[HN Gopher] Amazon asks Ring owners to respect privacy after cou...
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       Amazon asks Ring owners to respect privacy after court rules usage
       broke law
        
       Author : clouddrover
       Score  : 19 points
       Date   : 2021-10-16 15:11 UTC (7 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.theguardian.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.theguardian.com)
        
       | kolanos wrote:
       | So the U.K., famous for its CCTV networks, is fining a business
       | owner 100K pounds for setting up his own video surveillance? Is
       | this yet another case of "rules for thee, but not for me"?
       | 
       | In the U.S., there is no expectation of privacy in public. This
       | means that anything that can be seen from a public sidewalk or
       | roadway can be recorded. If you want privacy, you need to create
       | it. This means putting up blinds/curtains, fences, tree lines,
       | etc. Same is true for anything that can be heard from a public
       | sidewalk or roadway.
       | 
       | This ruling in the U.K. would likely be a first amendment issue
       | in the United States.
        
         | cameronh90 wrote:
         | Something like 97% of the CCTV cameras in the UK are private,
         | just like the one in the article.
         | 
         | The issue is he set it up without complying with GDPR rules. If
         | you set up a CCTV system that can record public areas or land
         | you don't own, the data collected needs to be reasonable and
         | you need to notify people you're doing it so they can request
         | to have images of them deleted. Any organisation running CCTV
         | in a public area will likely have performed a DPIA, including
         | police, local government etc.
         | 
         | Our right to privacy is a bit stricter than the USA. You don't
         | have a right to privacy as such regarding photos taken from
         | normally accessible public areas. If you're out taking photos
         | in public then you won't have anything to worry about from a
         | data protection perspective. However, if you're recording 24/7
         | or commercialising that data, you have to be more careful. If
         | you're doing things like going up to people's windows and
         | taking photos into their room or flying a camera drone at low
         | altitudes over their private garden, you might also have
         | problems. At the very least you should do a DPIA.
         | 
         | Also this fine may be overturned on appeal.
         | 
         | Side note: if you measure like for like, the USA probably has
         | more CCTV installations per capita than the UK.
        
         | charesjrdan wrote:
         | There is no expectation of privacy in public in the Uk either,
         | it's perfectly legal to take photos/videos of strangers in
         | public. However in this case, I think the microphones where
         | picking up conversations from private gardens and the camera
         | could see over the fence (which usually have a height limit and
         | can't easily be raised).
         | 
         | I think you'd also have issues if you had a camera pointed into
         | someone's garden in the US
        
           | kolanos wrote:
           | > I think you'd also have issues if you had a camera pointed
           | into someone's garden in the US
           | 
           | Only if the garden wasn't visible from public property, or in
           | this case, the business owner's private property. You have
           | the same right to record anything from your private property
           | as you would from public property, which is why surveillance
           | cameras pointing out to the street in the U.S. are legal.
           | 
           | I'm not sure about the vantage point of this doorbell camera,
           | but I would be surprised if a doorbell camera was placed in
           | an area where it could see into a neighbor's garden where it
           | otherwise would not be visible from a public area.
           | 
           | As for recording audio, in the U.S. the burden of proof would
           | be on the complainant to prove that they otherwise could not
           | be heard from a public area. But even then, it would be
           | difficult to get around the first amendment protection since
           | this business owner was using the doorbell camera as it was
           | intended. Not sure how a U.K. court can fine someone 100K
           | pounds for this.
        
       | irq-1 wrote:
       | Not Amazons fault for making a door bell that can listen 70ft
       | away, but the customers fault for not respecting privacy? Right.
        
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       (page generated 2021-10-16 23:02 UTC)