etc.
|
| No more Google Streetview either, which a lot of people
| (myself included) find very useful - it lets me familiarise
| myself with how a place looks before I visit it
|
| If I take my children to the park to play, would I be
| allowed to take a video of their play to send to my wife?
| What if a stranger is visible in the distance in the
| background of the video?
|
| It would do nothing about the immense quantity of CCTV
| footage of privately owned public places such as shopping
| malls. And it might even encourage moving public property
| into private ownership - if the local government aren't
| allowed to perform CCTV surveillance of a street, but if it
| were privately owned its private owner could, then
| transferring public streets into private ownership might be
| promoted as enhancing public safety/security. Transfers of
| public streets into private ownership have already happened
| - in 1999, the Salt Lake City government sold a portion of
| Main Street to the LDS Church, which has since used its
| ownership of that section of street to remove protestors
| from it [0]. But your proposed law might make such moves
| more popular
|
| [0] http://www.thisweekinmormons.com/2017/02/remember-
| controvers...
| kodah wrote:
| Transferring things like roads into private property for
| no reason at all seems dubious and certainly circumvents
| the spirit of what I'm going after.
|
| My main concerns are the US becoming a surveillance state
| (probably first and foremost - not to say we haven't
| already arrived or are well on our way) and secondarily
| the way average citizens are allowed to violate each
| other's privacy. Some can argue that when you are in
| public you assume zero privacy, but in a world where a
| local incident that be dealt with at a local level
| occurs, is recorded, and then goes viral multinationally
| or where bad actors want to be lazy we start to face
| issues where this simple understanding of privacy breaks
| down and has intersections like this one.
| jMyles wrote:
| > I don't think it should be legal to film anyone without
| their consent because that practice will always be abused
| by bad actors.
|
| If a technology is developed allowing me to extract video
| from my hippocampus, will you require me to walk around my
| life with my eyes closed?
| FlownScepter wrote:
| > The way I end up reading the situation is that some
| people want to aid the police to find package thieves but
| they don't want to aid police in finding people suspected
| of crimes during protests.
|
| Well that depends highly on what's considered a crime in a
| protest, who determines that, and whether or not the person
| in question agrees with the protest.
|
| I have no problem at all catching porch pirates. I have
| big, big ethical concerns with surveillance footage being
| used to track public organizers who haven't committed any
| crimes.
|
| I think these sticky situations are always going to be a
| problem as long as the Police insist on operating in
| opposition to the people they claim to want to protect.
| Police do not feel like they are part of my community, they
| feel like an upper class of citizen who are permitted to,
| well, police the community by any means necessary up to and
| including violence, with basically no oversight.
|
| That's not someone to look to for help. That's someone to
| fear.
| renewiltord wrote:
| > _My idea would be to craft laws saying you can 't capture
| any video for anything off of your property._
|
| Given the documented failure rate of eyewitnesses to be
| accurate (worse than AI face recognition), we should also
| ban relaying something you've seen. That way we can make a
| just society.
| mola wrote:
| Probably started that way, because it's a real problem. But
| then some enterprising DA understood the potential, and
| some BizDev ppl heard that lovely Kah Ching ringing in
| their ears. The rest is history.
| chokeartist wrote:
| Yeah how dare they use modern technology to tackle public
| safety. Oh wait I think I just had a moment of
| wrongthink.
| kodah wrote:
| That's certainly a possible explanation based on
| speculation and you'd probably have fanfare on a
| technology forum for warning against it. The problem is
| that nobody has determined that has happened (unless I'm
| missing something) and it was asserted as fact anyway.
| hirundo wrote:
| > I don't think it should be legal to film anyone without
| their consent ... My idea would be to craft laws saying you
| can't capture any video for anything off of your property.
|
| Derek Chauvin would appreciate that.
| kodah wrote:
| Police bodycams would probably be the exception there (I
| imagine there's others, even simple laws are never as
| simple as what I wrote.)
|
| That said, the tone of your comment is entirely
| unconstructive.
| roywiggins wrote:
| If the only people who can legally film cops are cops,
| that's going to have some pretty serious knock-on
| effects.
|
| The video relevant to Chauvin was recorded by a
| bystander.
| kodah wrote:
| Yeap, I definitely understood the argument, and it's
| quite valid. What I took issue with was the dismissive
| tone that it takes rather than adding to or building onto
| the discourse.
| pnathan wrote:
| Not only that, in Seattle - Amazon's home city - package
| theft is seen as a significant problem. So, I would imagine
| that deterring package theft is a real concern and a real
| quality of life issue for many Amazon ICs.
|
| I would argue a key root solution here is to for police to
| prioritize addressing property crime, rather than for
| private citizens to attempt to address the civic policing
| concerns on their own - which is what these cameras are
| doing, at their core.
| ryandrake wrote:
| Or, don't "deliver" a package by just leaving it out in
| the open on the person's property somewhere. It's always
| seemed bizarre to me that this counts as delivery in the
| USA. We should normalize bigger and more secure mailboxes
| or require an actual person to be available to receive a
| package.
| MikeDelta wrote:
| Indeed, in Europe it is normal that people be home to
| receive the package. There are alternatives, but leaving
| it in front of the door is not one of them.
| mancerayder wrote:
| What about people without doormen or stay-at-home
| spouses? If you're single and go to work daily, having to
| be home is the biggest headache pre-pandemic.
| marakv2 wrote:
| What we do in Japan. They don't deliver, you call the
| delivery service to reorganise delivery at a convenient
| time for you
| sokoloff wrote:
| In order to avoid a 1 in 1,000 to 1 in 10,000 chance of a
| package being stolen, I don't want to have to have an
| extra interaction for every delivery.
|
| Leave it on the porch; if one gets stolen every few
| years, that's still wildly more convenient than
| rescheduling most deliveries.
| skissane wrote:
| I used to get stuff delivered to my office. It was a big
| office building and we had a logistics department with a
| loading bay out the back. A lot of other people at my
| office used to do the same thing. Until work announced
| that they were getting sick of handling personal
| deliveries, and from now on only work-related deliveries
| would be allowed. (I think they didn't mind in the
| beginning handling the occasional personal delivery, but
| then it escalated in volume to the point that they had to
| put a stop to it.)
|
| Nowadays (even pre-pandemic) I work from home full-time
| so there is usually someone here. But actually I used to
| get stuff delivered to the office even when my wife was
| at home full-time. There is always the chance she would
| go out, whereas there was someone down in logistics
| 8am-6pm.
| ryandrake wrote:
| So, bigger, more secure mailboxes, then.
| goatcode wrote:
| >they are opting into package thieves, not protest monitoring
|
| This is not explained in ToS?
| woodruffw wrote:
| > This is not explained in ToS?
|
| Show me someone who reads (and fully internalizes) the ToS
| for their purchases, and I'll show you a liar!
| d1zzy wrote:
| So the request here is that Amazon makes it more possible to
| be more specific about what use you allow for the cameras and
| give users flexibility to not be all-or-nothing.
|
| Seems reasonable.
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