[HN Gopher] Amazon admits giving police Ring footage without con...
___________________________________________________________________
Amazon admits giving police Ring footage without consent
Author : Pakdef
Score : 643 points
Date : 2022-07-13 12:52 UTC (10 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (theintercept.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (theintercept.com)
| kornhole wrote:
| I worry less about the police than I do about Amazon having this
| surveillance in the first place. The former head of the NSA sits
| on the board of directors and they have multi billion dollar
| contracts for services to the intelligence agencies.
|
| Please if you want to surveil your property and people nearby,
| choose devices that capture it locally or to your private cloud.
| You can then choose to hand it over to police when warranted.
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| >I worry less about the police than I do about Amazon having
| this surveillance in the first place. The former head of the
| NSA sits on the board of directors and they have multi billion
| dollar contracts for services to the intelligence agencies.
|
| That's just being worried about the police with extra steps. An
| F15 doesn't stand on a street corner and a surveillance dragnet
| doesn't kick in your door.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| Those extra steps are important because they create legal
| deniability. For example, local jurisdictions (or judicial
| outcomes) tell police they can't do X, Y, or Z because it's
| government overreach. So police just look for corporations
| that engage in those activities and purchase the data from
| them, with your tax money. So instead of the Stasi you end up
| with Corpsec.com, but it's OK because there's a middleman
| making a dollar, good old capitalism.
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| When the local police kick in your door it doesn't matter
| whether BigPerkyTips.com "made a technical mistake" told
| them you were a dealer or the glowies shoveled parallel
| constructed crap at them. In neither case will anyone be
| held accountable. Until we hold the people closest to the
| bad outcomes accountable for the bad outcomes nothing will
| change.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| They don't need _your_ consent to give police _their_ footage.
| orthecreedence wrote:
| Right, this is the issue. Don't install surveillance devices on
| behalf of a megacorporation and get butthurt when they use the
| footage for something you don't approve of.
|
| How the fuck did people go this insane?
| abeppu wrote:
| I get that privacy vs law and order issues get people worked up
| because they probe at a difference in values. And perhaps in many
| contexts reasonable people can take different abstract positions.
|
| But with Ring etc, I think society gets a really poor law and
| order benefit in exchange for the privacy cost. We should at
| least be demanding that if our privacy is invaded we get
| something out of it.
|
| I live in a dense city where minor property crimes are
| notoriously common. Last year, after multiple package thefts, one
| neighbor bought a blink camera for the building entrance. It
| recorded every time me or my neighbors entered or exited, and it
| recorded when later my neighbor had yet more packages stolen
| (thieves easily got through a locked gate and front door). But
| what do you do then? The cops aren't going to do anything with a
| video of a guy in a hoodie stealing $200 worth of goods. That
| stuff is never going to be recovered. Nextdoor in our area has
| tons of these videos. My neighbor still had to learn to be
| proactive and defensive. A cost in privacy was paid, but no
| reduction in crime was enjoyed.
|
| Here are some proposals for potentially more equitable
| arrangements:
|
| - if the police can have at-will access to our cameras, we should
| get at-will access to their bodycams. No more of this "10 days
| after a shooting, family members of the deceased were able to
| watch key clips of footage selected by the PD"
|
| - if the police claim that having access to our cameras makes
| them more efficient in solving crimes, then let them put numbers
| on that efficiency so we can reduce police budgets accordingly
|
| - if the police claim that having access to our cameras makes
| lets them solve more crimes, then anyone coming forward with
| footage of a crime should be able to demand that the police make
| a credible effort to investigate. Oh, not enough resources? My
| city is in the top 10 in per-capita police spending in the US,
| and I see _so many_ cops doing absolutely nothing all the time.
| If I'm going to live in a creepy surveillance state we could at
| least have an industrious and effective police force.
| nomilk wrote:
| It's often overlooked that users get happiness from privacy, and
| the mere risk of a breach (however small) makes risk-averse
| people unhappy, even if a breach never eventuates.
|
| Law enforcement might catch some more bad guys with 11 extra ring
| videos, but now every ring user has to worry about local police
| sharing/laughing/perving at their home videos - is it worth it?
|
| It might have been well intentioned, but Amazon's decision seems
| dubious.
| fundad wrote:
| Privacy makes you happy but policing is a social program and
| its constituency are happy with more police invasion into the
| lives of others.
| nomilk wrote:
| Maybe it could be opt-in, or even opt-out, like organ
| donation, at least then the user has a say and it's not
| totally left to Amazon's discretion.
| phailhaus wrote:
| > It's often overlooked that users get happiness from privacy
|
| That's not true though, at all. Users prefer convenience over
| privacy by far, just look at how much people still use
| Facebook, Google, TikTok, etc despite having terrible privacy
| practices. Those videos are too addicting. Being able to
| monitor your home is too convenient.
| kornhole wrote:
| Many people like myself become quite agitated when they know
| they are under surveillance. I can't be happy when agitated.
| nomilk wrote:
| If forced to, users may forego privacy for convenience. But
| in the case of ring there's no reason users shouldn't be able
| to expect both.
| phailhaus wrote:
| But they don't. They see the product, it's useful to them,
| they buy it. Practically nobody is doing research into
| privacy practices of the things they buy. It's only a
| problem if it becomes a news story.
| danaris wrote:
| You're missing the "informed" part of "informed consent".
|
| 20 years ago, if the world's biggest online retailer had
| a particular security camera that was their most
| recommended, chances are it would just be a pretty good
| security camera.
|
| Today, that retailer is deliberately pushing its own
| products that compromise our privacy so they can collect
| more data on us in hopes of making more money-- _and_ ,
| if that weren't enough, providing it to the police with
| no warrant, no consent, and no recourse.
|
| In my experience, most "average people"--not tech-savvy
| people, and not conspiracy nuts--fall into one of two
| camps on privacy: Either they don't understand that their
| privacy is likely to be violated by something like Ring,
| or they do, but they've come to the conclusion that
| there's no hope for privacy and just given up.
|
| In neither of these cases can true informed consent be
| possible.
| dikaio wrote:
| To be fair, consent is given by these corporations constantly
| over any allegation so whether with or without consent you can
| safely assume these corporations are not on your side.
|
| For me, I try not to get caught up in the day to day arguments of
| it all and just donate to organizations like the EFF.
| RosanaAnaDana wrote:
| Does any one know of a privacy focused security camera?
|
| I live in a rough neighborhood and am concerned about theft, but
| I have 0 faith or trust in companies like amazon.
|
| If I want a security camera that I can check remotely, but I want
| to own my data and have complete privacy (no snooping by the
| company, no ability for them to give my data to some one else).
|
| Do I have any options for this other than completely rolling my
| own?
| MikeFez wrote:
| Rolling your own is probably your best bet as being able to
| check remotely typically means your camera streams are running
| through a company's servers.
|
| Personally, I moved from BlueIris and I've been incredibly
| happy with Frigate which is configured to pull from my local IP
| cameras - none of which have direct access to the internet:
| https://github.com/blakeblackshear/frigate
|
| You can check in via browser assuming you have some method of
| accessing your local network. Paired with a google coral device
| (or a beefy CPU) alongside local storage, it also has the
| ability to detect objects in real-time which often is a feature
| that requires video processing on a company's server.
| tekeous wrote:
| If you believe what they say, Apple HomeKit Secure Video.
|
| If you don't, Ubiquiti makes a good remote system with on
| premise DVR.
| wilg wrote:
| I have a HomeKit doorbell camera which uses HomeKit Secure
| Video and is end-to-end encrypted.
| UberFly wrote:
| All the more reason to keep the video footage within your own
| network. A Unifi system or similar.
| troyvit wrote:
| Often when a story like this comes up I go off on a search for
| clothing and accessories that help disrupt the AIs these cameras
| use. The attempts at this fall into 3 categories: works of art,
| college projects, and organizations that are no longer selling.
| One exception might be https://adversarialfashion.com/, though it
| seems focused on license plate readers.
| Pakdef wrote:
| I think that they might be more likely to look at the pictures
| with a bunch of license plates on them
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| Or you'd get miscategorized as a car which is probably the
| best case scenario.
| Pakdef wrote:
| not very often a car moves around with multiple tags
| visible from one direction...
| karaterobot wrote:
| > "If there is the infrastructure, if there is the channel by
| which police can request footage without a warrant or consent of
| the user, under what circumstances they get it is out of our
| control. I worry that because it's decided by the police and by
| somebody at Ring, there will be temptation to use that for
| increasingly less urgent situations."
|
| Many people (I would argue anybody with common sense) predicted
| Ring would get used as a surveillance tool. This quote correctly
| states the nearly-inevitable next step, which will also be
| ignored.
| mhaymo wrote:
| According to the article, users can opt-in to end-to-end
| encryption, so it's not true that this is "out of our control".
| pdonis wrote:
| Yes, you can opt in, but the Ring mobile app insists on
| generating your passphrase for you instead of letting you
| choose your own. Which means Ring could still perfectly well
| know what your passphrase is, even though it's supposed to be
| "private", since it's their code in their app generating it.
| Sorry, not buying it.
|
| Edit: Also, at least according to HowToGeek [1], you lose
| some significant features if you enable E2EE.
|
| [1] https://www.howtogeek.com/741180/how-to-enable-end-to-
| end-en...
|
| (Edit to edit: My Ring app gives me an even more
| comprehensive list of features that are disabled if you
| enable E2EE. Since among them is Shared Users, which is how
| my wife and I can both see our Ring videos, I don't see how
| this is any kind of actual support for E2EE. Surely a
| significant portion of Ring's customers have more than one
| family member who wants to have access to the videos.)
| dionidium wrote:
| My view on this is that we're not going back and it would be
| silly to try to do so. Once you have the technology to record,
| track, and ultimately apprehend criminals, simply _not doing
| so_ in the name of ideological purity becomes increasingly
| obscene. What we need are courts that understand the
| technology, prosecutors who fear censure for overreach, and
| fair laws about standards of access to the data.
|
| It's here to stay. We just need good rules around its use. The
| benefits are too compelling.
| banannaise wrote:
| What, we're just going to skip over the fact that the police
| can beat the shit out of you and throw you in jail for a few
| hours, largely consequence-free, before any of those parties
| even get involved?
| dionidium wrote:
| " _We can 't surveil criminals because the cops will beat
| them up before they're even charged_" does not seem to me
| to describe a problem that has absolutely anything to do
| with cameras.
| zamalek wrote:
| There are vendors who provide exactly the same service that
| Ring does, but allow you to retain sovereignty over the data.
| Ubiquity, for example.
| _Algernon_ wrote:
| That still doesn't protect _my_ sovereignty if my neighbour
| points their camera at my drive way (which was described by
| another commenter in this thread).
| wslack wrote:
| By that logic, we should use illegally obtained evidence to
| record/track criminals. Not sure that's how the courts
| actually operate.
| pera wrote:
| This isn't about "ideological purity" nor technology: My home
| is literally the only place where my family and I still have
| some form of privacy, is it too hard to understand that we
| don't want random strangers having the power to lurk into our
| lives 24/7?
| buscoquadnary wrote:
| So moved into a newly built house, by default everyone gets a
| smart doorbell in this house. They looked at me like I was
| crazy when I said I didn't want it or any of the other the
| "smart" devices.
|
| This was the exact reason.
| chickenpotpie wrote:
| I live in a community like yours and IMO you're just hurting
| yourself. Your home is probably already covered by everyone
| else's cameras and they can just pull the footage from them.
| It seems like the only person that doesn't have access to
| recordings of their own home now is you.
| buscoquadnary wrote:
| Actually across the street from my house is a fence and so
| I only have neighbors on the sides, because of that my home
| is not being videoed.
|
| But also because for me the minor inconvenience of not
| constantly videotaping my house is overwhelmed by the
| opportunity to stand on a principle. Sure it doesn't do
| much to Amazon or anyone else but at least I know I am not
| participating in the Orwellian surveillance state. It also
| gives me the opportunity that when people notice and ask
| about it, to inform them about it. A lot of people didn't
| realize that this information was available to the
| government to use at their discretion as well.
| jjulius wrote:
| OP already responded to your comment, but I'll bite and
| argue that, in your hypothetical, they're not hurting
| themselves.
|
| First, they're taking a stand based on principal. That
| they're successful in doing so is a win for them. Second,
| to your point, they're still covered in case of theft
| because their "home is probably already covered by everyone
| else's cameras and they can just pull the footage from
| them". Assuming they're on good terms with their neighbors,
| this request should be pretty easy and quick to fulfill. If
| they're not, local PD can still get a warrant for the
| footage.
| chickenpotpie wrote:
| > First, they're taking a stand based on principal.
|
| I'm all for that, but taking a stand doesn't benefit the
| individual. Taking a stand is for the benefit of society
| and requires the collaboration of society
|
| > Assuming they're on good terms with their neighbors,
| this request should be pretty easy and quick to fulfill.
| If they're not, local PD can still get a warrant for the
| footage.
|
| yes and that process is just objectively much more
| difficult than pulling the data from your own camera,
| which takes all of five seconds versus an order from a
| judge. That means they're life is worse.
| jjulius wrote:
| >That means they're life is worse.
|
| It doesn't, though. If they are aware of the tradeoff
| (that in order to have the privacy they want, it will
| take longer to get any footage they may need), and they
| find that the tradeoff is worth it, then their life is
| not "worse". After all, _that 's why they made the
| decision to begin with_ - because they believe that their
| life is worse with them than without.
| chickenpotpie wrote:
| But it's not more privacy, that's the entire basis of
| what I'm saying. In this hypothetical, you're already
| monitored by cameras. The only difference is that the
| subject doesn't own them. The privacy is the exact same
| in both.
| jjulius wrote:
| By not taking part in it, they are not contributing to
| something they oppose. It's a moral choice for them. My
| fault for not making that clearer.
| Taylor_OD wrote:
| To be fair... If you carry around a smart phone or have a
| smart watch or a laptop you're at just as much risk. The ring
| is just one more device.
| ubermonkey wrote:
| Well, no, not exactly.
|
| The ring is an always-on camera. My phone is not that. My
| phone may leak some information about me, and its basic job
| (cell phone) provides a record of location data, but that's
| not the same thing as forcibly making a home security
| device into part of a police state panopticon.
| CursedUrn wrote:
| Are you sure your phone microphone isn't always on? At
| the very least your voice assistant is listening all the
| time to detect the trigger word (does this send the voice
| to the cloud for AI assisted detection?). Also if you
| search for articles about Ultrasonic Beacons, they imply
| adware tech is listening all the time too.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| I disabled voice assistant and trigger word on my
| android. I hate talking to machines.
| ensignavenger wrote:
| My smart phone is not recording video all the time and
| uploading it to somebody else's computer. It does send
| location pings to the cell tower when turned on... However,
| I can easily turn my smart phone off, or leave it home or
| somewhere else. Security cameras and thermostats and
| refrigerators aren't so easy to just turn off.
| Taylor_OD wrote:
| It's listening and recording audio at all time.
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| I guess if you don't have prowler or package theft problems,
| they aren't really necessary. I personally have found my Nest
| cameras indispensable. Ironically, if police would just do
| their job on property crime, they wouldn't be so needed.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| Where the hell do you all live where this is a common
| problem? Out of all of my friend and relatives, 100s of
| people, none of them have ever complained about
| vandalism/theft.
| [deleted]
| adastra22 wrote:
| Currently a huge problem in San Jose, where I suspect a
| lot of people here post from.
| giraffe_lady wrote:
| I live in a big city and package theft is fairly common
| here, happens to me a few times a year. The shipping
| company always replaces though, this has never cost me
| anything and so there's not much pressure on me to
| contribute to the police surveillance apparatus over it.
| mixmastamyk wrote:
| Bikes are stolen often here in Southern California. There
| is a camera system here, but thieves wear
| hoodies/hats/look-down, and in any case no one bothers
| chasing after them anyway.
| BitwiseFool wrote:
| I was in a similar situation until a rash of thefts began
| happening around my apartment complex a little over 10
| months ago. _Something_ changed, whether some porch
| pirates moved in to the complex, or some crime ring
| decided to start exploiting our area. The police and
| apartment management had no answer, and it turns out
| their security cameras are absolutely useless.
| thewebcount wrote:
| Yeah a similar thing happened at a rental property we
| own. Someone in the neighborhood learned the code to get
| into the building and started stealing packages. Changing
| the code would help for a few days and then it would
| happen again. I haven't heard about the issue in a few
| months, so it seems like they've fixed whatever the
| problem was. My guess is someone was watching people
| input the code and then using it later to get in. Another
| owner recently moved out, so maybe they were the weak
| link? Who knows.
| xeromal wrote:
| Probably any large metropolis.
| dm319 wrote:
| I live in a big metropolis (Birmingham, UK), and have had
| no issues, The place I had it worst was when I lived in a
| cute 17th century village in the Oxford countryside. Had
| several packages stolen in the year I lived there.
| xeromal wrote:
| Yeah, maybe it's more of certain problem people. It
| probably takes one bad apple to create a culture of
| theft.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| I have friends in NYC, Boston, Houston, Dallas, and
| Seattle and they have never mentioned package theft or
| vandalism. Maybe I'm wrong in assuming that since they
| don't mention it that it must not be a problem for them.
| xeromal wrote:
| I'm sure we could pull up ring footage of thieves in each
| of those cities as anecdata, but it would just be
| pedantry. At least here in LA, the looting of our train
| cars got so bad that some companies just started
| bypassing the city.
|
| Personally, I live in the valley (SFV of LA) and haven't
| had issues, but I live in a low-middle class area full of
| russian/persian immigrants. I wonder if wealthier areas
| are targeted?
| tomjakubowski wrote:
| > I wonder if wealthier areas are targeted?
|
| Maybe, but it's also probably still extremely rare and
| internet discussions oversample people who have been
| victims. I've only known one person here in LA who's had
| any of their packages stolen in the past few years, and
| that one turned out to be due to a bizarre personal
| vendetta.
| [deleted]
| giraffe_lady wrote:
| what is a prowler. how does a camera prevent package theft?
| you get information about who took it but it doesn't
| prevent them from taking it, or get it back. deterrence
| only?
| dylan604 wrote:
| from your comment, it doesn't sound like anyone was
| deterred.
| giraffe_lady wrote:
| yeah my personal view is that these cameras do nothing
| except widen police surveillance capacity but I'm
| somewhat interested in what the people who buy them
| _think_ they are doing.
| corrral wrote:
| I expect people who buy them haven't personally witnessed
| what it looks like to report property crime--even fairly
| major property crime--to the police. Which is to say,
| they don't realize that there's almost no chance they'll
| do anything about it at all except issue a report for
| insurance (if you want one, and probably for a fee just
| to add insult to injury) _even if_ you come to them with
| all kinds of evidence, up to and including clear video of
| faces and license plates. They probably imagine it going
| very differently from how it _actually_ goes.
| dylan604 wrote:
| My personal experience from a home invasion where the
| individual caused a not insignificant amount of damage to
| the home resulted in nothing more than the police merely
| filing in a form and handing me a receipt.
|
| My personal experience from coming home to a burgled also
| ended with the same situation. The police came, waited
| from crime lab to take prints, prints were not
| recoverable, no follow up. This was even after several
| attempts at providing the assigned detective detailed
| information from the bank on how the criminal's attempted
| to use a stolen checkbook to withdraw money from a bank
| account. The detective later explained that he's too busy
| to look at information provided via email.
| corrral wrote:
| Yep. I've seen (and personally experienced) individuals
| and small businesses suffer property crime ranging from
| low thousands to upper five figures. Not once has any
| amount of evidence, including the aforementioned faces-
| and-license-plates video evidence, or in another case
| multiple credit card transactions at places that
| assuredly have cameras covering both the register and
| parking lot (and at least once at a hotel, which means
| they made a copy of an ID, even though it may have been
| fake), convinced the cops to do _anything whatsoever_
| aside from offer to issue a report for insurance (for a
| fee, the assholes). I 've even seen a case of this
| plainly being _an ongoing spree_ with video placing the
| same people and vehicles multiple places. Cops didn 't
| care, even though the criminals were still working and
| hitting places every day or two.
|
| Middle-class white people in every case, just to
| eliminate any race angle. Maybe richer folks have a
| better time, IDK. This isn't even the allegedly-lawless-
| hellhole of San Francisco or anything remotely like that.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| Cops in my area did a sting operation to find out who was
| putting trash into one of the municipality's wealthy
| benefactor's trash bins at night. They also did a six
| month investigation to catch some high school kid who
| spray painted "BLM" on a street, but completely ignored
| whoever wrote "WLM 2" next to it the next day.
|
| The police know who they work for, and they will expend
| all the resources they have to go after people they
| simply just don't like, no matter how petty the crime.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| I'm genuinely shocked that you even got them to take
| prints at all. I've been robbed before and the most
| police have done is fill out a police report.
| baskethead wrote:
| I'm shocked that the police even took prints. When my
| house was burglarized, they looked around and then told
| us to file a report and left.
| dylan604 wrote:
| The crime lab said it was rare for them to make an
| appearance. He said if there had been a dead body, they'd
| have brought out all the toys to do forensics. I gently
| reminded him that I would have been the dead body in
| question, and the whole conversation was soured after
| that.
| adastra22 wrote:
| Personally, I was motivated to get a Ring camera after a
| couple instances of porch theft. In the years since it
| has never happened again. So there is some deterrent
| value.
|
| I would never install a smart device INSIDE my home. But
| I don't see why people are freaking out about
| door/driveway cameras.
| giraffe_lady wrote:
| I don't know, I don't live in a place with driveways so
| it's hard to say how I'd feel about them. Where I live
| these cameras all face the street and public sidewalk, a
| place I feel is adequately surveilled already.
|
| Anyway I had a few packages thefts over a few years and
| did nothing about them at all. I haven't had any in about
| a year though so clearly it's working.
| mhb wrote:
| The deterrent value would be the same for a dummy camera
| then?
| rdtwo wrote:
| What's the point? Even if you have a great video of a dude
| stealing your packages nobody will arrest or do anything
| about it.
| adastra22 wrote:
| I used to have things stolen off my porch frequently.
| After installing a Ring camera, that ended immediately
| and never happened again. It did seem to work as a
| deterrent.
| parkingrift wrote:
| You don't have to pick a dystopian spyware camera to
| deter porch theft. This attitude is why we can't have
| nice things.
| adastra22 wrote:
| What is the issue with a porch camera looking out into a
| low traffic public space like my own personal driveway? I
| seriously don't understand the complaint here, and I say
| this as someone who has a Faraday pouch for my phone and
| a policy of no AI "assistants" WITHIN the house.
| deltree7 wrote:
| I will have my own definition of dystopia and not rely on
| some privileged HNers definition. Thank you very much
| tomjakubowski wrote:
| Since the camera is a good deterrent, would you then
| consider disabling the service?
| mulmen wrote:
| The point is it helps prosecutors build a case when
| serial package thieves are eventually caught. This
| happened in my neighborhood a few years ago.
| ensignavenger wrote:
| There are alternative cameras that don't have the same
| privacy concerns.
| lijogdfljk wrote:
| Yup. I absolutely love my cameras. I wouldn't have set
| them up without a home server to isolate them, though.
| RNAlfons wrote:
| Can you recommend some?
| wheelie_boy wrote:
| The logitech circle view ones are pretty good
|
| Anything the integrates with homekit secure video will be
| e2e encrypted
| KevinGlass wrote:
| UniFi cameras are amazing. Superb video quality (better
| then so called "professional" cameras from the regular
| security companies), easy to setup (but still an order of
| magnitude more work then a Ring), self hostable, and from
| my experience highly reliable.
| zrail wrote:
| Agreed. I have a UniFi Protect setup and almost all of
| the equipment is top notch. I don't appreciate the lock-
| in inherent in the system (Protect NVR only works with
| Protect cameras, cameras only work with their NVR, and
| you can't self-host the NVR on your own hardware), but
| I'll gladly take it in trade for excellent spousal-
| approval-factor.
|
| The one exception I've found so far is that the UNVR-4
| system software in older models is stored on a very cheap
| USB flash drive, and I believe they write logs to it too.
| Mine failed a few months before warranty expired so I
| just replaced it with an SSD and SATA->USB 3 adapter I
| had laying around. Works great, is snappy, and should
| hopefully last quite a bit longer.
| horsawlarway wrote:
| Synology has some fairly strong products in this space.
|
| A fairly cheap NAS from them for local storage, and then
| basically any ip camera you can find will mostly just
| work. (NAS I'm using: https://www.amazon.com/Synology-
| Bay-DiskStation-DS220-Diskle...)
|
| They offer surveillance station
| (https://www.synology.com/en-us/surveillance) as a free
| app for most of their models.
|
| My entire setup (3 cameras, NAS, hdds, POE switch) cost
| me under $1000, and I get pretty much every feature that
| most of these cloud camera services offer.
|
| - Remote viewing on my phone (https://play.google.com/sto
| re/apps/details?id=com.synology.D...)
|
| - Activity alerts and optional triggers for recording
|
| - Viewing through any browser
|
| - Multiple user accounts
|
| Plus if I want it, Surveillance station has a whole host
| of other features that I currently don't need, but are
| nice to have (ex: automated cloud backups, offsite
| storage, CMS, Action rules, etc)
|
| As a nice little bonus - I pay zero in monthly costs for
| this outside of the power to run the cameras & NAS
|
| My initial setup cost ran slightly higher than something
| like Nest or Google Home (ex: I paid 1k vs the roughly
| 400 it would have cost to buy the cameras from a cloud
| service) but 4 years in I'm now in the positive on the
| investment, since I don't have a recurring 14/month
| subscription charge.
|
| So long story short - It's still my data, it's costing me
| less over time, and I get feature parity.
|
| The downside is it requires a little more configuration
| and setup.
| sebazzz wrote:
| Eufy, which records locally. Doesn't have as much "AI"
| though.
| zionic wrote:
| I see stuff like this all the time, yet people are quick to
| call obvious extrapolation a "slippery slope fallacy"
| unfocused wrote:
| My next door neighbor (we share a wall) had their bicycles stolen
| twice, so they installed Ring (floodlight) cameras in both the
| backyard and the front porch. After a year, the cameras have
| yielded no added security, or caught any "bad guys" as far as I
| can tell and from what they told me.
|
| What I realized, is they use it to keep track of their kids,
| funny cat videos that trigger the recording, and most
| importantly, as a 2 way radio to talk or listen to the kids. That
| last point, well, I found out they can also listen to my
| conversations an my kids.
|
| I asked them to point their front porch camera so that it doesn't
| record my front driveway, just theirs. and they lost their shit.
| They confirmed they record audio and video. They asked if there
| was a problem. I said no problem with them. I'm not comfortable
| with the audio/video recording me or my friends conversations if
| company comes over to talk to me on my porch or driveway.
|
| I really didn't need to tell them anything, it's self evident why
| someone wants a camera point away. Needless to say, after I asked
| them in the winter, one of them refuses to speak to me and
| crosses the street and avoids me.
|
| These people use surveillance to supervise their kids, and don't
| care about the fact that their neighbors (me) could be recorded,
| and they could be hacked or footage access by random people,
| because Amazon isn't exactly the king of privacy.
|
| I believe these cameras haven't decreased crime. They also don't
| really add more security. It's a shame though they are
| everywhere, with disregard for privacy right on people's
| property. So yes, I'm biased. I have no love for Ring.
| throwawaymanbot wrote:
| kyrra wrote:
| Depending on your state and country, you may have a legal angle
| here if you care, see: https://recordinglaw.com/party-two-
| party-consent-states/
|
| I believe it's the reason Nest defaults to not recording audio,
| because the law various by state, and even mixed within some
| states. For 2-party (all-party) states, you can't record audio
| on security cameras (or at least it's a bad idea, and likely
| illegal).
| lbwtaylor wrote:
| >>For 2-party (all-party) states, you can't record audio on
| security cameras (or at least it's a bad idea, and likely
| illegal).
|
| You can record audio in public, and a street facing audio
| recording is low risk, unless the microphone is so sensitive
| that there is an argument you are picking up audio from, for
| example, a neighbor's back yard. I think a sign indicating
| audio and video recording is sensible.
|
| That said, a backyard facing camera has real risks about the
| video and certainly the audio coverage. A reasonable person
| would not use audio recording and would carefully manage
| coverage to exclude neighbor's private spaces.
| krnlpnc wrote:
| If feasible a physical barrier on the porch along your property
| line might be the simplest option. Simply block the line of
| sight, and optionally install white noise generators on your
| side to mask noise.
| jazzyjackson wrote:
| IMO the primary utility of Ring is for Amazon to surveil their
| delivery contractors, without a doorbell cam it's trivial for a
| delivery person to set the package on the porch, photograph it
| as "proof of delivery", and then walk away with said package.
|
| So the deterrent effect is good for the consumer in that it
| prevents theft, and good for Amazon because they can contract
| out to just about anyone to deliver packages, no trust required
| (or, "trust but verify")
| justapassenger wrote:
| You're waaaaay overthinking it. Building whole system of
| analyzing that at scale is very costly, and totally
| unnecessary.
|
| Amazon, as any other carrier, depends on the insurance (self-
| insurance in this case) and statistics. Some % of package
| theft will happen, and it's all priced in into their business
| cost.
| pengaru wrote:
| Is this really all that effective until practically everyone
| has one?
|
| They do seem common, but not _that_ ubiquitous, yet.
|
| My parents have a Ring camera, my sister has a Nest, and I
| have DIY raspberry pi cameras. My parents immediate neighbors
| have none.
| techdragon wrote:
| For bonus points they can then point the finger at the local
| thieves that happily try to identify and then shadow Amazon
| delivery contractors and steal valuable looking parcels based
| on whatever gut instinct they have for value based on
| size/shape/weight of the packages.
|
| Amazon proves the delivery and now it's the local Polive
| Department's problem.
|
| They are literally selling customers an excuse they can use
| later against the very customer that buys it.
| hansvm wrote:
| In a lot of jurisdictions the seller is liable for the
| package till the consumer receives it, often explicitly
| calling out doorstep delivery as being insufficient to
| remove that liability. The seller might separately have a
| claim against a carrier or thief, but the law is on the
| side of the consumer regardless of whatever else plays out.
| Plus, legalities aside, it's usually cheaper to satisfy the
| consumer than to take the long-term PR hit of their goods
| sold being costly gambles.
| jrh206 wrote:
| In your example the thieves have nothing to do with Amazon
| or their drivers. I don't understand how this could be
| construed as Amazon selling an excuse for something they're
| not responsible for.
| jjoonathan wrote:
| Amazon used to get stuck holding the bag. Now they can
| make the customer hold the bag.
| berberous wrote:
| I mean, the customer should hold the bag in that
| scenario. Amazon completed the delivery.
| jjoonathan wrote:
| I am sure Amazon sees it that way, but I am not at all
| sure customers see it that way. The "Buy It Now" button
| doesn't exactly show INCOTERMS.
|
| Ultimately, this is all a zero-sum BS game until we start
| talking about actual solutions, but I don't know enough
| about what Amazon offers to have an opinion about who
| needs to do better. If Amazon offers porch locker
| delivery and convenient central locker locations, sure,
| let's push customers to use them -- but if Amazon refuses
| to deliver to porch lockers and offers central lockers
| that are 20 miles away and open 10am-3pm, let's push
| Amazon to do better.
| bee_rider wrote:
| Does Amazon actually offer the option to sign for the
| package? (I've never really thought about this, living in
| a nice neighborhood)
|
| I mean, the customers know what they are getting into I
| guess but it is still bad if the dominant online store
| doesn't offer any way to securely get their products.
| zorpner wrote:
| Amazon doesn't even give their drivers time to piss,
| they're not going to wait for signatures.
| jonnycomputer wrote:
| That really does sound like one of their incentives for
| having these... never thought about that.
| woodruffw wrote:
| This will maybe be too snide, but I want to say it: what an
| utterly ridiculous system we've contrived for ourselves.
|
| People want to live in suburbs, where their residences are
| separated from commercial areas. This starves city and town
| centers, leaving only big businesses that are capable of
| thriving on high volume sales.
|
| But we still want the convenience of walking down to their
| neighborhood store, so we've constructed an entire economic
| system built on shipping things in disposable boxes around
| the globe and getting them to people's doorsteps within two
| business days.
|
| _But_ , it turns out, this makes it really easy for someone
| to walk up to your door and steal your package. So we pay the
| same companies that starve our neighborhood businesses for
| the _privilege_ of being surveilled, in turn externalizing
| the cost of their haphazard practices onto law enforcement
| and the victimized parties.
|
| More middlemen, more theft, more surveillance, more waste.
| What a farce.
| TuringNYC wrote:
| >> People want to live in suburbs, where their residences
| are separated from commercial areas. This starves city and
| town centers, leaving only big businesses that are capable
| of thriving on high volume sales.
|
| What are you supposed to do really? I grew up in an urban
| environment (NYC) and embraced urban living. The reality
| was that it wasnt sustainable w/o being a multi-
| millionaire. I'll give real examples.
|
| I take a 20min subway/bus to a store purchase a terracotta
| planter, or perhaps a box of cat litter. You then have to
| carry that 5 or 10 pound item. You realize the subway isnt
| working, today. You need to take an express subway. Now you
| have to switch trains but you realize the escalator and
| elevator also isnt working. So you drag it up the stairs,
| across the tunnel, and back down the other side. You could
| hitch a ride on a friend's car, but there is congestion
| pricing, or a $11 toll on the tunnel, and throw in another
| $40 for parking. These things used to work in the 1990s,
| also in the 2000s, but eventually things all failed in a
| big way (and the failure of public transport was a big part
| of it.)
|
| Good luck if you are disabled, or have knee problems, or
| have a baby+stroller also.
|
| I tried really, really hard to live in an urban
| environment, but it was eventually a failure. I now live in
| the suburbs. We order cat litter and have it delivered to
| our doorstep.
|
| No, i dont want to live in the suburb. But I cannot afford
| to live in the city. If I could freely take cabs everywhere
| like a multi-millionaire I would live in the city. Short of
| that, i didnt see much option to stay.
|
| People say crazy things like "oh you should just bike
| everywhere." OK, how does my mom with osteoporosis bike?
| How does a disabled person bike? Where on the bike do you
| place the 10lb cat litter box?
|
| Cat litter is just one aspect.
| yazaddaruvala wrote:
| The reality is all mid-big US cities need:
|
| - 100x more livable sqft, so it can be affordable for
| everyone.
|
| - 3000sqft condos that rival lux family homes in the
| suburbs for space.
|
| - All building should become mixed use. Parking
| underground, retail on street level, offices on the first
| N floors of the building, and residential higher up for
| the views.
|
| - More vertical green space on the buildings.
|
| - More horizontal green space between the buildings.
|
| I'm also partial to building walk/bike ways above current
| roads such that roads are covered / "underground" i.e.
| don't cause noise or pedestrian deaths. Retail would be
| located where people walk.
| woodruffw wrote:
| I am _very definitely_ not a multi-millionaire, and I 've
| lived in NYC nearly my entire life. It's a big city and
| things certainly vary by availability, but there's a pet
| store 4 blocks from my apartment (in a not especially
| dense, mostly residential neighborhood).
|
| What you're describing is the pathological case. The
| similar pathological case for the suburbs is a 20 minute
| trip to Costco, only to get stuck in an extra hour of
| traffic, do your shopping and return home, only to
| realize you forgot the one thing you really needed. That,
| like yours, is a real example (from the few years I spent
| in college, in a suburban area).
|
| (For what it's worth, I agree completely about
| disabilities, and it's shameful that NYC has continued to
| ignore basic accessibility needs in the subways. That
| being said, the NYCT buses are pretty great about
| accessibility, and serve a corresponding demographic.)
| TuringNYC wrote:
| >> What you're describing is the pathological case.
|
| I have both children and happened to have a knee injury
| for several years. That turns a huge number of seemingly
| normal things into "pathological cases." Ever try
| bringing a stroller up and down a subway stairwell? Ever
| try bringing a stroller into a usually crowded bus? Ever
| try literally anything mass transit related with a child
| or knee injury? I dont think children are that uncommon
| here. Sure, if I had a full-time nanny that would solve
| the problem, but then as I said, its all easy with money.
|
| Also, not sure if you live in the wealthier areas of NYC
| (read: those with multiple subways), but things magically
| become easier and easier in wealthier areas. Now try
| living in a neighborhood with a single train line. Now
| see what happens when the train just randomly starts
| skipping your stop all the time and going express. Poor-
| people problems.
|
| Groceries with a child...not hard. Groceries in the
| _winter_ with a child? Hard. Groceries in the rain with a
| child? Hard. Possible, of course, but its also possible
| to live in a tent in the forest.
|
| At some point, practical starts to overtake merely
| possible. Interestingly in the suburbs, all these things
| are possible for those on mere mortal salaries. Hence,
| despite literally having "NYC" in my username I no longer
| live in NYC.
|
| Finally. Suppose I did get a stuck in traffic job for an
| hour with a baby in tow on the way to Costco...it isnt
| really the end of the world...you turn on the radio and
| spend the time. Its not like its freezing and i'm
| standing on a subway platform praying the next train is
| not going to skip my stop while my baby cries from
| weather exposure or while my knee gives in.
| mlyle wrote:
| > But we still want the convenience of walking down to
| their neighborhood store, so we've constructed an entire
| economic system built on shipping things in disposable
| boxes around the globe and getting them to people's
| doorsteps within two business days.
|
| 1. Generally they don't come from across the globe to your
| doorstep after your order, but from a nearby fulfillment
| center.
|
| 2. Getting things quickly from online shopping is just as
| nice in cities (actually nicer, because you can get a
| broader variety of goods quickly) as in suburbs.
| woodruffw wrote:
| Where, pray tell, does the fulfillment center receive
| them from? Shipping happens regardless (I know my local
| hardware store doesn't make vacuum cleaners), but the
| waste of individual boxes and delivery for every single
| item on demand is obscene.
|
| You're right that it's just as nice in cities, if not
| nicer. But that doesn't make it right, and it doesn't
| make it not a maladaptation within our economic system.
| mlyle wrote:
| > Where, pray tell, does the fulfillment center receive
| them from? Shipping happens regardless (I know my local
| hardware store doesn't make vacuum cleaners),
|
| Yes, the steps before are very similar to fulfillment
| centers vs. to distribution centers servicing retail and
| to individual retail stores (not quite the same-- you
| need somewhat more fulfillment centers). It's just the
| last step from the fulfillment center to your house that
| are different.
| woodruffw wrote:
| > It's just the last step from the fulfillment center to
| your house that are different.
|
| Right. It's that last step I'm criticizing. But even the
| former deserves some amount of attention, given the scale
| and proliferation of disposable consumption that Amazon
| has encouraged.
| mlyle wrote:
| > Right. It's that last step I'm criticizing.
|
| OK, then mentioning across the globe was not core to your
| argument (and thus I picked at it).
| mlyle wrote:
| > You're right that it's just as nice in cities, if not
| nicer. But that doesn't make it right, and it doesn't
| make it not a maladaptation within our economic system.
|
| Also, please note... a frequent mistake in economics is
| to conflate positive statements ("Ordering online causes
| additional emissions and use of cardboard and packaging
| products") with normative statements ("it is wrong to
| waste cardboard and emit carbon for the convenience of
| online shopping"). Every agent in the economic system has
| their own normative beliefs and utility function. Hume
| showed us you can't get to the normative statement
| through positive observations.
| woodruffw wrote:
| > Hume showed us you can't get to the normative statement
| through positive observations.
|
| Hume and I disagree :-)
|
| The original comment was a normative one: I think our
| current scheme is _wrong_ , in a moral sense. I think
| it's also wrong in an economic sense, but that's just a
| cherry on top.
| mlyle wrote:
| > I think our current scheme is wrong, in a moral sense
|
| If we had, say, 1000x the resources that could be used
| without too adverse of consequences, would it still be
| wrong in your eyes?
|
| Or are you saying that you don't believe that the
| resource use is justified within our current constraints?
| woodruffw wrote:
| The latter. But that's one among many sufficient reasons:
| I also think it's indicative of an economic and social
| policy that encourages civic alienation and
| delocalization.
|
| The more snappy way of saying it: we're maximizing short
| term advantages (any plastic crap I want in 48 hours,
| shareholder value) at the cost of long term advantages
| (cities and towns worth living in, a sense of community
| rooted in part in supporting local businesses, not
| needing surveillance in every aspect of our lives because
| we've automated out the tacit security of being around
| other humans.)
| mlyle wrote:
| Is it always wrong to prioritize a short term advantage
| over a long term advantage?
|
| > cities and towns worth living in
|
| Like-- this is something America has really just not
| understood how to do. It doesn't have much to do with
| e-commerce (which is still popular in places that do know
| how to do it).
|
| > a sense of community rooted in part in supporting local
| businesses
|
| Sometimes having a strong local business is great. But in
| the best case, you're limited by the tastes and curation
| choices of a small number of vendors-- you lose the value
| of the long tail. And in the worst case, you find
| yourself beholden to an actively exploitative and/or
| hostile supplier.
|
| > not needing surveillance in every aspect of our lives
| because we've automated out the tacit security of being
| around other humans
|
| We're personally safer and more secure in our effects
| than in any time before in US history (well, the best
| point was a decade ago, but still-- we're about the same
| as then). It has nothing to do with surveillance or
| e-commerce, and only minimally has to do with suburbia
| vs. city living.
|
| In the end, I think you've just got "this feels wrong to
| me". I bet I could look at a choice that you've made and
| I'd recoil from it as wasteful and repugnant, too.
|
| P.S. Thank you for indulging me in this conversation. I'm
| going to be teaching AP Microeconomics for the first time
| next year, and as much as anything I'm practicing being
| the devil's advocate.
| woodruffw wrote:
| > Is it always wrong to prioritize a short term advantage
| over a long term advantage?
|
| Nope! But I think this is an instance where the long term
| advantage is much more "important" (morally,
| sociologically) than the short term one. You're welcome
| to disagree, naturally, but I think there's a growing
| sociological/sociopolitical consensus that our current
| mode of life and consumption is overwhelmingly
| unsustainable.
|
| You're completely right that this just isn't something
| the US is good at, full stop. But I see the proliferation
| of delivery as part-and-parcel of the problem, rather
| than an unrelated phenomenon that somewhat ameliorates
| local issues. In other words: e-commerce thrives because
| we've economically primed it to thrive via other bad
| social and economic decisionmaking.
|
| > But in the best case, you're limited by the tastes and
| curation choices of a small number of vendors-- you lose
| the value of the long tail. And in the worst case, you
| find yourself beholden to an actively exploitative and/or
| hostile supplier.
|
| This is true, and it's part of the tradeoff. But I'll
| note: in sufficiently dense cities, this collapses back
| in on itself. From my apartment, I can walk to my choice
| of a dozen independent grocers, hardware stores, &c.
|
| And it's not as if Amazon doesn't reflect this as well:
| my understanding is that much of the current Amazon
| experience is sifting through rebrands of the same basic
| product (especially in the context of consumer
| electronics, where it's all the same IC/SoC in a
| different plastic case). If that isn't an exploitation of
| diminished choice, I don't know what is!
|
| > We're personally safer and more secure in our effects
| than in any time before in US history (well, the best
| point was a decade ago, but still-- we're about the same
| as then). It has nothing to do with surveillance or
| e-commerce, and only minimally has to do with suburbia
| vs. city living.
|
| Absolutely right again. I should have said "the
| perception of safety," which perversely has tracked
| against _actual_ safety. I lay a lot of the "blame" for
| that at the feet of forces that encourage civic
| alienation (again, car-centric living, decline of local
| businesses, &c.).
|
| > I bet I could look at a choice that you've made and I'd
| recoil from it as wasteful and repugnant, too.
|
| I'm positive that you could! That's why I'm trying to
| avoid an individual critique, as such -- I don't blame
| people living in suburbs, or for shopping on Amazon, or
| for driving everywhere. The economic incentives are all
| right for those things, and I have my own economic
| incentives that push me to do things that are absolutely
| wasteful and repugnant. The critique instead is directed
| as the incentive structures _themselves_ which, if we can
| collapse or undermine them, will hopefully result in
| better human action without the stress and tears of a
| blame session.
|
| (I also appreciate your indulgence. I definitely started
| out with some extra snark, and the fact that you
| tolerated it is a testament to fairness and
| levelheadedness when you could have rightfully ignored
| me.)
| kelnos wrote:
| > _Where, pray tell, does the fulfillment center receive
| them from? Shipping happens regardless (I know my local
| hardware store doesn 't make vacuum cleaners)_
|
| Yes, exactly -- the shipping happens regardless. It's
| certainly more efficient to ship 20 of each widget to a
| store than it is to ship 20 widgets to 20 homes, though.
| But then people have to get to the store to buy those
| widgets, and often they will drive to get there (not
| everything is going to be available within walking
| distance).
|
| > _but the waste of individual boxes [...] is obscene._
|
| Yes, this is bad. Personally I try to mitigate this by
| batching my purchases so more things arrive per box
| (admittedly, sometimes I _don 't_ do this), but some
| shippers will still break up a single order into multiple
| boxes spread over several days, which sucks. I do
| occasionally end up with an item that's shipped directly
| in its own packaging (that is, no extra box around the
| item, and it arrives in the same box that I would have
| picked up off a store shelf), but this is pretty rare,
| and of course there are many items where this wouldn't
| work (and would be more wasteful, not less).
|
| > _But that doesn 't make it right_
|
| I'm curious as to how you're defining "right" and "wrong"
| here, and it does feel like some of your argument is
| based on "this feels icky and anti-social", and not
| entirely on objectively-bad externalities. I think the
| transportation aspect of these deliveries is a bit
| overblown, as transportation has to happen regardless,
| and people driving to a store to buy things is probably
| not much better (and is sometimes worse) than a box truck
| or van stopping door-to-door to drop things off (walking
| to a store would be the ideal, but I suspect this
| wouldn't replace as much driving or online ordering as
| we'd expect, even in places where it's possible). The
| packaging waste is definitely a consideration, but I've
| seen this getting better over time, with more
| reusable/recyclable paper products being used, and less
| plastic. We still have a ways to go here, though. To be
| clear: I do agree with you that much of this is
| objectively worse than visiting a store to make the same
| purchase, but I think calling it "obscene" is an
| overreaction.
| kelnos wrote:
| I don't think the urban/suburban divide really covers it,
| though. I live in a city, in a neighborhood with an okay
| amount of local retail, but I still order a lot of stuff
| online and have it delivered.
|
| I usually get my groceries delivered. It saves me an hour
| of driving to the grocery store, shopping, paying, driving
| home, and making several trips up and down four flights of
| stairs to bring the items home. I'm totally happy to pay a
| delivery charge and a tip to not have to deal with that.
| Yes, I do walk to the local grocery if I just need a couple
| items, but I usually do a larger delivery grocery order
| around once a month.
|
| Neighborhood stores can't stock everything, especially in a
| city where space is expensive. Looking through my last 3
| months of Amazon orders (24 orders), I see only three items
| that I could have gotten by walking somewhere locally, and
| they were all things that were part of a larger order that
| was mostly stuff I could _not_ get locally. And that 's
| just Amazon; I definitely have purchases from other online
| retailers over the past three months, and for the most part
| I'd guess they're all things I couldn't get within walking
| distance either.
|
| My neighborhood shines when it comes to restaurants, bars,
| parks, and personal services (hair cuts, mani/pedi, that
| sort of thing). A good variety of groceries are available
| within walking distance, and even some more exotic stuff
| (there's a high-end cake bakery a couple blocks away, for
| example), but otherwise most regular purchases aren't
| easily fulfilled with a short walk. Most of those other
| purchases would require a 45-60 minute bus ride, or a 15-20
| minute drive (with no guarantee of finding what I want).
| And if I need to do that, I'll probably just order it
| online instead.
|
| I do agree that the situation isn't ideal. I generate a lot
| of cardboard and paper recycling waste, though fortunately
| not that much plastic. I'm not sure about fuel usage: if I
| have to drive somewhere to buy something, it might be a
| wash compared to a delivery vehicle bringing it to me. And
| the package theft problem (and the "solutions") we've
| created for ourselves is ridiculous.
| twothamendment wrote:
| It sounds like it is time for a white noise generator, right on
| the property line and make sure they don't hear anything.
| mtalantikite wrote:
| I live in a block-long grouping of condos in Brooklyn. Every so
| often the management company sends out exterminators and one
| day as I was talking to him he pointed to these environmental
| monitors installed on a lamppost on our block. He says "what's
| with that, the government spying on us?" and I explained it's
| just some environmental data collectors, but pointed to my
| neighbor's Ring and mentioned "although that thing records me
| every time I enter or leave my condo". He said "oh, I have one
| of those, it's great". He didn't think there was anything wrong
| with the fact that Amazon was sharing the videos with law
| enforcement without consent. The cognitive dissonance was
| maddening but not at all surprising.
| user_7832 wrote:
| I hope you let him know about Amazon's stellar privacy?
| mywittyname wrote:
| Or that they are in cahoots with "The Government" and will
| gladly share any and all data through back channels because
| AWS has very freaking lucrative contracts with them.
| kelseyfrog wrote:
| Or if you live in a two-party consent state that you
| don't consent. That should be enough. Someone that
| doesn't respect your consent doesn't respect you.
| lcnPylGDnU4H9OF wrote:
| The recording as I understand it would still be illegal
| in a one-party consent state. Conversations that OP has
| in their house with their guests and/or children are
| being recorded by none of: OP, OP's guests, or OP's
| children. It seems to be very sketchy what they're doing.
| paxys wrote:
| I feel the same way whenever people freak out about smart
| speakers, laptop webcams and doorbells - but have had a
| smartphone (with microphone, camera, GPS, OTA updates and
| unrestricted up/down connectivity) on them 24x7 since 2008.
| antonymy wrote:
| It's explainable by looking at polls for how Americans feel
| about major institutions. Gallup did one for various public
| and private institutions:
| https://news.gallup.com/poll/394283/confidence-
| institutions-... and what they found is the only two major
| institutions that maintain a universal (across political
| affiliation and other demos) positive trust rating are small
| businesses and the military. Everybody else either varies a
| lot or just has universal low trust.
|
| You'll note from this source that "big technology companies"
| score above all 3 branches of the federal government. Part of
| this is how partisan politics has become, so one party will
| have a majority of people expressing trust in an institution
| their party controls, the other hardly anybody, resulting in
| a fairly low score for the presidency and supreme court.
| Congress, it seems, is so universally despised it doesn't
| matter who controls it, it sits at single digit trust
| percentage.
|
| In light of this it becomes understandable why somebody would
| be fine with big tech spying on them at the behest of the
| police (another institution with pretty high universal trust,
| though it does vary depending on political affiliation a bit
| it's considerably higher than any federal institutions), yet
| react with suspicion from something set up by bureaucrats
| from a federal agency.
| deltree7 wrote:
| When Democrats think of Congress they think Lauren
| Bobert/Mitch McConnell.
|
| When Republicans think of Congress they think Nancy Pelosi
| / AOC.
|
| That's how congress gets low ratings
| trelane wrote:
| And also how "my representative" consistently get scored
| highly on the same surveys.
| CobrastanJorji wrote:
| The difference is that one of those things has a benefit.
| When there's a mysterious box that does some vague thing that
| you don't care about, it's safe to hate it. It's not helping
| you in any observable way, so opposing its existence is a
| safe, easy decision. But the Ring camera is providing him
| with a benefit, so evaluating whether to oppose it requires
| putting a cost on "spying on us" and weighing that against
| the personal benefits, which takes up a lot of mental load
| and consideration, so we ignore the vague costs against the
| concrete benefits.
|
| People often care about these sorts of high level, idealistic
| concerns like "privacy" and "freedom" right until you offer
| them the smallest "concrete" benefit. Look at 23andme. Hey,
| can we take your blood, analyze your DNA, and send it to the
| police? No? What if we also told you what percentage Western
| European you are, would that convince you to pay us for the
| service?
| themitigating wrote:
| "When there's a mysterious box that does some vague thing
| that you don't care about, it's safe to hate it. It's not
| helping you in any observable way, so opposing its
| existence is a safe, easy decision"
|
| This sounds like the justification of stupidity. If you
| don't know what it does it ignoring may or may not be safe.
| If you can't observe a benefit to you (I assume you mean
| obvious and causual observation) doesn't mean it doesn't
| benefit you.
|
| It's like you've codified ignorance to make it sound
| reasonable. This is the same level of thought my cat uses
| to interact with the world.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| Maybe I'm wrong, but it sounds like the OP is not
| justifying such a view, but explaining how others tend to
| see things in general.
| Jenk wrote:
| > This sounds like the justification of stupidity.
|
| Doesn't read that way at all to me. Reads like a very
| accurate depiction of reality.
| CaptainZapp wrote:
| I would think (alas, I'm not a lawyer) that that's outright
| illegal in most of Europe.
| alanh wrote:
| I'm sympathetic to your privacy concerns (neighbors shouldn't
| be recording much of _your_ space although some may be
| unavoidable if you are close by).
|
| You really lose me with this, though:
|
| > I believe these cameras haven't decreased crime. They also
| don't really add more security.
|
| Based on what?
| RektBoy wrote:
| Wild, don't you have any laws against this? Here in CZ(EU), you
| can't put camera facing public property just like that, I don't
| even mention facing private property of somebody else, lol.
| Even camera facing your property and like corner of view is
| public property, I can send formal complaint to "GDPR" bureau,
| they will warn the property owner, if nothing happens, fine
| incoming which can be pretty huge.
| jimmaswell wrote:
| Absurd. The right to record in public, which this is, should
| be respected.
| dekhn wrote:
| The camera may be acting as a deterrent (if they didn't have
| any additional thefts) without it being obvious.
|
| I never would give a neighbor a hard time about a camera
| pointing at a publicly visible spot on my property- just into
| windows and other semi-private locations. That includes both
| audio and video. I ascribe to the "it's legal for journalists
| to go through your trash, so if you want privacy, shred your
| trash first" philosophy.
|
| I added a new camera that includes the school across the street
| and if the cops come by and ask for footage, I generally
| provide it (they asked for a breakin across the street, but my
| camera wasn't pointed there).
|
| One important details is that I buy fairly generic cameras that
| aren't talking to the outside world/cloud services although
| it's still a risk.
| ls15 wrote:
| > I never would give a neighbor a hard time about a camera
| pointing at a publicly visible spot on my property
|
| In Germany people have successfully sued their neighbours for
| that and I fully agree with the courts. Filming others
| without consent is invasive.
| dekhn wrote:
| I live across from a school; hundreds of people see my
| house exterior for days. I wouldn't apply a different rule
| to a security camera.
|
| I understand some folks have different privacy standards
| than me. I'm not asking you to follow my privacy rules, as
| they are a bit more open about public spaces than many
| people enjoy.
|
| If somebody wanted me to not point my camera at their
| driveway, a legal threat would be the absolute worst way to
| achieve it.
| JadeNB wrote:
| > I understand some folks have different privacy
| standards than me. I'm not asking you to follow my
| privacy rules, as they are a bit more open about public
| spaces than many people enjoy.
|
| Private spaces that are publicly visible do not
| automatically become public spaces, though.
| dekhn wrote:
| We're talking about my front yard. I can go on street
| view and see exactly what everybody else driving by sees.
| The only change is that they scrub faces and license
| plates, which I could do using AgentDVR + DeepStack.cc
| and some scripting.
|
| If you tried pointing a camera over my fence into my
| backyard, then I start complaining.
| JadeNB wrote:
| > We're talking about my front yard.
|
| Yes, agreed! Your front yard is a private space, even
| though it is publicly visible. You have every right to
| afford as much public access to it as you please, but the
| mere fact that you're the one who has the right to make
| that decision means it is a private space.
| ls15 wrote:
| > We're talking about my front yard. I can go on street
| view and see exactly what everybody else driving by sees.
| The only change is that they scrub faces and license
| plates, which I could do using AgentDVR + DeepStack.cc
| and some scripting.
|
| I think a major difference is that a permanent camera
| allows documenting who is entering and leaving a house at
| which times, while street view or driving by do not. Even
| a nosy neighbour behind the curtains would most probably
| not be able to gather a complete history.
| ls15 wrote:
| > a legal threat would be the absolute worst way to
| achieve it.
|
| I agree, just asking is always a sensible first step, as
| well as making proactively sure that your camera does not
| invade anyone's private space, but I can see how that can
| happen unintendedly.
| uoaei wrote:
| There is a difference between a camera from across the
| street and a camera from across the driveway.
|
| And obviously a legal threat is a last resort after good-
| faith questioning.
|
| I am not really sure what your objection is to the
| comment above yours, because these concerns seem
| misplaced.
| pc86 wrote:
| In the US you don't have any expectation of privacy in
| public (or at least severely limited) and the courts have
| upheld again and again that recording public areas, even
| _from_ a private area, is completely find. Some
| jurisdictions require notification or consent for audio
| recording, but not all.
| ls15 wrote:
| I find it really unfortunate that the US is so blatantly
| disregarding data privacy. In a world of eroding freedom,
| lack of data privacy can become a severe safety risk. The
| return of the Taliban in Afghanistan, the reversal of Roe
| v. Wade and Russia's recent moves give me an idea of
| dynamics that can turn dark quickly.
| ev1 wrote:
| RvW is an interesting point here - I routinely saw people
| camped out recording every entry point of a Planned
| Parenthood for example, including separate cameras
| pointed lower to capture licence plates. I'm assuming
| they later post these online or run some kind of ALPR on
| it for harassment.
| FireBeyond wrote:
| Yup, and the same people are outraged that people are
| posting home address details of Supreme Court Justices.
| The same court that ruled it was legal to post the home
| address of obstetricians so people could protest in front
| of their homes.
| borissk wrote:
| People and companies in US don't know what 'privacy'
| means. All software companies (maybe except Apple), car
| companies (especially Tesla), telecoms, etc. just collect
| huge amounts of customer data not giving a damn about
| consent.
| sixothree wrote:
| Police capture a tremendous amount of data using this
| theory. But citizens don't have access to that data
| because it's considered confidential.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| this post reads luke a paradox
| alanh wrote:
| My front door is not a 'public area', not really
| MacsHeadroom wrote:
| You don't have a legal expectation of privacy anywhere
| visible from public property, including even the inside
| of your house viewable from a public easement/street.
|
| Because of this, it's legal for someone to point a camera
| right inside your window or front door. It's also illegal
| (public indecency) for you to be naked in your own window
| or open door.
| StanislavPetrov wrote:
| If I set up a telescope to look inside your window most
| people would call that an invasion of privacy, even if
| the telescope was set up on public property. Having a
| high resolution digital camera where images can be zoomed
| and a very sensitive microphone that can pick up
| conversations is similar, in my opinion.
| libria wrote:
| A US law is shaped by what we think is
|
| 1) acceptable behavior
|
| 2) enforceable, practically
|
| I think video recording laws are largely influenced by
| 2).
|
| I can angle my Ring camera to my smoking hot neighbor so
| I can record her doing yardwork. Creepy AF (breaks rule
| 1) but at what angle is it not obviously deliberate?
| Turned 10 degrees toward her lawn? 30?
|
| Point being, I think US recording laws are too liberal
| but we need a defineable limit for privacy.
|
| Maybe photon distance? Capturing photons traveling
| further than 30m into the aperture is invasive? (half
| kidding)
| ls15 wrote:
| A physical mask that blocks the view to the hot
| neighbour, but not to your areas of interest would give
| them some reassurance.
| brewdad wrote:
| Ok, but what if I am trying to monitor my driveway where
| I park my vehicle but the hot neighbor's flowers are in
| the same line of sight just beyond my parking space? It's
| not always feasible to block a portion of the view
| without blocking the entire reason for having the camera
| in the first place.
| ls15 wrote:
| I think a German court would ask in such cases which has
| more weight: a) your interest in security, or b) your
| neighbour's interest in privacy. I think the default is
| b), but there are cases where a) has more weight, for
| example if your house was already broken into and you can
| reasonably explain why this exact angle is crucial for
| your security. Just catching some flowers in the picture
| does not make a strong case for b).
| Terry_Roll wrote:
| What about the satellites mimicking God watching over
| everyone?
| ls15 wrote:
| I am not really fine with with them, but that's another
| can of worms.
| jwagenet wrote:
| From the street photography articles I've read; if you
| can see it from a public space then its fair game, which
| I think is reasonable. But in your scenario the camera is
| on your private home, so most people would expect
| reasonable privacy from being recorded.
| ashwagary wrote:
| Yes, if it's in public it's fair game thanks to the 1st
| amendment.
|
| The nextdoor homeowner probably has a right to setup a
| tripod, a laser pointer (or a similar bright spot light)
| and point it directly at the neighbor's Ring camera iris.
| KennyBlanken wrote:
| This is not true; rules vary state to state. In
| Massachusetts, for example, you cannot "secretly" record
| others, in public or private.
| brewdad wrote:
| Putting out the yard sign or one of the stickers that
| comes with the Ring camera solves the "secrecy" issue.
| jonnycomputer wrote:
| Who would want to live next to someone after a lawsuit
| between you? This is a neighbor-relations issue first and
| foremost.
| kelnos wrote:
| Sounds like relations between these two neighbors is
| already pretty bad -- the guy crosses the street to walk
| on the other side? Because he was asked not to point his
| security camera at someone else's property? Some people
| are just... children.
| dekhn wrote:
| Wait til you see two neighbors arguing about property
| lines.
| pc86 wrote:
| At least that I can understand. It has implications on
| right of way, usage, easements, property values, etc.
| without even getting into issues of adverse possession
| (which combined with property value issues can become
| real trouble).
|
| The line between "please don't point your camera onto my
| property" - something I would respect as a courtesy
| regardless of the law - and "I'm going to cross the
| street not to interact with this person" goes straight
| through mental illness in my opinion. Normal, stable
| people do not behave that way.
| naasking wrote:
| > In the US you don't have any expectation of privacy in
| public
|
| It's not clear that "on your property" counts as "in
| public" in all cases.
| brewdad wrote:
| Front yard, visible from the street, probably "public" in
| most jurisdictions. Backyard, or somewhere shielded from
| view without entering yours or someone else's private
| property? I would argue that is "private" space that
| should be protected but it would probably come down to
| the specific circumstances to be certain.
| dekhn wrote:
| This is the operational definition I'm working from.
| jerry1979 wrote:
| But do you enjoy that people in the US don't have this
| expectation of privacy? Do you believe those laws could
| change?
| shadowgovt wrote:
| Germany's entire threat model, at a cultural level, is 100%
| different from the US due to differing histories. Germany
| is concerned about how networks of tattle-tale can be used
| by fascists to organize oppression. Americans are concerned
| about how crime flourishes in the unobserved corners of
| urban environments.
|
| These are both, basically, bogeymen. But the German
| bogeyman is the Nazis returning and the American bogeyman
| is the transient murderer.
| ls15 wrote:
| > These are both, basically, bogeymen. But the German
| bogeyman is the Nazis returning and the American bogeyman
| is the transient murderer.
|
| Eastern Germany had another authoritarian surveillance
| state after the Third Reich. I have no good reason to be
| confident that it will not happen again. It could as well
| happen in the US, considering recent history.
|
| An authoritarian surveillance state that is paired with
| digital surveillance is the grim reality of at least
| hundreds of millions today and that model seems to be on
| the rise internationally.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| More like billions of people.
|
| Anyone who thinks that the power of the surveillance
| state won't be abused is naive. The existence of "benign"
| surveillance hinges on those with power always acting in
| good faith and never faltering. There are practically
| zero repercussions for abusing that power, and little to
| no checks and balances, either.
| Zak wrote:
| It's interesting that Germany makes a distinction between
| observing and recording images or video, while the US does
| not. The US does distinguish (typically in state law)
| between _listening_ and recording. Recording _is_ different
| from watching /listening. It's reasonably possible to know
| who is present at any given time, but not possible to know
| in advance who might hear/see a recording in the future.
|
| I do, however think Germany's law goes a bit too far: as I
| understand it, use of surveillance cameras on private
| property without warning signs is illegal even if a person
| would _have_ to be trespassing to be recorded. I do not
| think trespassers should enjoy a right to privacy with
| regard to their trespass.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| It's not just about trespassers, it's also about anyone
| who was invited onto the property that's under
| surveillance. Guests, workers and contractors who are
| invited onto the property have a right to know if they're
| being recorded or not.
| [deleted]
| hoorible wrote:
| Your trash analogy doesn't hold up because trash becomes
| "public" once it's on the street which isn't part of your
| property. "Publicly visible spot on my property" is a
| meaningless phrase; it's still my property, and I'm legally
| (here at least) allowed to raise an objection to the
| recording of it.
|
| I can't and wouldn't object to someone recoding the sidewalk
| in front of my house. I can, and absolutely will, object to
| someone recording my yard. You might not see a distinction
| but there absolutely is one.
| dekhn wrote:
| I can't ask the people who drop their kids at the school
| across the street not to look at my yard, so why would I
| complain about a camera? Because it's always on and
| recording? Still not convincing to me. My exterior yard
| (the part not surrounded by a tall fence) is for everybody
| to look at. In fact lots of people stop by my house to look
| at our amazing maple tree and start conversations with us.
| always2slow wrote:
| dekhn wrote:
| I think it's totally uncalled for to call me a creep. I'm
| saying other people can point their cameras at my yard.
| When I point _my_ camera I seriously consider that others
| don 't share my values. And if they came over and asked
| nicely, I'd move the camera (it currently points at a
| neighbor's driveway). At least I'm open and honest about
| it.
| always2slow wrote:
| >I think it's totally uncalled for to call me a creep.
| I'm saying other people
|
| No I think it is called for, you clearly aren't getting
| it. The things you are saying, the behavior you're
| outlining and the justifications you are giving for it
| make you a creep.
|
| >can point their cameras at my yard. When I point my
| camera I seriously consider
|
| >that others don't share my values. And if they came over
| and asked nicely, I'd
|
| So you perform an act of intimidation[1], and then expect
| your neighbors to come to you and ask that you stop? This
| is not the behavior of a good person, no matter what
| you've convinced yourself. Good people do not intimidate
| their neighbors and then expect to be given the benefit
| of the doubt on top of it. This is the kind of thing a
| creep does to force interaction with them and then
| escalate their intimidation tactics.
|
| If you truly weren't a creep and you wanted to put a
| camera up, you'd ask your neighbors for permission first.
| Get their consent and then proceed only if they give it.
| So really at best you're a creep who doesn't see a
| problem with intimidating their neighbors at worst you're
| someone who doesn't understand or care about consent.
|
| >move the camera (it currently points at a neighbor's
| driveway). At least I'm
|
| >open and honest about it.
|
| Seriously, nothing about your responses here are showing
| that you're open and honest. You sound entitled and
| presumptuous. I'd invite you to please try to view this
| from a perspective that isn't your own.
|
| [1] You started out saying this, remember? - "The camera
| may be acting as a deterrent (if they didn't have any
| additional thefts) without it being obvious."
|
| The camera is acting as a deterrent by being
| intimidating, so at least you agree that a camera can be
| intimidating.
|
| edit: formatting
| googlryas wrote:
| Normal, law abiding citizens aren't intimidated by
| security cameras generally, which is why most people can
| go out to shops and stores which almost certainly are
| recording them and not give it a second thought.
|
| Would you label a gate or a lock as "intimidating" as
| well?
| always2slow wrote:
| That isn't what's being discussed here, but it's still a
| type of intimidation. Being law abiding really doesn't
| matter because pointing a camera at someone's property is
| a type of intimidation and harassment.
|
| But to answer your question: >Would you label a gate or a
| lock as "intimidating" as well?
|
| No I wouldn't, but that isn't to say I couldn't imagine a
| scenario where it could be used that way. For example,
| say you move to a new place and you're different from the
| locals. You notice your neighbor watching you with
| suspicion when you come home from work everyday and they
| make a show of watching you while putting a big padlock
| on their garage door or something. There's nothing
| illegal or even really wrong about doing that. It's just
| kind of crappy and not very neighborly. The behavior
| would be weird and _creepy_.
| sdoering wrote:
| I can only second this. If this were my neighbor I would
| get a restraining order against them. Recording your
| neighbors kids in the yard to me sounds borderline
| problematic.
|
| I just can't find any sane justification for behavior
| like that.
| dekhn wrote:
| If you tried to get a restraining order for my camera
| which incidentally overlooks the neighbor's driveway (no
| kids playing there), you would be laughed at. I'm not
| breaking any law, nor do I have any ill intent. The kids
| I incidentally tape are in a school yard across the
| street from me, and after Uvalde, both the cops and the
| school admins would welcome another source of information
| to help them prevent school killings.
|
| Think of it this way- before any of this happened, the
| cops came to my door and asked politely if we had a video
| camera facing our neighbor's yard, which would have
| provided some useful evidence on a car breakin. They
| didn't say "oh, hey, it's creepy to videotape your
| neighbor's front yard which is in plain view and has no
| fence." Combined with the laws of my state, it's clear
| that videotaping my yard and the neighbor's front yard is
| not illegal, and in general, seems to be non-creepy.
| always2slow wrote:
| dude if your basis for creepiness is the cops, I've got
| news for you..
| swatcoder wrote:
| I appreciate the principled point you're trying to make
| about public recording specifically and anticipatory
| deference more generally, but you've turned it into a
| very personal attack on another community member and that
| doesn't feel very appropriate to this site.
| dekhn wrote:
| That's a fairly extreme perspective and probably reading
| a lot more into my thoughts and intent then you really
| have any insight.
| alpaca128 wrote:
| Would you also be fine with people filming you through
| your windows? Why not, after all it's visible from a
| public space with the right angle. And windows are just
| part of another kind of "fence".
|
| In the end it's private property and that makes it
| private by default. Nobody can forbid you from looking at
| it, but imho filming is just as invasive as parking the
| car there while having greater potential for abuse.
| Filming has intent that goes farther than just randomly
| looking around.
| dekhn wrote:
| I use drapes and shapes to get privacy for my windows. My
| intent Here is to prevent school shootings and help
| investigate crimes that occur on my property or my
| neighbor's property. Definitely not my intent to stare at
| my neighbors in their private lives and they understand
| that completely.
| alpaca128 wrote:
| How are cameras supposed to prevent school shootings? The
| best they can do is let you watch cops do nothing as we
| could see in Texas. Prevention is much more important and
| much cheaper but that's not done either.
|
| And I don't know why I'd spend money in anticipation of a
| potential crime in front of my home, donating data to
| Amazon in the meantime. The police is already tracking
| phones and using other methods no single camera can
| match.
| soganess wrote:
| Sorry you are not convinced, but looking and recording
| are different.
|
| If I hear my neighborhood talking - hearsay
|
| If I record my neighbors talking - admissible evidence
| wilg wrote:
| I believe they are both considered hearsay (in U.S. law),
| and both are admissible depending on the conditions
| A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote:
| I think main differentiator is that an individual human
| is unlikely to stand in one place just watching for an
| extended period of time. It actually was very expensive
| to do that kind of surveillance not that long ago, which
| is why it was not deployed without a good reason. Camera,
| on the other hand, is cheap. Individual creep is
| preferable to a panopticon.
| dekhn wrote:
| None of these things really bother/worry me. This is
| mainly a threshold argument- a thing that was hard got
| easier, but didn't fundamentally change what is possible
| for a dedicated adversary.
| uoaei wrote:
| The scale of difference between $25/hr for a human and
| less than $0.01/day (amortized over the lifespan of the
| camera/service) changes the economics entirely. The
| circumstances before and after are paradigmatically
| different.
| dekhn wrote:
| How many times do I have to say "I don't care, I've
| thought through the implications and I'm not bothered by
| this" until people stop replying techplaining things to
| me
| uoaei wrote:
| I think it takes as long as you continue to believe your
| opinion deserves no counterbalance in a public forum
| setting.
| kelnos wrote:
| I don't think we're arguing with you anymore about
| whether or not you could be bothered, just that you
| somehow seem to think that there's no (or only a minor or
| incremental) difference between a human watching your
| property and a camera recording it, which is objectively
| false.
|
| And of course no one can resist trying to correct someone
| who is Wrong On The Internet.
|
| Also I think it's because it sounds like you're refusing
| to sympathize with people who might be uncomfortable with
| this sort of thing. Are you the kind of person who would
| reflect on this issue and say, "this doesn't bother me,
| but I can see why it might bother someone else, so I
| wouldn't point a camera at my neighbor's house"? Or are
| you the kind of person who would say "this doesn't bother
| me personally, so I'll just do whatever I want and ignore
| how other people feel about this"? You are definitely
| giving off the latter vibe here, which is anti-social and
| selfish (not the kind of neighbor I'd want to live next
| to, regardless of this particular issue). Hopefully
| that's not who you are, though, and we've all just gotten
| caught up in the argument and are appearing one-
| dimensional.
| dekhn wrote:
| I dunno, I think I explained my position, my reasoning,
| my priors, and came to a reasonable conclusion. I'm
| certainly not insisting I'm right. But what I know I can
| do is install a camera in a visible location and be open
| to people approaching me and asking for changes.
|
| I've also read the relevant california and federal laws
| (not in detail) and concluded what I'm doing is not a
| violation, in letter or intent. I'm not looking into
| people's windows, or their backyards.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| > came to a reasonable conclusion
|
| [D]idn't Aristarchus and the Pythagoreans propose
| heliocentrism in ancient times? If only they had
| prevailed, we might have had Real Science millennia
| sooner. What was their evidence? Well, you see, fire is
| nobler than earth and the center is a nobler position. So
| fire has to be in the center. QED. There are many names
| for this sort of thinking, but "scientific" is not one of
| them.
| dekhn wrote:
| Wat? I didn't say scientific, I said reasonable. In the
| legal meaning of the term ("just, rational,
| appropriate"). I'm not making a scientific argument.
|
| Keep your criticisms high quality.
| kelnos wrote:
| How is that not fundamentally different?
|
| 1) Human stands there and watches your property. A
| description of what happened on your property is subject
| to whether or not people believe this human, and the
| fallibility of human memory. This human cannot be there
| 24/7, and must -- at minimum -- break to sleep, acquire
| food, and use the bathroom. In reality, they'll have many
| other demands on their time that mean they can't (or
| won't want to) spend much time watching your property.
|
| 2) A connected, always-on recording device that captures
| what's happening in high definition, 24/7 (assuming it
| has an IR light; if not, ok, more like 12/7). This
| becomes an indisputable, permanent record that can be
| replayed as often as anyone wants, and that most
| reasonable people would believe, without question, as
| reflecting what is truly going on.
|
| How are these two things not _fundamentally_ different?
| This is approaching "definition of fundamental"
| territory.
| dekhn wrote:
| Clearly, we have different premises.
| uoaei wrote:
| Exactly. The high cost of human eyeballs trained on a
| specific target for long periods of time introduces a
| negative feedback loop which tames the overreach. Cheap,
| ubiquitous cameras with virtually unlimited storage
| eliminates that self-regulating mechanism and degrades
| the trust between members of a society.
| [deleted]
| ImPostingOnHN wrote:
| > "Publicly visible spot on my property" is a meaningless
| phrase
|
| Indeed, your property or not, it's still a "publicly
| visible spot", and the creep is legally (in the US at
| least) allowed to be creepy in this way over your
| objections
|
| > I can, and absolutely will, object to someone recording
| my yard.
|
| The creep can, and absolutely will, object to your
| objections, and be allowed to continue (in the US at
| least).
|
| Privacy requires constant vigilance, in terms of electing
| lawmakers.
| rlewkov wrote:
| >I can, and absolutely will, object to someone recording my
| yard. You might not see a distinction but there absolutely
| is one. You certainly can raise an objection but it has no
| legal weight behind it. Anything that is in public view can
| be legally filmed. I think there may be some federal
| prohibitions against filming sensitive government areas
| though not sure if these have ever been testing in court.
| Walk around naked in your front yard or in your house in
| front of an open window you are eligible to be legally
| (though maybe creepily) filmed.
| ocdtrekkie wrote:
| > if the cops come by and ask for footage, I generally
| provide it
|
| Yeah, I see nothing wrong with this: The law has to ask you,
| the owner of the camera, for the footage. No legal process
| can circumvent your knowledge of the footage request, and you
| can review the footage prior to handing it over. This is all
| possible because you made good non-cloud infrastructure
| decisions.
|
| This is basically how it _should_ work, but the fact that
| Amazon is a third party means the government can legally
| compel them separately from you being aware. There 's _no_
| fix for this: Cloud storage is a critical failure of the
| design of the Ring system.
| abeppu wrote:
| It's not illegal for journalists to go through your trash,
| but can't we have a bar for treating our neighbors that's
| higher than not being criminals?
| atkailash wrote:
| daniel-cussen wrote:
| Their crossing the street to avoid you is a confession of
| having spied on you deliberately. It's their kame-hame-ha of
| scorn, they have to do it because otherwise you'll see what
| they've been peeking at, means they're guilty as shit.
| unfocused wrote:
| Most likely. I certainly didn't bring any of that up, nor
| will I. I've spoken to this person on a couple of occasions
| since then for some other matters that were urgent, and they
| didn't run away. But I'm not going to engage them to talk
| about the weather. So hopefully they mature and see that they
| overreacted.
| _benedict wrote:
| Depending where you live this might be illegal. In the U.K. you
| have an obligation not to record your neighbour's property, and
| not to record conversations of members of the public.
| mdp2021 wrote:
| A related article appeared earlier, and I submitted it,
|
| _Dystopian doorbells: how the humble door buzzer turned into
| mass surveillance network_
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32079896
|
| https://www.standard.co.uk/homesandproperty/property-
| news/vi...
|
| A very interesting piece of info is that <<microphones that
| can pick up audio from up to 25 feet away>>. The Evening
| Standard is a British newspaper, and the article tackles the
| legal matters, but does not mention audio recording. Maybe an
| overlook, or maybe concerned people should check the audio
| related regulations further.
|
| > _Video doorbell owners must be careful not to place their
| cameras in areas where they might breach neighbours' privacy.
| Any footage detected outside of your property is likely to
| breach UK General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) laws_
| _benedict wrote:
| The ICO[1] and case law[2] corroborate that audio recording
| outside your property with CCTV is generally prohibited.
|
| [1] https://ico.org.uk/your-data-matters/domestic-cctv-
| systems-g...
|
| [2] https://www.icaew.com/library/subject-
| gateways/law/legal-ale...
| mdavis6890 wrote:
| Yes that's reserved for the government only.
| iso1631 wrote:
| Yet every local facebook group is full of the curtain
| twitchers posting pictures of "person walking past, looks
| suspicious, keep save everyone x" in blatant disregard for
| the law, yet nothing happens
| joshu wrote:
| Extremely bright IR lamp that flickers randomly at night?
| They'll get a lot of notifications.
| Miner49er wrote:
| It's probably illegal too. It's illegal in most states to
| record conversations unless you have consent from one or all
| parties in the conversation.
| mywittyname wrote:
| But will anyone actually enforce the law?
|
| I haven't been following this very closely, but my assumption
| is that the proliferation of recording devices have rendered
| these laws impractical to enforce, thus somewhat moot.
| woofyman wrote:
| Single party recording is legal in 38 states.
|
| https://fireflies.ai/blog/call-recording-laws-
| in-50-states-3...
| Miner49er wrote:
| The neighbor isn't a party to the conversation though?
| treesknees wrote:
| It's also specific to phone call recording. Nothing about
| recording the audio of someone talking outside your house.
| mlyle wrote:
| First-- this is a summary of statutes for recording phone
| calls; the laws are not always the same in each
| jurisdiction for making an audio recording in public.
|
| And we're in a thread where someone is describing a
| scenario where neighbor A records person B talking to child
| C. Neighbor A is not a party to the conversation. Whether a
| state has a one party or two party statute, this behavior
| would likely violate it.
| TuringNYC wrote:
| >> Whether a state has a one party or two party statute,
| this behavior would likely violate it.
|
| Fascinating. How does Ring get around this? Has no one
| tried to sue to force the issue?
| mlyle wrote:
| It might be hard to sue Ring; they'd claim they were not
| responsible for capturing a neighbor conversation and
| it's intended for use on your own property.
|
| And to sue the neighbor, well, you'd have to know that
| they actually were capturing your conversation and feel
| like suing your neighbor.
| bluefirebrand wrote:
| My guess is that only applies to private conversations? If
| you're talking with someone in public (and arguably the
| outside of your property is public) do they need your
| permission to record you?
| twawaaay wrote:
| I have this theory that cameras do not reduce crime because
| "amount" of crime depends on supply of people willing to do
| crime.
|
| If you are a person that is willing to do crime and you see a
| camera, you do not stop doing crime. You find another target.
| twoxproblematic wrote:
| dm319 wrote:
| I am also no fan of Ring or similar, though the reasons are
| slightly different. We lost our cat recently, and I went round
| my neighbourhood knocking/ringing on every door to ask around.
|
| It was a strange experience as around 30% had these ring
| doorbells. It was unpleasant to know I was being recorded and
| judged, and often as a result, not answered.
|
| I vowed at that point we would never consider one, if only
| because I don't agree that everyone should be treated with
| suspicion by default.
| deltree7 wrote:
| If you had a Ring, you would have most likely gotten clues
| about your cat.
|
| If you had asked your neighbors nicely to view their Ring
| history, you would have mostly likely gotten even more clues
| or even found your cat.
| dieortin wrote:
| If he had a police squad patrolling in front of his house
| he would've also gotten clues about his cat I guess.
|
| And it's hard to ask something nicely to someone that
| doesn't even answer based on your looks or whatever.
| bogomipz wrote:
| >"It was a strange experience as around 30% had these ring
| doorbells. It was unpleasant to know I was being recorded and
| judged, and often as a result, not answered."
|
| Ugh, the idea that these things would be encouraging
| neighbors to become unneighborly by using Ring cameras as
| screening devices is truly dystopian. Helping neighbors with
| pets that have gone astray seems like one of the most basic
| neighborly and and potentially reciprocal interactions. I
| really hope you found your cat. I agree with commenter above
| that the prime utility of these for Amazon is as a form of
| delivery receipt mechanism for the army of Amazon's last mile
| contractors. The panopticon eye effect of the Ring network
| appears to be just another externality foisted on society by
| Mega Corp.
| dm319 wrote:
| Thank you, my cat mysteriously returned one day :) It was a
| weird experience, and I don't even look 'weird' (at least
| as far as I'm aware!).
| vorpalhex wrote:
| I had two suspicious people come to my door (separate
| incidents) which resulted in me getting a video doorbell (I'm
| going to migrate from a cloud one to a closed circuit one).
|
| I've also had two cases of salespeople who didn't understand
| the phrase "not interested". One escalated to me threatening
| a trespass call before he left. (This is with No Soliciting
| signs clearly visible)
|
| I worry my wife would not get the same effect.
| dm319 wrote:
| How do you judge how suspicious someone is through a video
| feed?
| vorpalhex wrote:
| If it's 90deg on a hot summer day and they are wearing a
| big bulky jacket, that raises eyebrows.
|
| Are they wearing a uniform? If they are pretending to be
| part of a company and not wearing a uniform, that is
| suspicious.
|
| What about the time of day? ADT sales people don't knock
| on my door at 8pm at night.
|
| How are they acting? Are they waiting calmly? Are they
| checking their pockets or waistline? Are they glancing
| around seeing if other people are around?
|
| Are they hiding their face?
|
| Did they ignore a no soliciting sign?
|
| Did they walk by and check out the property before
| approaching the door?
|
| Did they knock on my neighbors door first? Or did they
| come straight to my door?
|
| Did they park? Where did they park? Was it a company
| vehicle?
|
| How many people is it? Are those people dressed in a
| similar way? Are they all standing together or did one of
| them wander off?
|
| If you don't answer immediately, how do they act? Do they
| get annoyed and wander off or do they become insistant?
| Do they escalate to knocking or shouting?
| googlryas wrote:
| I find this viewpoint very strange. Why are you jumping to
| the idea that you're being treated as suspicious, and being
| judged, and being avoided as a result of that judgement?
|
| What if people were just...doing something else? At work? At
| the movies? Driving? Pooping?
|
| Do you feel judged when you walk up to doors with peepholes?
| 5-more-minutes wrote:
| Did you steal the bicycles...
| ls15 wrote:
| > I believe these cameras haven't decreased crime.
|
| They _are_ the crime
| alasdair_ wrote:
| Something to consider would be pointing a directed beam of
| sound towards the microphone. Bonus points if it's an endless
| loop of you saying "I like to spy on my neighbors" over and
| over again.
| shadowgovt wrote:
| This is one of the perennial tug-of-wars in the general
| principle "Your rights end where my nose begins."
|
| If you're emitting pressure waves or reflecting radiation flux
| and it crosses into my property, am I allowed to record and
| analyze it? And both the law and morality basically say "kinda,
| maybe, I dunno, depends." To wit: it's generally considered
| gauche to take photographs of you doing harmless things in your
| backyard, but if you're building a meth lab back there, you can
| be certain a neighbor will take photos and submit them as
| evidence. But how do they know it's a meth lab without looking
| in the first place?
|
| The rights and responsibilities around data storage and
| analysis are context-specific and complicated.
| vorpalhex wrote:
| It would be a crime for you to use an air pellet rifle and
| sabotage the device. It would also be a crime if you used spray
| paint for the same end. I suspect the cameras are sensitive to
| IR light blinding them, but again, any kind of sabotage could
| be criminal.
| kcb wrote:
| Ring will gladly send them a free replacement.
| dijonman2 wrote:
| Unfortunately this is a reason for single family homes on large
| lots. Privacy. I have large hedges between me and my neighbors
| which block visuals and all but the loudest noises.
| nedwin wrote:
| Def sounds like shitty behaviour from your neighbours.
|
| In terms of decreasing crime I live in Oakland in a duplex.
| Downstairs was empty and crooks broke in and stole a bunch of
| stuff over several hours earlier this year. We only had a
| camera doorbell for our upstairs unit and I have footage of one
| of the crooks walking around the corner with a crowbar, seeing
| the camera and immediately turning around and walking away. The
| camera was a huge deterrent for them and I believe the only
| reason our upstairs didn't get broken into where we were fast
| asleep.
|
| We now have cameras on every door + a floodlight in the
| backyard.
| tomkat0789 wrote:
| A middle option could be to install a fake ring camera as a
| deterrent without the privacy hazards.
| pwthornton wrote:
| You could do that. The cheapest and easiest option is just
| to get yard signs saying that you are recording 24/7. Nest,
| Ring, and others sell there. There are plenty of generic
| ones too. If you want to use video cameras as a deterrent,
| you need to make sure people think you actually have them.
|
| I sometimes see people with their cameras pretty well
| hidden. That's not going to work as a deterrent!
| brewdad wrote:
| I use both strategies. I have an obvious camera on my
| porch pointed at my front door. I also have a camera
| hidden in a bush near the opposite side of the porch. Any
| potential troublemaker turning away from the obvious
| camera gives me a perfect view of their face from the
| hidden one.
| encryptluks2 wrote:
| Shitty behavior how? There is nothing illegal about
| recordings your neighbors driveway.
| nedwin wrote:
| There's a difference between illegal and shitty.
|
| Shitty = you ask your neighbour not to point their cameras
| at your house, and they ignore you. Seems unnecessary.
| encryptluks2 wrote:
| And so you may have a different opinion of your neighbor.
| They share a different opinion. Some Karen's think it is
| shitty for you to park in front of their house on a
| public street.
| yomkippur wrote:
| Good idea on the flood lights have you thought of night
| vision as well because it can become very difficult to see in
| low light situation.
|
| what i also suggest is play police radio. nothing scares this
| demographic than hearing police radio chatter describing what
| is happening
| anigbrowl wrote:
| There are multiple homes near me that just point cameras
| straight out into the street, recording everyone else's comings
| and goings. This seems deeply anti-social to me, not much
| different from spying on the neighbors with binoculars.
| Meanwhile, police in San Francisco now propose that they should
| have realtime access to private networked surveillance systems:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32077528
| Johnny555 wrote:
| _I asked them to point their front porch camera so that it
| doesn 't record my front driveway_
|
| Ring also lets you set up privacy blocks on recorded footage,
| so you could ask them to black out your driveway.
|
| I did that with the camera that shows my driveway, due to the
| curve of the driveway, it also shows part of the neighbor's
| house, so I blacked out their windows in the camera feed. I
| sent them a screenshot and asked if they wanted me to black out
| their entire yard, but they were fine with my video capturing
| any activity in their little used side yard.
| gleenn wrote:
| Depending on the state you live in, e.g. California has two
| party consent to record audio, meaning if you don't consent
| then what they're doing is illegal.
| thatfunkymunki wrote:
| are you certain this applies to things occuring in public?
| IANAL but it strains reason to believe it's illegal for
| cameras in public to have audio recording enabled.
| [deleted]
| gpt5 wrote:
| These only apply to private conversation, and not ones
| occurred in public (i.e. it's fair game to record the
| driveway, but not the backyard).
| parineum wrote:
| Is your front porch "public"? Usually things like this
| hinge on a reasonable expectation of privacy and I think a
| conversation at your front door can be expected to be
| relatively private.
| pyuser583 wrote:
| > Amazon isn't exactly the king of privacy
|
| Is there something specific you're talking about?
| wittyusername wrote:
| I wonder if this Ultrasound Directional Jammer would be the
| right mix of legal and proportionate.
|
| https://www.tinytxs.com/products/ultrasonic-jammer
| lmkg wrote:
| This type of thing is actually one of the cases were GDPR has
| been enforced, although it varies from country to country.
| Seems CCTV is most heavily enforced in Spain.
|
| Go to https://www.enforcementtracker.com/ and filter by "CCTV,"
| a few are for residential cases, e.g.
| https://www.enforcementtracker.com/ETid-1226.
| lkxijlewlf wrote:
| I would be having some fun.
|
| Friend: Have you any success bringing your neighbors on board.
|
| Me: There's been a setback. They're currently not speaking with
| me.
|
| Friend: That is unfortunate. We're talking a lot of money.
|
| Me: I know. I'll fix it.
|
| Friend: You better.
| MerelyMortal wrote:
| "Have they found the gold that was burried in their backyard
| by the previous owners?"
| jimmaswell wrote:
| You have no right not to be recorded in public in my opinion.
| You're the one shooting photons onto their property (the
| camera) that they should be able to do what they want with.
| dieortin wrote:
| So I should be able to peer through your bathroom's window
| because you're shooting photons outside?
| [deleted]
| jonnycomputer wrote:
| You made a reasonable request, and they should have complied
| with an 'oh yeah, sure, sorry.'
| sizzle wrote:
| Floodlights are great for security and I like the cams to get a
| notification when packages arrive or to see if I closed the
| garage or if there v is any suspicious persons coming on my
| property, etc. Wyze has great AI person and package detection
| from my usage. I don't actively monitor video unless something
| happened that warranted it. I also do not put it in places that
| it can pick up neighbors private moments.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| I've wrote about it before on HN, but a local busybody saw me
| committing the crime of walking down the street in my own
| neighborhood on their Ring camera and used that as pretext for
| calling the cops on me, who then harassed me for being
| "suspicious" without having actually looked at the footage
| themselves at all.
|
| Unsurprisingly, I am not a fan of the surveillance state that's
| found itself at my literal doorstep.
| shadowgovt wrote:
| For what it's worth, that same neighbor could have called the
| cops to harass you after seeing you walking with their own
| eyeballs, or the ancient art of lying to the cops that they
| saw anything at all. The presence of the Ring in this story
| adds nothing to the risk scenario
| heavyset_go wrote:
| I've been walking in the neighborhoods I've lived in
| everyday for literal decades, and this only became a
| problem recently.
|
| The difference here is that Ring and its companion apps
| like Neighbors continuously send their users scary alerts
| and video clips of innocuous neighborhood activities they'd
| otherwise miss entirely, or just ignore. I see this all the
| time with such apps like Nextdoor and Neighbors, where in
| the past loud sounds in the summer would be written off as
| fireworks and ignored, but now we have legions of people
| working themselves into frenzies about how "gun shots" were
| detected, with calls to action for video evidence of the
| "perpetrators". What then happens is that people start
| sharing clips of their neighbors doing essentially nothing
| and accusing them of actually committing crimes.
| MetaWhirledPeas wrote:
| Sounds like your real problem is your neighbor being a jerk.
| If they didn't have Ring that wouldn't stop them from calling
| the cops on a "suspicious" person.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| I think there's a big difference between a busybody staring
| out the window sometimes and being upset with what they see
| versus a busybody with a 24/7 security system that pings
| them at all hours of the day with alerts and video clips
| about "suspicious" activity it detects, along with apps
| like Nextdoor, Citizen and the Ring Neighbors app that
| allow the paranoid to continuously share said clips and
| create local echo chambers of paranoia, suspicion and
| distrust.
| googlryas wrote:
| In this case we have no idea whether that happened, or
| whether the crappy neighbor was just looking out their
| window at that moment. It is silly to blame a doorbell
| camera for this.
| jonnycomputer wrote:
| That said, my neighbors did catch a bike thief with one of
| those. Even got the bike back.
| l33t2328 wrote:
| I understand your concern, but if it's something that can be
| seen/heard from the next property over, I don't know that you
| can reasonably expect such things to be private.
|
| Although now I'm imagining this taken to the extreme, like if
| your neighbors set up a 24/7 HD video feed with a hyperbolic
| microphone etc aimed directly at your front porch. That sort of
| behavior is certainly weird.
| 14 wrote:
| There is only one way to reach the mindset of a person like
| that and that is to install your own cameras on your property
| and face all of them at his house. Any of them that you can
| face directly into his windows the better. This may get
| negative attention here on HN but sometimes a pissing contest
| is the only way to get through to someone. You already tried
| the nice approach.
| kodah wrote:
| I don't mind people in my neighborhood running security cameras
| as long as they store the footage locally. I can't consent to
| the terms that a managed service provider presents them with
| respect to footage I am in or conversations I have. I am
| concerned that given a sizeable enough populace with locally
| stored footage, that it could become the target of robo-
| warrants for proxy-surveillance, but we're a bit off from that.
|
| The reason I support people running their own security cameras
| is because I recently had a woman go off on some wild diatribe
| about how my property looked (which actually belongs to my
| landlord) and she became very upset to the point of trying to
| force my front gate open as I shut it. Since then she's gone on
| some proxy wars with other people in the neighborhood.
| Obviously her behavior will continue to escalate and because I
| have no cameras I have no way to show she was willing to use
| force and intimidation from step 1.
| treesknees wrote:
| On one hand, it bothers me that I can't walk around the block
| without ending up on a dozen security cameras because everybody
| has a video doorbell. You can modify the motion and privacy
| zones to exclude certain areas such as the sidewalk, but I'm
| willing to bet most people do not do this.
|
| On the other hand, I've personally had success with the police
| and court systems based on video evidence I could provide from
| my doorbell camera. Also, previously I had a long-lasting issue
| with a neighbor at my old house who would get really nasty
| about my yard and other issues (I suspected old age and mental
| issues) that completely ended once I put up a security camera
| to record the area he was doing this from.
|
| If I do end up ever getting more security cameras, my plan is
| to show my neighbors exactly what angle they're recording and
| make sure they're OK with it. While I technically have the
| right to record whatever I want to in my state, I'd rather not
| make anyone feel uncomfortable. I recently came across a video
| where someone ended up pointing IR lasers at their neighbor's
| cameras and it was an effective way to disable the cameras
| without breaking any laws [1]
|
| [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RyYm2UwAaeQ
| rootusrootus wrote:
| > You can modify the motion and privacy zones to exclude
| certain areas such as the sidewalk, but I'm willing to bet
| most people do not do this.
|
| I have to do that or I get notifications constantly. I told
| my front cameras to only say something if someone shows up on
| my front step, or drives into my driveway. I don't want to
| get a notification every time someone walks down the
| sidewalk, or when the neighbors get home.
|
| Although honestly, I get lots of notifications for the
| neighbors anyway. Because they seem to think a 30 foot wide
| road is narrow and they end up using my driveway regularly
| when getting into and out of their own. Not really a camera
| problem though.
| duxup wrote:
| Can confirm I use them to watch my kids. I don't think they
| provide any security / can't imagine they would.
|
| Having said that the cameras only trigger recording action that
| happens on my property. Other places might appear in view but
| they don't trigger a recording.
| mywittyname wrote:
| Is there a way to trigger this so that it is always on?
| Something like a white noise generator?
| koonsolo wrote:
| In Belgium that would be illegal. It's even illegal to point it
| at a public space such as the road.
|
| Only your own property is allowed.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| Ha, you'd hate me. I have cameras pointing out the front of my
| house that record my driveway, the road, and incidentally the
| neighbor's driveways and front yards and such. No audio,
| though.
|
| But they're all cool with it, so there's that.
| unfocused wrote:
| I wouldn't hate you! :) Clearly you've engaged your neighbors
| if they are cool with it. You also mentioned no audio. I even
| told them it's fine with audio, now that I understood how the
| system works. Alas, no audio is obviously better as I don't
| have to ask my friends to walk further away from the line of
| side of the camera.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| Yeah audio is sketchy, I don't want to record that anyway.
| The impetus for the whole thing was my neighbors having a
| porch pirate experience. We all got together and since I'm
| the only nerd in this immediate area, I got nominated to
| run a couple cameras in case it ever happens again. Not
| like it'd likely result in anybody being caught, we're
| realistic about it, but still.
| cyral wrote:
| I just got a Ring cam and during setup it asks if you'd like to
| black out any regions to prevent recording neighbors, so that
| may be an option they just aren't aware of. Doesn't solve the
| audio issue if they aren't willing to disable it though.
| wahnfrieden wrote:
| do we know this is respected for the material they
| eagerly/secretly fork over to piggies?
| unfocused wrote:
| Yes, in fact, during the engagement, they even showed us
| where the camera trigger zone is, which they reduced to their
| driveway, and even added the blackout region for when I'm on
| my porch, as the wide angle of the lens made it impossible to
| point it away from my front porch. They were really
| cooperative and I tried to ensure that I wasn't being
| demanding.
|
| I even tried to meet them half way and said you can keep
| recording audio and video, now that I understand the trigger
| zone, but I was met with hostility the next day when I saw
| one of them in person.
|
| Although, even with the trigger zone, they can just live
| stream it anyways, not that they are that kind of people, but
| clearly, I struck a nerve with them. I am still friends with
| one of them, and all their kids. So it's just one family
| member that sees things differently.
| odysseus wrote:
| I have a non-Ring doorbell camera and while I can't prove it
| has deterred theft, it's pretty useful in at least:
|
| * Getting a partial face/partial vehicle ID of someone who
| stole our package
|
| * Seeing the sneaky method in which they stole the package
| (allowing me to talk to neighbors warning them about the method
| used)
|
| * Getting a private instant announcement of who exactly is at
| the door (if they've been here before and they're in my
| contacts)
|
| * Notifying us while on vacation that someone out of the
| ordinary is at the door (and being able to speak to them as if
| we were home)
|
| * Deterring raccoons (bright light on the front of the camera)
|
| Not-so-useful things:
|
| * Seeing the large number of cars that like to use our driveway
| to make a U-turn
|
| There is an option to turn off audio recording and all footage
| is encrypted.
| MichaelZuo wrote:
| If your houses are close together I don't think it's reasonable
| to have an expectation of privacy on the driveway or front
| porch. After all sound at normal speaking volume can easily
| travel 100 feet on a quiet day, if there's nothing in-between.
| unfocused wrote:
| I really wanted to avoid any legal issues with them. We
| decided talking/texting is best. My wife is a litigator, and
| even she didn't want to go there.
|
| If you share a wall with a neighbor, it's always best to try
| and resolve things through direct communication. Our kids
| still play together, and they still come over and vice versa.
|
| I made my point, and they actually engaged in helping
| mitigate my concerns. I certainly can't ask them to remove
| their camera, so that's why we took this approach. They met
| us half way, but clearly felt something more when one of them
| over reacted.
| bckygldstn wrote:
| That's probably legally true in the US, but is that the best
| we can do?
|
| It's valid to question the value of laws. Sometimes I wish I
| did have more privacy in public.
|
| But more importantly, technology has completely changed what
| non-privacy looks like and is tragic to me that laws haven't
| caught up.
|
| There's a huge practical difference between "someone within
| 100ft, probably a neighbour who I know, might hear me and
| probably instantly forget what I said, but 99% of the time no
| one is there" and "100% of your conversations are recorded,
| transcribed, and stored forever by a profit-maximising
| behemoth with various other unavoidable tentacles into my
| life, and also they might sell or give that data to other
| companies also the police".
| micromacrofoot wrote:
| This is a similar problem with data brokers... yes my
| records are public, but for most of history that meant
| going down to city hall and putting forth effort... should
| the law around public records be different when data
| brokers vacuum up all that public data and resell it
| digitally? We've lost many practical barriers to privacy.
| jrumbut wrote:
| Incidentally overhearing a conversation and recording 24/7
| then uploading anything interesting to a third party's
| servers for them to do who knows what with it feels very
| different.
|
| I'm curious what others think of the ethics of a non-internet
| connected camera? Does that really resolve the issue or do
| you still consider it wrong to have residential security
| cameras that capture the sidewalk/street outside the house?
| doublerabbit wrote:
| Its more than reasonable. It's called respect.
|
| Their house and their drive and just because voice could
| travel 100-feet sill doesn't mean they have the right to
| record it.
|
| If the speed limit is twenty and someone is driving thirty,
| does that give you the right to drive thirty too?
| ZoF wrote:
| BeetleB wrote:
| You're comparing apples and oranges. One is legal and the
| other isn't.
|
| They absolutely have the right to record audio that is
| audible on their property. It used to be the norm that if
| you don't want your neighbors hearing you the onus is on
| you to speak quietly in a private place. With the increase
| in such devices the norm too will shift to "know that a
| device is recording audio in certain zones"
| bink wrote:
| That's not exactly true. Many states have laws outlawing
| recording "private" conversations without the consent of
| all parties. As far as I know that would even include
| recording someone having a private conversation with you
| on your own property. Whether or not someone talking on
| their own property and their voice carrying over their
| property line would qualify is up for debate.
| BeetleB wrote:
| That's actually a good point. I'd like to see if someone
| has done an analysis on this. Factors to consider:
|
| - Whether the recording was intentional (i.e. if I set up
| cameras for security, and it so happens to record all
| your conversations on your front porch, this is
| unintentional, but if I set up a microphone by the wall,
| it's intentional).
|
| - The type of communication - most resources I'm finding
| discuss phones and similar channels.
|
| From what I could find:
|
| I just checked one state: Video recordings are fine, but
| if they capture the audio of the conversation, then it's
| a violation of the law.
|
| Other places define a violation of reasonable expectation
| of privacy to require an explicit intent to eavesdrop -
| so if it's a side effect of my security system, it's not
| illegal.
|
| In a number of states, your front porch or backyard are
| not considered private places. If the conversation is
| between you and someone else (not the neighbor), then by
| federal law, intentionally recording the conversation is
| illegal (neither party consented). When it's
| unintentional, it'll probably vary from state to state.
|
| In most places they can point the cameras onto the
| exterior of your property. But if it can see inside a
| bedroom (even if the window is open and no curtains are
| drawn), it can be a violation.
|
| Interesting side effect of searching for this: Video
| monitoring of your baby may be illegal!
| googlryas wrote:
| I wonder if these laws run afoul of the ADA - You can't
| do zero-party consent audio recordings - but you can
| record video, which could just as easily capture a deaf
| person's conversation using sign language. Basically, it
| sounds like this law affords protections to only certain,
| non-disabled citizens.
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| Is there a "you're both wrong and I hope you live far
| away from me" option?
|
| One should travel about the same speed as all the other
| traffic and one should not record people without their
| express consent regardless of the law.
|
| The behavior both you and the person you replying to are
| advocating for are just examples of being a jerk within
| the letter of the law.
| mikodin wrote:
| I agree but to a point. I am curious how this plays out
| when what is recorded wouldn't necessarily be audible or
| intelligible by the human ear but is able to be picked up
| and amplified via post processing or more sensitive
| devices.
|
| Will we then just have to always assume that a device is
| recording audio in all zones?
|
| Countermeasures will be figured out, but it's an
| interesting thought process.
| BeetleB wrote:
| It's a scary thought process, but yes - you will have to
| assume it and _technical_ [1], not _legal_
| countermeasures will be thought out.
|
| Sure, one can have laws, but these kinds of laws are
| incredibly hard to enforce when it becomes trivial for
| everyone and their grandmother to break the law. It's
| frankly much easier to police Lyft/Uber usage than this.
|
| [1] Cone of Silence from Get Smart...?
| [deleted]
| heywot wrote:
| There's a huge difference between casually overhearing a
| conversation because you also are outside versus having
| actions/words recorded for eternity, and potentially analyzed
| by a third party (Amazon, Google, etc).
| mindslight wrote:
| I'd say an apt comparison would be a neighbor occasionally
| hearing what you're saying (and possibly cozying up to
| their closed front door to listen), versus your neighbor
| coming out onto the porch every time you're talking,
| attempting to join the conversation, and even filming you
| with their cell phone to share with their friends. The
| latter is wildly socially unacceptable, and at the very
| least we'd shun someone who did this. Unfortunately most
| people seem to ignore electronic devices in their social
| analysis.
| thegrimmest wrote:
| I'm not sure I agree - if you have the right to observe,
| listen and record using your meat implements (eyes, ears,
| brain), then you should have the right to do so using a
| digital augmentation of the same (cameras, microphones,
| storage).
| arrrg wrote:
| Why? Can you explain why the two should be treated the
| same?
|
| That's not at all the case in many other legal contexts.
| thegrimmest wrote:
| Because there is no clear distinction between the two.
| You're certainly entitled to listen with your ears and
| write things down aren't you? Can you use a hearing aid
| to help you listen? What about binoculars to help you
| see?
|
| Clearly it's impolite to peer into your neighbours
| windows with binoculars, and gossip about all the
| conversations you overhear with your hearing aids, but
| you've got the right to do so, don't you?
|
| What about observing your neighbours through a peep hole
| in your door (or wall)? What about setting up a camera
| instead of a peep hole? And what if you want to see the
| camera feed from your phone? Reference it for later?
| Where is the line? All of these, including pens and
| paper, are technological augmentations to our innate
| capabilities. I'm not against banning them per se, I'd
| just like a clear idea of why we ban some and not others.
| jerry1979 wrote:
| > I'd just like a clear idea of why we ban some and not
| others.
|
| Can you think of any reasons why we would want to ban
| some and not others? It reminds a bit of something that
| Emma Goldman might say: people have only as much liberty
| as they have the intelligence to want and the courage to
| take.
| thegrimmest wrote:
| I can't think of any deontological reasons, no. It seems
| to me that people are just more apprehensive of the more
| recent innovations. I can point you to writings in the
| past advising what to avoid writing down. This taboo has
| clearly shifted.
|
| Say in 1000 years from now everyone has cameras and
| storage media implanted in their persons, I suspect the
| public consciousness surrounding what is and isn't
| expected to be recorded would change. I don't however
| think that your fundamental liberty as a human being
| should depend on the public consciousness, but rather be
| derived from principles/axioms.
| ironlake wrote:
| And infringing on this imagined-from-first-principles
| right would cause serious repercussions. No regulation
| could ever be as beneficial as losing this imagined-from-
| first-principles right. We must let corporations and the
| police state that serve them have and use this data.
| thegrimmest wrote:
| It's not imagined-from-first-principles, it's in fact
| attempting to define the very axioms that ought to
| constrain law in the first place. What does it mean to be
| "free" do something?
|
| If you avoid this question, you can justify just about
| any tyranny so long as it can be argued to be
| "beneficial" (spoiler alert: this is how the worst
| atrocities in history have been justified). In other
| words, the ends don't justify the means.
| jakelazaroff wrote:
| I think there's a difference between "expectation to not be
| incidentally seen or overheard" and "expectation to not be
| under constant surveillance".
| jiminymcmoogley wrote:
| Privacy doesn't have to be a binary, GP probably expected a
| modicum of it in that they assumed their conversations could
| be heard by their neighbours should they be listening in at
| the time, but is uncomfortable at the idea of a digital
| record of each audible outdoor conversation being kept in
| perpetuity, that the neighbours and any third parties with
| access the footage could use against them if their
| relationship went sour (which it now seems it has...). The
| "expectation of privacy" argument should really only be used
| when discussing whether recording should be legal, not when
| determining whether someone is a jackass according to social
| norms.
| unfocused wrote:
| You got it. I'm on my front porch, and clearly anyone on
| the street walking by could hear me. But to know that it's
| possible to record my _entire_ conversation is creepy.
|
| I've learned my lesson and now invite people to our
| backyard, which is free of any cameras.
| Tangurena4 wrote:
| > _I asked them to point their front porch camera so that it
| doesn 't record my front driveway, just theirs. and they lost
| their shit._
|
| My sister has cameras on the outside of our house. When
| neighbors asked her to point them away from their houses, my
| sister also lost her shit. Even when the police came by, she
| got so upset that the police re-aimed her cameras when they got
| her distracted.
|
| For some reason people who get involved in shootings try to
| hide their guns in our neighborhood (there are some unique cars
| and unique landscaping in this neighborhood). Her cameras have
| resulted in the police recovering about a dozen guns during
| 2021 and several arrests when the perps come by a few hours
| later to pick them up.
| gist wrote:
| > I believe these cameras haven't decreased crime. They also
| don't really add more security. It's a shame though they are
| everywhere, with disregard for privacy right on people's
| property. So yes, I'm biased. I have no love for Ring.
|
| Impossible to believe with the ubiquity that they haven't
| decreased crime. Or at least certain types of crimes.
|
| Prior to this type of video only a small amount of people had
| security cameras and generally they were easily spotted.
|
| Today anyone committing (again a certain type of) crime knows
| that if they drive into a neighborhood or walk around they will
| be on a camera somewhere and multiple times. That has to have
| an impact even if there isn't data to prove it.
| unfocused wrote:
| I live downtown. The same "folks" that steal things, that
| I've seen for a better part of a decade, drug addictions and
| all, still steal stuff. It's just the police are not going to
| bother with it. One of them tried to steal our plant! Yes,
| our $5 plant. But I caught them in person, and they
| apologized, but they were high on some drugs.
|
| No camera will deter someone like that.
| chrisBob wrote:
| I think you can set up a video camera pretty much anywhere you
| want, but there are a lot of laws about audio recording. I
| would check on your state's laws. I don't even think this would
| be covered by 1-party consent.
| Domenic_S wrote:
| The front porch is a "public" area, in the sense that there's
| no expectation of privacy. It's as legal as if you were
| taking an iphone video or live photo of your car in the
| driveway and happened to catch the neighbor in the
| background.
|
| Ring does have the ability to set "blackout zones" in the
| camera's FOV, and as a good neighbor the ring owner could
| have excluded the neighbor's driveway/porch with a few
| clicks.
| reaperducer wrote:
| _The front porch is a "public" area, in the sense that
| there's no expectation of privacy._
|
| Parent commenter is correct. The laws in your area are not
| the laws in every area. Some states and cities have
| restrictions on recording, even in public areas.
|
| Illinois is one of the states with laws that prohibit many
| kinds of incidental audio recordings, while video is
| allowed. As was explained to me by a downstate
| communications lawyer, it's because the laws were passed by
| mobbed-up politicians before video was a thing, in order to
| protect mobsters from federal investigations.
|
| Even today, when you see undercover recordings taken by
| local TV news stations in Illinois, there's never any
| audio.
| Domenic_S wrote:
| No they aren't. Intent matters.
|
| According to this article [0] by the senior counsel and
| ethics officer for the Illinois Department of Central
| Management Services,
|
| > _The threshold questions are whether the conversation
| is private, and whether the recording is done secretly.
| The law allows recording if the conversation is not
| private, that is, there is no reasonable expectation of
| privacy as defined above. Also, there is no violation
| unless the recording is "surreptitious," defined as
| "obtained or made by stealth or deception, or executed
| through secrecy or concealment."_
|
| [0] https://www.isba.org/committees/governmentlawyers/new
| sletter...
| avgDev wrote:
| You cannot record voice in Illinois for example. I'm pretty
| sure this is the case for most all party consent states.
|
| If you post a video with voice online you are breaking the
| law in Illinois, unless all parties gave you consent. I don't
| even know how something like RING camera is legal since it is
| being uploaded to the cloud and the parties don't consent to
| it.
|
| Edit: Illinois actually made some changes to the law, that
| allows recording of voice in public spaces.
| noasaservice wrote:
| > I asked them to point their front porch camera so that it
| doesn't record my front driveway, just theirs. and they lost
| their shit.
|
| Wear a mask, and smear it with peanut butter. Or spraypaint.
|
| Or, since they are wifi based devices, do a deauth attack
| against all devices on their network. The Rings don't have much
| of a local storage buffer.
| IncRnd wrote:
| Robert Frost first coined the saying, "Good Fences Make Good
| Neighbors."
| [deleted]
| silisili wrote:
| After years of avoiding 'smart home' bs, I finally caved on a
| doorbell camera and a few other goodies. After doing a lot of
| research, this is the reason I avoided Ring.
|
| I ended up landing on Eufy as it stores data locally. You're free
| to back it up, and cloud services are completely optional(I don't
| use them). No complaints, feel free to ask if anyone has
| questions.
| bedast wrote:
| Bear in mind that Amazon not only owns Ring, but also Blink.
| bob1029 wrote:
| I fear for the day when someone comes knocking on my door because
| my government-approved surveillance doorbell has been offline for
| too long.
|
| The very first thing I did when I moved into my new house was
| completely disconnect/disable all networked security & "smart"
| home systems. I have a Ring doorbell, but it is not receiving any
| power. I figure the simple sight of it may still serve as a
| deterrent.
|
| Most of the "smart" home things I permit today utilize bimetallic
| strips for their decision making.
| mdp2021 wrote:
| > _I fear for the day when someone comes knocking_
|
| https://www.cartooningforpeace.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/0...
|
| (Jeff Danziger, cartoonist, NY)
|
| from
|
| http://www.cartooningforpeace.org/cartoonotheque/nouvelles-t...
| remflight wrote:
| Burglars are not deterred by cameras or alarm systems,
| especially in the age of face masks. They know they will only
| be in the house for 5 mins or less and face masks make it
| harder to identify them.
| jkubicek wrote:
| This makes me wonder, what is a burglar in 2022 stealing? We
| have no jewelry or cash in our house. We have a nice TV, but
| in the age of $250 4k TVs I can't imagine most burglars would
| chance breaking into a house to get a valuable TV. The kid's
| iPads are ancient and mostly worthless, we've got no game
| systems, no fancy cameras, no stereo.
|
| The small handful of valuables we have are either stored in
| an obscure enough place that the thief would have to devote
| longer than 5 minutes to finding it, or so esoteric that I
| doubt a random burglar would recognize its value.
| philistine wrote:
| What modern thieves steal are the same thing they have
| always stolen; items that are resellable. Go to your local
| pawn shop and you'll see what attracts thieves. Video game
| systems, power tools, amps, guitars, routers, and tons of
| bicycles.
| kcb wrote:
| Many ring devices have sirens that I would think would be
| quite deterent when set off. The Ring Alarm can even act as a
| proper monitored alarm system.
| remflight wrote:
| Burglars target to be in a house for roughly 5 mins. They
| don't care what noise they make, they will be out before
| the cops can come.
| mywittyname wrote:
| Also, everyone pretty much ignores alarms. There's a 3
| second window where they wonder if the alarm is there's,
| but they promptly ignore it afterwards.
| loudmax wrote:
| > I fear for the day when someone comes knocking on my door
| because my government-approved surveillance doorbell has been
| offline for too long.
|
| Don't worry, the plutocrats will come knocking on your door
| long before the government does.
| crikeyjoe wrote:
| shadowgovt wrote:
| This is exactly the sort of thing that David Brin discussed in
| Transparent Society. In this case, people should be aware that
| Ring owns that footage, not them, so final decisions on how its
| used will rest with that company
| eth0up wrote:
| I tend to drop a link to Motion when such subjects arise. It's
| been a stalwart companion for years and is usually in Linux
| repositories.
|
| https://motion-project.github.io/
| Pakdef wrote:
| My favorite one.
|
| I run a script on_event_end to make a backup on my VPS and
| also, on_event_start, I record audio:
|
| on_event_start ffmpeg -nostdin -f alsa -i pulse -c:a libmp3lame
| -ar 44100 -b:a 128k -ac 1 -f mp3
| /home/user/motion/%Y%m%d%H%M%S.mp3 &
|
| I just wish they would have chosen a different name, it can be
| hard to find in a web search.
| eth0up wrote:
| > I just wish they would have chosen a different name, it can
| be hard to find in a web search.
|
| It's an apt and good name, but definitely not search
| friendly.
| helen___keller wrote:
| TLDR:
|
| > Although Ring publicizes its policy of handing over camera
| footage only if the owner agrees -- or if judge signs a search
| warrant -- the company says it also reserves the right to supply
| police with footage in "emergencies," defined broadly as "cases
| involving imminent danger of death or serious physical injury to
| any person."
|
| (...)
|
| > it has provided police with user footage 11 times this year
| alone.
|
| I would actually be okay with this if it was more public when the
| standard was met. For example, there's an armed shooter at the
| local elementary school in front of my house? Sure, scoop up my
| Ring footage.
|
| But without more info I have to assume it's whenever the police
| say it's an emergency, which can be anytime they want.
| fotta wrote:
| In your situation, the police should be asking YOU not Amazon
| for the footage.
|
| I don't have a problem with turning over footage, but not
| without my consent. I want to be able to decide when to give it
| to police.
| gjm11 wrote:
| You might be off on holiday, or asleep, or in hospital under
| anaesthesia, and the police might not be able to get in touch
| with you quickly.
| BurningFrog wrote:
| In an emergency, you might not be home, or you might be shot.
| cronix wrote:
| None of which precludes them from asking first, or
| attempting to.
| helen___keller wrote:
| I'm saying that if the "emergency" standard was well
| described and followed consistently (and I agree with it),
| then I would OK granting amazon the power to manage this
| permission on my behalf.
|
| Similarly, as a citizen of the country, I'm OK that judges
| can sign a warrant and manage permission on my behalf as
| well.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| _I would actually be okay with this if it was more public when
| the standard was met. For example, there's an armed shooter at
| the local elementary school in front of my house? Sure, scoop
| up my Ring footage._
|
| As we saw recently, police/local government will often fight
| against the release of surveillance footage to the public in
| cases where it makes them look bad. The Austin Statesman had to
| fight in court for a month to get the footage from the school
| in Uvalde which showed police just loitering in a hallway for
| an hour, in the full knowledge that a gunman who had just
| massacred a bunch of young children was holed up in a room
| nearby.
|
| I'm not using the term 'loitering' casually. There's one bit of
| footage showing an officer idly checking his phone, which has
| 'Punisher' wallpaper.
| int_19h wrote:
| Police will fight the release of basically _any_ information
| that sheds a light on their activities. In many states, there
| are no publicly available statistics on things like how much
| SWAT teams are used, and what for. When some states tried
| passing laws to require PDs to capture such stats, police
| unions pushed back hard.
| delecti wrote:
| Another big distinction would be whether they told people when
| they sent police their camera's footage. Nothing suggest
| they're doing that, which makes it harder to trust their
| judgement.
| BurningFrog wrote:
| 11 emergencies a year across the US sounds perfectly
| reasonable.
| Taylor_OD wrote:
| Sure. What were the emergencies though? Police knew a ring
| cam had evidence of a murder on it? Or police knew ring cam
| had some footage of where they dropped their keys last night?
|
| Who defines emergency? If its the police then anything they
| need it for is an emergency.
| NegativeLatency wrote:
| Also if it's really an "emergency" then they should be able
| to use the existing warrant process
| BurningFrog wrote:
| Getting a warrant from a judge typically takes a few
| hours.
|
| It can be faster in emergencies, but in the "cases
| involving imminent danger of death or serious physical
| injury to any person" this is about, I don't know that
| it's practical.
| Taylor_OD wrote:
| In what situation does previously recorded footage on a
| ring camera need to be accessed as evidence in sooner
| than a few hours? This footage isnt being used in crime
| prevention.
| johndhi wrote:
| I mean, duh. The law obliged companies to turn over internet
| related data to law enforcement and not tell the data subject
| about it if law enforcement asks in the right way. This can be
| said of all data Amazon or any other tech company collects.
| mabbo wrote:
| The full title of the article includes "WITHOUT A WARRANT".
|
| The law doesn't oblige anyone to provide police with
| information without a warrant. Amazon is _choosing_ to do this.
| thewebcount wrote:
| I just saw this article[0] about how the constant scams we're
| subjected to on a daily basis are a big problem for more than
| just monetary reasons. If companies weren't allowed to collect so
| much data, and weren't allowed to just share with whomever they
| wanted to, this would be much less of a problem. Many of these
| scams are possible because of the huge trove of personal
| information collected by companies like Amazon, Google, etc.
| Whether they lose control of their data to hackers or sell it to
| untrustworthy "partners" doesn't really matter. If they didn't
| have it, they couldn't sell it or lose it.
|
| [0]https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/07/13/scam-
| fr...
| asojfdowgh wrote:
| https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/may/18/amazon...
|
| https://www.theverge.com/2021/1/31/22258856/amazon-ring-part...
|
| Its not an accident, its the entire reason why they make the
| doorbells
| at_a_remove wrote:
| Looking at most Ring videos, they don't seem very useful for
| tracking anyone down, more of a "yes, a porch pirate stole your
| stuff." Their position is such that the license plate -- assuming
| they even come in via a vehicle -- is visible. Plate readers need
| to be in a different place, with a different aim.
|
| Plus, Rings are wireless, and too many thieves are just using a
| wireless jammer.
| darknavi wrote:
| > too many thieves are just using a wireless jammer.
|
| Is this actually that wide spread? I hardwire all of my cameras
| but I've never heard of wide-spread wireless jamming in house-
| hold crime.
| Pakdef wrote:
| They should cut off the power instead... it would take care
| of both.
| at_a_remove wrote:
| It's a grab, not a heist.
| Pakdef wrote:
| In a heist, they probably would have battery backups
| anyways...
| at_a_remove wrote:
| Around here, I have seen a few clips of it.
| robg wrote:
| Who would have thought that consumers would accept a surveillance
| state by absorbing the upfront costs?
| salawat wrote:
| If the data is not on your hardware, it is not your data.
| bsedlm wrote:
| what if my data is on my hardware as well as on the cloud
| hardware?
|
| whose data is it anyways?
| cddsadsa wrote:
| What even is "data"? If you mean "my data is the way in which
| I interact with a website. It is personal to me and is my
| property.", then surely you must also say "my mannerisms when
| I talk to you are personal to me, and you may not remember
| them without my consent".
| phailhaus wrote:
| > you may not remember them without my consent
|
| The Quantum Thief series takes this to its extreme, with a
| technology called "gevulot" which does exactly that by way
| of a societal exomemory. You can choose to "reveal" any
| aspect of your self all the way up to your appearance on a
| person-by-person basis. Highly recommend the book!
| dspillett wrote:
| It is shared data. You can use it for whatever you like, so
| can who-ever controls the other location it is stored at
| (unless encrypted and only you hold the keys).
| mdp2021 wrote:
| I was also confused by that expression: the poster very
| probably meant: "what is stored in the hardware of somebody
| else you cannot control".
| rasz wrote:
| then the data is on "someone elses computer"
| chickenpotpie wrote:
| I dislike these beliefs that idealize a world with no trust or
| cooperation. Humans are social animals and we do our best when
| we work together. We don't need to throw the baby out with the
| bath water and private host everything on our own servers
| because one company is doing something shady. You can own your
| data on someone else's hardware with strong encryption and
| common sense legislation that regulates how its accessed.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| Reasonable, but your position if taken to extremes can lead
| to oppressive conformism - eg if you choose not to have or
| share footage from a security camera, you become an object of
| suspicion yourself. Relying on 'common sense legislation'
| assumes a level of probity which is often sadly lacking.
| chickenpotpie wrote:
| So don't take my position to the extremes.
|
| Top level comment was a very general blanket statement. I'm
| saying there's a middle ground.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| _I dislike these beliefs that idealize a world with no
| trust or cooperation_
|
| Sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander.
| Pakdef wrote:
| Are you saying that the movie studios don't own their movies?
| npteljes wrote:
| They own it legally, and they are absolutely unsuccessful in
| stopping unauthorized copies. Same with the Ring videos, no?
| The owner of camera owns the recordings, maybe, but they
| can't really control disclosure.
| annoyingnoob wrote:
| When you pay for a service that includes storage, then its your
| storage.
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| I wouldn't mind if the "traditionalist" SCOTUS that errybody
| seems to hate took a good look at the phrase "papers and
| effects"
| gffrd wrote:
| It blows my mind how quickly people put up home cameras with zero
| thought to
|
| * (1) what gets captured
|
| * (2) who gets what gets captured
|
| Walk down the street of any middle-class neighborhood in a major
| suburb: a healthy chunk have cameras. Let's say 60%.
|
| So, you and your family are being passively surveilled on a
| massive scale ... for the benefit of someone who's not you
| preventing another someone from stealing their bike.
|
| Is this a reasonable tradeoff? Is it fair to others?
| helen___keller wrote:
| > Is this a reasonable tradeoff? Is it fair to others?
|
| Devils advocate:
|
| You word this in a way that implies it is negative, but the
| fact so many people do it suggests many or most people don't
| agree with you. Maybe having cameras around makes the average
| person feel safe?
|
| It sucks for you as a privacy minded individual, but ultimately
| who are you to tell your neighbors they can't have cameras on
| their property? The street itself is public, there's no implied
| right to privacy for what can be seen from the public road.
| Truthfully many American suburbs have only ever had privacy by
| chance, many places in more urban locales there's always eyes
| from the public street. It's just happened that because cars
| are efficient and convenient, nobody walks by or spends time on
| the sidewalk in the modern American suburb. That doesn't mean
| they have no right to do so.
| gffrd wrote:
| > Maybe having cameras around makes the average person feel
| safe?
|
| Interesting point! Attempted interpretation: "I'm a person
| walking by a house that has a camera, and it makes me feel
| better knowing there's a recording of what's happening to me
| ... in the event that I'm robbed/harassed/assaulted/etc."
| Also: no need for an alibi, when there's record of you being
| pretty much everywhere.
|
| I wonder if anyone has studied whether cameras being present
| in communities increase the net level of trust with which
| people operate? I would assume the net benefit would be
| "everyone's less worried/suspicious, so operates with greater
| baseline trust."
|
| This feels like similar territory as social media, where we
| (humans) tend to think the system operates with the same set
| of rules/principles as normal socialization, but vastly
| underestimate the scale in which we're now operating.
| Pakdef wrote:
| In addition to that, they pay a lot for the service... someone
| I know just had 3 cameras installed and pays $80 a month for
| cloud storage...
|
| Buying your own and hosting it yourself would pay for itself in
| just a couple months with something like Reolink RLC-510A and a
| cheap VPS https://www.lowendstock.com/.
| lacker wrote:
| What I would like to see is for the police to actually track down
| crime when people give them video evidence. Here's a video of
| someone stealing a car, stealing a bicycle, breaking into a
| house. Go arrest them! Instead, the police just ignore reports
| like this.
|
| I think it would be fair to do something like, if you are
| convicted of a crime, the police keep your face and other
| biometric data on file for the next five years. Then if you get
| caught on video committing another crime, they can just use face
| detection to know it's you.
|
| The way it works now, the power dynamics are all wrong. It
| shouldn't be Amazon listening to the police who ignore the
| people, it should be the police listening to the people, and
| Amazon just sells people a data service.
| hedora wrote:
| Agreed. I've found the last group that gets access to invasive
| surveillance data is the local police.
|
| For a while, Google was offering reverse GPS lookups of phones
| to the police. ("List all phones in this bounding box at this
| time in the past"). If you had Google Maps installed on your
| phone, then you were automatically opted in to sharing the
| data.
|
| (I think this may be illegal in some US jurisdictions now;
| though Biden is talking about specific carve outs preventing
| sharing of GPS traces near abortion clinics with state
| governments, so who knows...)
|
| Someone broke into a remote building at 2AM. We had video of
| them doing it with a precise start / stop timestamp for the
| event, and of no one else in the area. The police said they
| couldn't ask Google to query the database for them.
|
| So, we're in a situation where the data exists on everyone, but
| only abusive law enforcement types and creepy marketers are
| willing to use it.
|
| We can't even really have an argument about the tradeoffs
| between privacy and security, since the data isn't available
| for the benefit of normal victims of normal crimes.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| If you get convicted of a crime, the police will keep your
| biometric data forever. What leads you to imagine they don't?
| lacker wrote:
| I am not an expert, but right now it seems like the police
| generally keep around your biometric data, but they don't
| keep it in a very useful way. I can't walk into the police
| station, show them a video clip on my phone of someone
| breaking into my car last night, they scan the video and it
| says "we found them, this is John Q. Smith". The data is on a
| piece of paper somewhere, or it's in a database that is
| rarely used for whatever reason. So in practice it's like
| they aren't storing it at all.
|
| If the police did keep biometric data in a useful way, I
| think our society would have to be more explicit about what
| biometric data we want the police to keep. I don't know what
| the right answer is, but something like, if you are convicted
| by a crime then your biometric data is at least kept for a
| few years, that seems reasonable to me.
| n8ta wrote:
| Seems more likely they are storing it in a useful form but
| just don't care about your problem. Or perhaps a larger
| agency than your local pd is making use of it.
| MengerSponge wrote:
| I'll change my tune when news like this breaks about Apple, but I
| paid extra for a HomeKit video camera because Amazon's data
| policies give me heebie-jeebies.
|
| I get a notification and a live video on my TV when someone shows
| up on my doorstep, but not when someone walks by on the sidewalk.
| It's easy.
| CubsFan1060 wrote:
| Do you use HomeKit cameras or HomeKit Secure Video cameras?
| MengerSponge wrote:
| HomeKit Secure Video on a Logitech Circle View. It is
| decidedly _aight_. It 's expensive, but it works well enough.
| The video was high enough quality that the local police could
| ID the guy who stole letters from my mailbox a few months
| ago.
|
| But it's easy and reliable and notifies us when somebody
| drops a package on our doorstep.
| Pakdef wrote:
| Why wait? host your own...
| MengerSponge wrote:
| If I host my own, I know how to get openCV to only get
| notifications when a particular feature is detected, but can
| I get a live preview as a picture-in-picture on my TV while
| I'm watching NBA basketball? Or while my girlfriend is
| watching college basketball? I don't think there's a
| reasonable solution for that.
|
| Buying a HomeKit hosted camera, and AppleTV, and the
| prerequisite WiFi network upgrade costs about two hours of my
| time. Could a standalone camera, ethernet/wifi connection,
| server, and software be stood up for fewer dollars or less
| time? I _really_ doubt it.
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