[HN Gopher] Amazon's Ring to partner with Flock
___________________________________________________________________
Amazon's Ring to partner with Flock
Author : gman83
Score : 457 points
Date : 2025-10-17 09:15 UTC (13 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (techcrunch.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (techcrunch.com)
| sriram_malhar wrote:
| Of course they are.
| c0balt wrote:
| I'm surprised they weren't already, if one discards the ethical
| and moral issues (like one would expect from an Amazon
| product), they do have a lot of opportunities for working with
| each others data.
| hopelite wrote:
| This is just the systemization, scaling of what existed
| previously. It's a rather predictable pattern at this point
| in America. Introduction through innocuous means, expansion
| through a combination of convenience and fear, then
| systematic expansion once the slaves have become accustomed
| to the new state of things. It's a rather common ratcheting
| normalization staircase.
|
| Even public information clearly describes how it is the
| "CIAs" one trick pony, whether it's orchestrating a "color
| revolution" for "democracy", instigating conflicts and war to
| feign innocent self-defense, implementing social engineering
| and Constitutional subversion, or implementing mass
| surveillance specifically. It's the same wife-beater and
| child rapist type pattern of grooming abuse that then feigns
| innocence and deflects blame to anything and anyone else.
|
| Most people are really not all that different than any run of
| the mill battered wife (even if only in the making),
| psychologically. I get it a lot when I point out what a trap
| and an illegitimate, enemy entity that the EU is (not to pick
| on the EU, because it also applies to the US and many other
| places, but it's far more pronounced with the "EU-
| cultists")... You get the constant predictable defenses of
| the love-bombing "abusive boyfriend"/wife beater in the
| making responses. "you don't understand", "the EU really
| loves me", "you never want anything good for me", "he showers
| me with all kinds of benefits and slick marketing", "we are
| going to be happy forever".
|
| It's sad, and as someone that has watched that cycle unfold
| even in my own family, it's really kind of demoralizing and
| somewhat depressing to know exactly where it's heading and
| being unable to counter the forces that have roots a long
| long time ago, forces of nature. So, the US and the EU will
| have to suffer that which is predictable and was preventable,
| no matter how much they wanted to see the world through rose
| colored glasses.
|
| Maybe for humanity's sake, China can free the world of the
| scourge of this cycle and the psychopathic, narcissistic,
| maniacal group of people that causes it all... if they don't
| just kill all life on the planet because if they can't be in
| control then no one can be in control.
| touwer wrote:
| Big tech is nothing different from the German industrialists one
| hundred years ago
| CaptainOfCoit wrote:
| If history has thought us anything, it has to be that
| capitalists have absolutely no spine and only think about
| profits, no matter what.
| themafia wrote:
| We used to know this inherently and we spent half a century
| passing really well thought out and actionable laws designed
| to thwart the darker side of capitalism while still allowing
| it's benefits to accrue to the masses.
|
| Since then we've forgotten how to enforce anti monopoly and
| media ownership rules. Similarly we've somehow completely
| turned campaign financing into an open competition for
| bribes.
| card_zero wrote:
| So, in this situation when a large company cooperates with
| intrusive policing, you think the problem is that the
| company is too large and that enforcement of laws should
| have taken place? To prevent this collaboration with law
| enforcement?
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| It's a much bigger problem when a company with >50%
| market share connects all the cameras to law enforcement
| than if a company with 0.5% market share does that, but
| the first one can't happen if there are no companies with
| a double digit market share.
|
| And when there are more companies it's easier to tell
| people to buy a different one because that one is doing
| something shady. When Amazon does it, you recommend that
| unsophisticated people do what, use a Chinese camera
| which is presumably shunting the feeds to _that_
| government?
| aftbit wrote:
| I recommend that people don't install networked cameras
| unless they build a dedicated air-gapped network for
| them. If you want to know who is at your door ... look
| out a window.
|
| Unpopular take, I know, because it demands that people
| actually understand the technology they're using and
| where their data flows, and almost nobody has the skill,
| time, attention, money, and mindspace for that... but
| that's the only way to be a responsible networked camera
| user.
| potato3732842 wrote:
| Ah, yes, because those <checks notes> communists and <checks
| notes again> feudal lords, theocratic regimes, monarchs and
| all manner of other non-capitalist societies have such a
| stellar track record of treating people well.
|
| This isn't a capitalist or any other "ist" problem. It is a
| problem with society and social norms.
|
| The cameras are there because people want them to be. The
| cameras get used because it is not politically toxic to do
| so. The use continues because the people objecting to the
| current abuse don't object on a principal level, they love
| the jackboot. They'd just rather see it used to levy ruinous
| fines upon middle class scofflaws (got I hate that word and
| the people who use it unironically) than whisk brown people
| off the street. Sure, different people would screech if the
| powers that be pivoted in that direction but at no point does
| the screeching add up to change because only the people who
| hate a specific abuse screech at any one time.
| toofy wrote:
| > they love the jackboot
|
| yes, _some_ people genuinely do, and _some_ people don't.
|
| _some_ people have absolutely no understanding of what
| surveillance tech is doing and where it is going.
|
| in terms of the "ist" problem you refer to, at the end of
| the day, the real answer is to deny anyone that amount of
| power. whether it's corporations, religions, governments,
| or billionaires. none of these should have enough power to
| sway the world to terrifying places. none of them,
| including govs, billionaires, or corporations.
|
| somehow we need to achieve separation of money and state
| with as much vigor as we used to separate church and state.
|
| we should be incentivizing the power from all of those
| groups to be dispersed as much as possible.
| potato3732842 wrote:
| >somehow we need to achieve separation of money and state
| with as much vigor as we used to separate church and
| state.
|
| This used to be called "equality under the law" and laws
| that could not be written equally or enforced equally
| were not written or overturned by the courts.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > This used to be called "equality under the law" and
| laws that could not be written equally or enforced
| equally were not written or overturned by the courts.
|
| The US in particular had discrimination encoded in law
| for a long time. It took Rosa Parks in 1955 to end "white
| only" areas in public transport, and it took until 1965
| until racial discrimination by law was finally outlawed.
|
| "Equality under the law" always depends on who is
| considered to be part of the group that enjoys said
| equality. Even today, many countries still have laws on
| the books that discriminate between ethnicity and/or
| country of origin and/or citizenship. Just look at us in
| Europe - you usually have to be a citizen of an EU
| country to hold public office for example, residency is
| not enough. Or you got border patrol clearly profiling
| whom to control at a border checkpoint - whites get left
| alone and unbothered, non-whites get the full experience
| of what border control is allowed to do. That's not just
| discrimination, it's showing citizens that happen to have
| non-white skin that despite them being equal citizens by
| law, in practice there is no equality.
| potato3732842 wrote:
| Don't forget women. They couldn't open bank accounts
| until when? In any case, I should have known better than
| to leave open the door to race baiting.
|
| Focusing on race or any other distinction among the
| peasants is categorically missing the point. This isn't
| about peasants vs peasants. It's about peasants and small
| groups of peasants vs big moneyed interests. Some small
| time tire shop gets fined into oblivion for letting
| chemicals go down their drain meanwhile Jiffy Lube does
| that all day and doesn't get picked on because their
| lawyers can craft a story about why it's fine. In the old
| days everyone or nobody could dump it down the drain.
| Some homeowner can't put up an ADU because "hurr durr
| wetlands" but some megacorp can buy his land and put up a
| solar farm in the same damn wetlands because they can put
| fancy stuff on fancy letterhead and put it in front of
| the regulators. 100yr ago either everyone could build
| there or nobody could.
|
| We've given our regulatory agencies massive, massive,
| discretionary power and insanely broad mandates. And what
| winds up happening is that they pick on the small and the
| weak because those targets are plentiful and easy. We
| created dragnet surveillance to "stop terrorists" (it was
| a crappy argument even then) and it gets used to round up
| brown people or chase down and bankrupt a random business
| because 1/20 of their trucks had a plate that was
| illegible to toll readers for years on end. We told the
| EPA to make the water clean and they go harass farmers
| for digging trenches. Don't get me started on the FDA and
| opium. NYPD couldn't get away with stop and frisk (well,
| they could and did for far too long but that's not the
| point) but law enforcement across the country can now
| stop damn near anyone for any BS pretext because a
| technological obfuscation layer gives them pretext (much
| like the fake bomb detectors we were selling to the
| Iraqis back in the day) and the scale and division of
| responsibility makes it hold up in court.
|
| If one person or a small group can't do a thing then a
| big group shouldn't either. And if a big group can do a
| thing then the small group.
|
| If it's ok for ICE to just stop brown people then it's ok
| for NYPD to do stop and frisk. And if that's not ok then
| adjust the law.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > If one person or a small group can't do a thing then a
| big group shouldn't either. And if a big group can do a
| thing then the small group. If it's ok for ICE to just
| stop brown people then it's ok for NYPD to do stop and
| frisk. And if that's not ok then adjust the law.
|
| For what it's worth I fully agree with you!
|
| The thing is, this just isn't achievable with modern
| politics. The big guns will _always_ lobby for them to be
| exempted in some way, and even if only by funding the
| enforcement agencies only so limited that they have no
| way of enforcing the law againt the big fish.
|
| And on top of _that_ you got Conservatives (or whatever
| tries to sell themselves under that label these days) and
| Wilhoit 's (misattributed) law [1]:
|
| > Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition, to
| wit: There must be in-groups whom the law protects but
| does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds
| but does not protect.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_M._Wilhoit
| newsclues wrote:
| History also teaches us about communism but so many people
| refuse to accept that part of history and romance it.
|
| So why wouldn't any accept capitalism and ignore its flaws?
| immibis wrote:
| Nobody was talking about communism.
| gosub100 wrote:
| It's the government that wants unchecked power, no matter
| what. This is why people support the 2A, and why it was the
| 2nd most important thing to those who founded the country.
| mothballed wrote:
| Most of the _sanctuary_ areas that have historically
| resisted ICE are brutally against any originalist
| interpretation of the 2A.
| locopati wrote:
| And weirdly, the staunch defenders of 2A, because how
| else do you fight tyranny are all, good with the tyrant
| and the tyrant party shitting all over the Constitution.
| nielsbot wrote:
| You'll have to fight fascism with mass protests not guns.
| CaptainOfCoit wrote:
| > It's the government that wants unchecked power, no matter
| what.
|
| "The Government" is not a entity with "wants" or "needs",
| it's a collection of people with their own motivations.
| Motivations that usually end up being about power or money,
| or a combination, because the people who end up in the
| government are capitalists.
|
| > why it was the 2nd most important thing to those
|
| I mean, not really? The 2nd amendment includes stuff that
| they didn't even think of originally when creating the
| constitution, so just because it was the second amendment
| that went through, doesn't mean it was "the 2nd most
| important thing", the most important things are the
| original articles in the constitution, so the amendments
| must start ranking at 8th place or something like that, 2nd
| amendment ends up being the 9th most important thing if we
| were to rank things like you did, but honestly.
| lan321 wrote:
| >"The Government" is not a entity with "wants" or
| "needs", it's a collection of people with their own
| motivations. Motivations that usually end up being about
| power or money, or a combination, because the people who
| end up in the government are capitalists.
|
| The main issue is that its power only grows. No one sane
| would propose to reduce his influence and/or make his job
| harder and everyone has ideas on how to make his job
| easier. It's not about capitalism, communism or anything
| else. The only thing that plays a role is how many
| somewhat independent influence blocks you have and
| whether you have a system to stop the power creep and 'we
| only have to vote it in once' problem.
|
| And it's not even strictly about 'easier' from the
| perspective of the worker. I imagine if you deal with
| police work and such spying probably seems a lot more
| reasonable since you're very exposed to the bad part of
| society, which does skew your view of the world, no
| matter how rational you think you are.
| thrance wrote:
| Your 2A line sounds like a big joke. What are the armed
| citizens supposed to do? Shoot ICE? That would end well,
| I'm sure. The guns are fucking useless when most gun owners
| support the authoritarian government currently taking
| roots.
| red-iron-pine wrote:
| democracy in the US exists entirely because the common
| man was willing, and able, to do that
|
| ICE are fat and woefully underqualified.
| culll_kuprey wrote:
| I thought that was the Texas national guard lol. Kinda
| surprised they didn't take this "it's fake" defense.
| piva00 wrote:
| The same 2nd amendment from 1791 when the most firepower a
| government could have were cannons shooting round
| cannonballs?
|
| Surely in 2025 a ragtag group of people with some
| revolvers, pistols, hunting rifles, and a small minority
| owning assault rifles, with limited ammo will be able to
| fight against the most well-funded armed force with tanks,
| IFVs, assault helicopters, aircrafts, missiles, rockets,
| and military infantry armed to the gills wearing NVGs.
|
| People who think 2A will do anything in case your
| government actually turns violent on you are just trying to
| maintain the illusion of control.
| 759282361082 wrote:
| We should all learn from stalinists like you. Murdering 145
| million people is quite the feat.
| wpm wrote:
| Silence, clanker.
| CaptainOfCoit wrote:
| If anything, I'm a anti-ist, belonging to no-one.
| Ekaros wrote:
| Ofc they do not. It is only about making money. As is free
| market. Actually they will always trade morals for profits if
| possible.
| mothballed wrote:
| Big tech have always been dogs willing to play fetch for any
| master. The free market didn't offer big tech these quantity of
| rewards for brutalizing people 'guilty' of administrative
| infractions, our 'democratically' elected government did.
| potato3732842 wrote:
| >elected government
|
| Elected in part by the useful idiots on HN and many other
| places. They were so ignorant of how government actually
| works they were happy to give it this power. They foresaw the
| jackboot being used to stomp petty criminals and fellow
| middle class types who don't "pay their fair share". But they
| had never cracked open a history book because if they had
| they would know that sort of stuff is never a top priority.
| squigz wrote:
| Maybe people are just responding to things like labelling
| them all as "useful idiots" and "Nazis" and "fascists"
| brookst wrote:
| Fine, let's call them patriots who are fed up with
| democracy, limits on governmental power, and the rule of
| law.
| potato3732842 wrote:
| We are all useful idiots, comrade.
| hitarpetar wrote:
| what about snowflake, that's a good one too!
| wpm wrote:
| "You called me a nasty name so I'm gonna blow up our 250
| year old democracy"
|
| There's another word we can call them: juvenile.
| mothballed wrote:
| No a bunch of extremely intelligent and diligent people
| have been working on that for ages, they just rely on
| juvenile people voting them into power.
| bigyabai wrote:
| 50,000 years may come to pass, and nothing will be funnier
| than HN defending Apple's App Store monopoly one year and
| then realizing what a catastrophic disaster it was 6 months
| later.
|
| Are we _sure_ that formalized populist regulation is the
| boogeyman? Like, _really_ absolutely super duper double-
| checked certain?
| steve1977 wrote:
| If you follow the money, it might even be less different.
| user_7832 wrote:
| Hey don't be so ageist, IBM is still around!
|
| (Context, IBM helped the Nazis with recordkeeping.)
|
| See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_and_World_War_II
| _heimdall wrote:
| Germany was a mess after WWI, there wasn't much industry at all
| to speak of in the 1920s.
| red-iron-pine wrote:
| historical Big Tech was more than willing to help out the Axis
| powers.
|
| IBM did a ton of business with the Nazis.
| chung8123 wrote:
| I am both amazed and not surprised by the amount of people that
| will work at a company that is directly opposed to their own
| points of view. I am willing to bet many of the employees of
| Google, Meta, and Amazon are morally opposed to the very things
| they are supporting.
| _DeadFred_ wrote:
| Nah. They aren't. If they were, they would leave. I went to
| school for aerospace but didn't work in the industry for the
| longest time because all the jobs available were military.
|
| These people don't care, they might put on a fake persona
| that pretends to care, but you outright don't care if you
| work at these places. You get a job somewhere else when you
| care.
|
| What you hear from them isn't caring, it's just a way for
| them to pretend they are someone they aren't. The person they
| pretend to be would not be working there.
| gitfan86 wrote:
| To all the people talking about government surveillance do you
| not realize the government already can track you by your cell
| phone?
| themafia wrote:
| I have deniability with the phone. I can also just leave it at
| home if I want or turn it off entirely. That access should also
| be illegal without a warrant; however, this is far worse than
| cellular "metadata" tracking.
| gitfan86 wrote:
| I don't understand why you assume that the government is
| following all the laws when it comes to cell phones and cloud
| data but won't when it comes to ring data?
| sailingparrot wrote:
| What laws do you suppose they have to follow, exactly?
|
| Cops need a warrant to track your phone, check which tower
| it connected to or tail your car for extended period of
| time.
|
| Cops do not need a warrant to use Flock system. They have
| an app where they can simply put your license plate and
| they will get a path showing every move of your car as
| tracked by the flock cameras, and there are a looot of them
| (e.g. near San Jose:
| https://deflock.me/map#map=16/37.335318/-121.881316). And
| thats without the integration of ring.
|
| This essentially allows them to GPS tag anyone, with no
| warrant, while "following the laws". So no, it's not all
| the same.
| night862 wrote:
| Well, they don't.
|
| They definitely need to follow the law when they get it
| from the Telco, but Cops can use their CSS/IMSI catcher all
| they want, theres almost no way to tell. But they can not
| then go to court and say "Yeah--we listened to their phone
| call and searched the car."
|
| With this its no problem. No Hailstorm to buy for the
| entire force and there isn't any federal oversight on this
| sort of thing as near as I can tell. If you think police
| don't do crimes I've got a bridge to sell you.
| RHSeeger wrote:
| > or turn it off entirely
|
| That part you can't do. Unless the battery is removed, phone
| can be turned back on remotely.
| plingbang wrote:
| citation needed
| _factor wrote:
| https://www.idownloadblog.com/2021/12/16/ios-15-2-power-
| rese...
|
| They can do it right up until the battery truly
| discharges. You can't turn off WiFi/BT for real either.
| Icons will go dark and your WiFi and devices won't work,
| but underneath the radios are still plenty active and
| powered on.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| The Faraday cage wallet it is then.
| Citizen8396 wrote:
| What "they" don't want you to know:
|
| - You can disable this feature
|
| - Disabling radios from Control Center behaves
| differently than from Settings
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| Pull SIM card?
| iamnothere wrote:
| I can't seem to figure out how this works with a Linux-
| based phone. Do you have any details?
| codedokode wrote:
| Mine is often in airplane mode which makes tracking a little
| difficult.
| bryancoxwell wrote:
| Might be a good time to enable E2EE on your Ring cams if you
| haven't already:
|
| https://ring.com/support/articles/7e3lk/using-video-end-to-e...
| kotaKat wrote:
| Bad news: Ring just enabled opt-in-by-default "search parties"
| for people to leverage your outdoor cameras to find their "lost
| animals".
|
| https://ring.com/search-party
| taneq wrote:
| "Opt-in-by-default" is a lot of words to say "opt-out".
| jappgar wrote:
| You opted-in by buying the product in the first place.
|
| People are buying these things out of fear anyways. I
| thought they'd be happy big brother is watching.
| nrjames wrote:
| When a man murdered a woman in front of my house last
| year, our Ring camera's photos of his car led to his
| arrest within 24 hours, so not entirely useless?
| Vespasian wrote:
| It's all trade offs.
|
| Even in the most dystopian sci-fi future where a hostile
| and totalitarian government watches everything everybody
| does, they would still use the information to investigate
| boring everyday crimes.
|
| The (non rethoric) question is, are people willing to pay
| the increasing price of non-crime related surveillance as
| we see diminished security margins.
| nativeit wrote:
| I heard there could be zero crime soon, once they start
| "pre-registration" and open up the death camps for
| everyone Grok says is a baddy. So useful!
| matthewdgreen wrote:
| I'm ok with that as long as I, the camera owner, am
| choosing to hand over the footage. At best I can see some
| sort of watermarking to ensure that it's legitimate.
| nrjames wrote:
| There are legitimate reasons to want a camera either at
| your front door or surveilling your property. These can
| range from an increased sense of security to having
| documentation to support insurance claims, or even for
| watching wildlife. We installed our Ring camera after an
| ongoing string of nighttime car break-ins hit us and we
| had no direct proof of what happened for insurance. It
| was meant to be both a deterrent to that type of event
| and also for documentation if it happened again. There's
| also a pack of coyotes that lives in the woods near our
| house and occasionally eats our chickens. While that
| usage was more out of curiosity (if you have chickens,
| you're going to lose one from time to time), we were able
| to develop a sense of when that threat was higher.
|
| I live on a bucolic cul-de-sac in a house that I've lived
| in since the mid 1970s. Most of the neighbors are the
| same. I never in my life expected a random person to
| drive down the street, drag a lady out of his trunk,
| chase her around the cul-de-sac, and stab her to death in
| front of my house. I never expected to find the body in
| the woods 40' from my side door. This is when I also
| learned that nobody comes to clean up after a crime like
| that and that if I didn't want pools of blood in front of
| my house and a 50' streak of it crossing the circle or
| the splatters all over the mailboxes that I was going to
| have to go out there and clean it up myself. I was in
| PTSD therapy for a while after that. I'm glad the Ring
| camera caught some of the activity.
|
| After an event like that, it's easy to lose a sense of
| security in your home. How are you supposed to sleep the
| night after that happens, when the perpetrator remains at
| large? You can't lock your doors hard enough or do
| anything at all to feel secure. That lack of sense of
| security does not go away in a day or a week or a month.
| It goes away when you can find "normal" again. It helped
| us to find normal by installing other cameras around the
| house.
|
| I don't want Ring or Arlo or anybody to be automatically
| sharing my camera footage with anybody. Even with the
| murder event, it was my choice to go through the footage
| and share it with the authorities. I don't support
| authoritarian "law enforcement" activities, I don't want
| anybody tapping into my camera feed to find lost pets or
| for any other reason. They shouldn't be allowed to do it.
| Like many other services we all use, we're more of the
| product than the customer, as our data is harvested and
| used for other purposes.
|
| Personal security is different than targeted advertising.
| Most people won't know they need or want a camera until
| after they have experienced something that makes them
| feel less secure in their home. I just hope they have the
| wits to read the Terms and understand what they're opting
| into before automatically accepting all of the opt-in-by-
| default data sharing.
| somenameforme wrote:
| I think a good thought experiment to consider, in terms
| of defining what your own views are, is to consider that
| if every single person had a mandatory 24/7 uplinked
| camera on them with redundancies, then the number of
| unsolved crimes would rapidly approach zero. It would be
| essentially impossible to get away with crime, so the
| only crimes that would happen would be those of passion,
| ignorance, or the political elite who would certainly
| excuse themselves from such social obligations, as usual.
|
| But I definitely would not want to live in that world.
| And I think that's true for most people. It's kind of
| interesting too because there's some really nasty
| arguments one can make about this like, 'What, you'd
| rather see children kidnapped and even killed than
| consenting to surveillance that won't even be looked at
| unless you're under suspicion?'
|
| But it's quite disingenuous, because with any freedom
| there is always a cost, and that cost is often extreme.
| 40,000+ people die per year because of our freedom to
| drive, yet few would ever use that as an argument to
| prohibit driving.
| plasticchris wrote:
| The trouble is, there would also be no unsolved thought
| crimes
| neuralRiot wrote:
| Another problem is that "crime" is a very flexible term
| and when you have a hammer everything looks like a nail.
| Also the legal system specially in the US likes to equate
| convictions with solved cases which is not always the
| same.
| red-iron-pine wrote:
| > 40,000+ people die per year because of our freedom to
| drive, yet few would ever use that as an argument to
| prohibit driving.
|
| that is a fantastic argument to force reduced driving and
| shows up in virtually all discussions about car safety
| and public transit.
| reaperducer wrote:
| _When a man murdered a woman in front of my house last
| year, our Ring camera 's photos of his car led to his
| arrest within 24 hours, so not entirely useless?_
|
| Your doorbell photo of a car was really the only evidence
| to convict someone of murder?
|
| I'm glad I live somewhere that needs more proof that.
| nrjames wrote:
| No, it enabled them to find him quickly. There was other
| evidence, but with no previously know connection to the
| victim and the perpetrator having no prior criminal
| record, I was told it was unlikely they would have found
| him otherwise.
| ongy wrote:
| Why do you think it's fear?
|
| The owners I know consider it a convenience device.
| jeromegv wrote:
| Convenience for? Security? Isn't increased security
| measures based on fear?
| morshu9001 wrote:
| Just knowing when stuff happens outside your house when
| you're not home. Like, someone in the household came back
| from work, a package arrived, or a cool animal showed up.
| Or you're home and appreciate a little more notice before
| a visitor rings the doorbell.
|
| Personally not a compelling enough reason to buy the
| camera in the first place, but those non crime
| notifications end up being the most common once it's up.
| ongy wrote:
| Or having a quick chat with the delivery guy/neighbour
| while remote.
| ongy wrote:
| Who said anything about security?
|
| They are toys
| rkomorn wrote:
| I agree it's the same as "opt-out" but I like the phrase
| "opt-in by default" because it implies there's an
| affirmative "I want to participate in this" option
| somewhere, and that it is set to "yes" by default.
|
| IMO it properly reflects that what looks like an active
| affirmative choice by the user is actually not.
| IT4MD wrote:
| However, it's a very abbreviated way of stating, "soon you
| will not even be given this choice, because we make
| entirely too much money selling your data/info and we kinda
| bribe law enforcement by granting them any and all video,
| with a simple request"
| ceejayoz wrote:
| "Do it for the lost puppies!" is darkly comedic as a way to
| ease people into the idea.
| mihaaly wrote:
| Oh, Jesus!!
|
| This f shameless pretention of doing something noble - barely
| helpful above normal practices btw. - while manipulating
| clueless users into turning on mass-surveillance is revolting
| and disgusting. And ordinary employees figured this out,
| phrased, created content, implemmented, pubished, and are
| maintaining this dirty practice. Many times with (very
| misplaced) pride. Shame on all of them actively participating
| in this coward scheme!
| jappgar wrote:
| Shame on the idiots who place a webcam on their front
| doorstep too.
| nick__m wrote:
| Someone tried to enter by the window next to my front
| porch door, it prompted me to install a video doorbell
| because the dude that frightened my wife only received a
| ticket because there was no proof he tried (and fail) to
| force open a window and did not enter the house. If I had
| a recording he would have spent the night at the station
| and it would have been a criminal offense instead of a
| civil one.
|
| Even if it only provides deterrence, and a slight chance
| of after the fact punishment, I don't feel idiotic for
| buying a "doorstep Webcam", the door is visible from the
| street so there is no expectation of privacy and I really
| don't care that someone else could access those
| recordings.
|
| If I had indoors cameras they would be in a private
| network. But for a front porch camera the easiest to
| install IOT junk is perfectly serviceable.
| coredog64 wrote:
| This. Local youths started playing ding-dong-ditch last
| summer. It was harmless when it was 8-9pm on a Friday or
| Saturday. They escalated to banging on windows, then to
| doing it at 1am, and finally to damaging our garage door
| to the point it won't open.
|
| My wife is extremely upset about all of this, and I'm not
| going to be bullied out of the opinion that 24/7 cameras
| are actually a good thing.
| hitarpetar wrote:
| is the doorbell camera industry held up by wife guys?
| hitarpetar wrote:
| were you frightened also?
| nick__m wrote:
| No, I was pissed that the only punishment, for a know
| offender, was a small fine.
|
| The police knew the guy (young adults with bright orange
| hoodie are quite uncommon here) and they told me that he
| already did this a few time before moving in my
| neighborhood and that they never had enough evidences to
| do something else than fine him.
|
| Also I think the police are bored in my city because
| there were 4 patrols cars in the street when I got back
| home.
| red-iron-pine wrote:
| plenty of good use cases for it, and the popularity of
| the devices speak for themselves.
|
| just don't get ones owned by evil megacorps who have
| openly said they'll sell access to ICE
| morshu9001 wrote:
| What is an equivalently capable alternative that puts the
| user more in control?
|
| The reason Ring is popular isn't just marketing or
| network effect, it's that it works. Before Ring and
| clones, security camera / DVR combos were really hard to
| make effective, I tried. Maybe you'd have a totally
| reliable system with good video, but it'd fail to notify
| you when you need it to, or notify way too often. Battery
| power was infeasible because cameras couldn't sleep.
| Phone notifications were DIY. A long compounding list of
| things could go wrong and make you miss an important
| event or fail to record it entirely. I'm hoping those
| have caught up by now, but haven't found any.
| scjon wrote:
| Unifi is as good or better and doesn't require a
| subscription
| absoflutely wrote:
| Reolink also seems to work pretty well with local
| storage, notifications and no subscription or cloud
| uploads.
| stogot wrote:
| I have a Ring. I got the email notifying me and was about
| to go disable it, but it doesn't share anything. It says it
| will notify you that your camera detected the dog and then
| YOU choose to share the video or not. So I left it enabled,
| as it becomes a later choice. Effectively I'm not opted
| into sharing was my take.
| kotaKat wrote:
| But you're opted into the _automatic detection_ ,
| regardless. Ring is still processing your video still to
| see if there's a match to any Search Party unless you
| turn the feature off.
|
| At what point will the police request a warrant to run
| their own Search Party without consent?
| jppittma wrote:
| See, I have no problem with searches that involve
| warrants and probably cause. They could already violate
| the shit out of your privacy with a warrant. That's kind
| of the point of a warrant.
| nerdsniper wrote:
| Yep but Ring doesn't require warrants to hand over your
| video if police say "it's an emergency".
| https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2024/01/amazon-ring-
| stop...
| dragonwriter wrote:
| If you don't require warrants as long as the requester
| uses magic words, then you just don't require warrants,
| period.
| captainkrtek wrote:
| The feature in the app is also worded cleverly:
|
| "Search party lets you use your outdoor Ring cameras to help
| neighbors in your area"
|
| Note: doesn't mention pets yet. Then:
|
| "Starting with lost pets, Search party will..."
|
| What comes after lost pets? Very open ended
| treyd wrote:
| I love how evil the concept of "opt-in-by-default" is. It's
| so rapey and sinister.
| somehnguy wrote:
| Thanks for the heads up, just went in and disabled it on my 2
| cameras. Next step will be to throw these privacy invading
| pieces of junk in the trash. Just need to find a comparable
| product.
|
| Are there any wireless (running power to these locations is
| not an option) doorbell cams that record to local storage
| instead of the cloud? I refuse to pay a subscription for
| these things.
|
| Ideally they would record to my server instead of onboard SD
| card so that the footage can't just walk away if someone
| grabs the camera.
| absoflutely wrote:
| Reolink has some good options in this area. Both wired and
| wireless security and doorbell cameras with microSD storage
| by default, but FTP and SFTP can also be used. I've been
| happy with my (wired) doorbell camera with just a microSD
| card.
| nerdponx wrote:
| Consider not sending your doorbell footage to accompany that
| has no respect for user privacy, and is now actively partnering
| with a police surveillance company.
| cholantesh wrote:
| Yeah there are plenty of self-hosted solutions that work just
| as well.
| lcnPylGDnU4H9OF wrote:
| > now actively partnering with a police surveillance company
|
| You can make this point stronger: Amazon _is_ a police
| surveillance company (with Ring), just not primarily.
| ta1243 wrote:
| The best time to not buy into all this non-free surveilence-as-
| a-service crap was a decade ago.
|
| The second best time is today.
|
| Unfortunately the public love this stuff, and are quite happy
| to have CCTV pointing at your house. Privacy never existed 300
| years ago, it doesn't today. Accept your feudal masters and
| make peace with it, because they won years ago.
| comboy wrote:
| Just keep your cameras on separate vlan and access through eg.
| wireguard. Any company can have the best intentions but gov can
| just come to them, tell them to implement whatever is needed -
| even if that means lying to their users - and have access to
| everything. Probably even with plausible deniability for all
| parties involved, but not sure anyone even still cares about
| that.
| andrepd wrote:
| Is this seriously your conclusion? Might be a good time to get
| rid of the fucking spy camera owned by a multitrillion dollar
| corporation partnering with the state surveillance apparatus,
| is my opinion.
|
| Have people never read/watched a sci-fi book/film before?
| bryancoxwell wrote:
| I think encouraging people to enable E2EE is more realistic
| than asking everyone to throw out the Ring cams they've
| potentially spent hundreds on, yeah.
| andrepd wrote:
| Why people would purchase a telescreen to place on their
| homes in the first place is also incomprehensible to me.
| danparsonson wrote:
| But... what makes you think that Amazon et al can't MITM
| the connection?
| Aachen wrote:
| From the linked document (in German for some reason, so I
| skimmed it as best I could), it sounds like the device
| will generate a password and you need to enter it on your
| phone. So symmetric encryption, not trusting the server
| to distribute keys that would be susceptible to MITM, and
| also not leaving users the options to choose bad
| passwords
|
| Sounds good from a security point of view, although it
| also says they disable functions like having more than
| one person able to view the camera (having a partner be
| able to answer the door seems pretty fundamental; they
| probably just can't be arsed to make such functionality
| work with safety turned on...)
|
| Of course, just like with Signal or anything else that
| gets regular updates, they can push an update to your
| device specifically that sends the decryption key out.
| You'll always have to trust them to not do something like
| that, but that's a whole different level from subpoenaing
| data they have on a hard drive
| drdaeman wrote:
| Is Ring camera encryption actually independently audited and
| known to be implemented correctly and provide all the desirable
| security properties?
|
| Because when I reverse engineered my Tuya-based camera-equipped
| pet feeder, I've discovered that there was an encryption on the
| video stream, but they only encrypted I-frames and left
| P-frames unencrypted. Amazon is not Tuya, but IoT is IoT.
|
| My point is, there are myriad of ways IoT vendor can boast
| "encryption" and "security" on the marketing materials, while
| the actual implementation could be flawed beyond redemption.
| everdrive wrote:
| George Orwell really never could have imagined that people would
| flock to purchase or otherwise use the methods of their own
| surveillance. (smart phones, social media, smart cameras, modern
| cars, etc) I think it paints government surveillance policies in
| something of a different light. There is definitely a
| constituency which believes that the evil central government is
| pushing for surveillance in a purely unilateral way.
|
| I'm not really pro-government, but modern surveillance capitalism
| really pushes against this view. Put to their own devices, the
| public will generally (and apparently) flock towards mass
| surveillance all on their own, and I think one possible
| implication is that the government surveillance policies are more
| popular then some folks in HN circles would suspect.
| mihaaly wrote:
| I already have problem with negligent people using products
| like Ring that is to surveil anyone around without control,
| with uncontrollable and unreliable level of standard handling
| collected data (no high hopes here). But when I find it very
| very hard and limited purchasing products that cannot spy on me
| - special mention here for smart phones and cars - that makes
| me mad to the next level. Even for the elevated level privacy
| concious folks the car and the smart phone bringing hostility
| for your private life is getting harder and harder to avoid.
| Not having the suitable time to do the tedious investigations
| and costly trials into the reliability of products with low
| surveillance risks, not to mention the constant need of keeping
| yourself up do date to everything involved in this regard! We
| need to live our life, cannot spend it on constant workarounds,
| hacks, and very reasonable paranoia. When logging into
| essential services are MANDATING the use of smart phones (i.e.
| MFA, but own apps sometimes, requiring specific vendors!!), not
| to mention the need of getting from A to B the way required
| (goods, children, time limits, navigation), but cannot procure
| a solution that will not expose you to adverse agents or even
| criminals (those getting in and out of systems nowadays like
| they live there) that makes me really really mad! This society
| is shit. I cannot do it, but feel the highly increasing need
| for becoming the real life Captain Fantastic [1].
|
| [1] https://www.imdb.com/title/tt3553976/
| perplex3d wrote:
| I feel this entirely. The constant surveillance is almost
| unavoidable if one ever wants to participate in society. How
| can I always avoid using a cell phone when my source of
| income requires that I be accessible most of time. People
| will respond to get another job or buy this obscure product
| instead, but as you said, I can't live my life if I'm
| constantly researching EVERYTHING that affects my life, and
| having to wade through so much bs to do so.
| _joel wrote:
| > government surveillance policies are more popular then some
| folks in HN circles would suspect.
|
| "Ignorance is bliss"
| hopelite wrote:
| That was a major, if not the core theme of 1984, and how the
| system could create and manage such a state.
| einrealist wrote:
| And don't forget the AI companies. People are happy to send
| their highly personal information (and company secrets) to them
| so that a chatbot can use it. Didn't OpenAI just announce a
| porn feature?
|
| OpenAI is receiving far more data with a far greater privacy
| impact than social networks. And all this is happening at a
| time when the US is transitioning from a somewhat functioning
| democracy to an autocratic and fascist system.
|
| https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-news/chatgpt-pa...
| protocolture wrote:
| >government surveillance policies are more popular then some
| folks in HN circles would suspect.
|
| 2 things.
|
| 1. Few people understand most surveillance legislation,
| including journalists.
|
| 2. Most governments use thought terminating cliches involving
| child safety to force compliance on the middle set of people
| who dont like surveillance and understand a minimum amount of
| what the legislation does.
|
| These points leave anti surveillance campaigners fighting an
| uphill battle. Most people, when they have these laws clearly
| articulated and arent in danger of being called a pedo for
| opposing them, oppose them.
| everdrive wrote:
| I think this is correct, but buying something like a Ring
| camera is 100% voluntary. And buying a smartphone _used_ to
| be 100% voluntary, and people couldn't get enough of them.
| People aren't ignorant about privacy, they don't even care
| about it. Try telling your friends you turn bluetooth off on
| your phone and don't have a data plan for it. They'll think
| you're very, very weird. They do not care about privacy
| whatsoever.
| Aachen wrote:
| These are mappable in OpenStreetMap with the tags
| surveillance:type=camera + camera:mount=doorbell
|
| Data query around the Netherlands shows about a hundred are
| mapped so far as specifically doorbell cameras: https://overpass-
| turbo.eu/s/2dQw (the tag does not yet seem established in the
| USA). There are also many thousands of cameras mapped that are
| either not doorbell-mounted, or simply not tagged to such detail.
| This is a convenient map to see all of them:
| https://sunders.intri.cat/
| mikkupikku wrote:
| Seems like a fairly impractical thing to map unless you're
| getting volunteers to walk up to and inspect people's front
| doors. I know there is an app for a sort of gamified version of
| this where people take tasks to verify street signs or even how
| many stories a building has, I used that app for a while, but
| doorbell mapping seems a lot leas casual.
| westmeal wrote:
| Walk up to door with stack of papers with a stock photo of a
| puppy on it that says lost puppy. Check if there's a camera.
| If the owner comes outside, ask them if they have seen this
| puppy.
| QuantumNomad_ wrote:
| And then at door 125,000 you finally reach the home of the
| puppy that's in the stock photo you printed. And they say
| "Why yes, we _have_ seen this puppy. How did you know??"
| namibj wrote:
| So use one that you know to now be dead.
| roughly wrote:
| Well this is taking a dark turn
| array_key_first wrote:
| And then remember you live in America and you get shot for
| walking on someone's property.
|
| Joking, a little, but seriously: the culture in the US has
| rotted to such an insane degree. Not only are we not
| friends with our neighbors, I'm actually scared to talk to
| them!
| nbngeorcjhe wrote:
| apparently Ring LLC has their own OUI [0]. I wonder if you
| could wardrive around and identify cameras by their MAC
| address
|
| [0] https://maclookup.app/vendors/ring-llc
| egberts1 wrote:
| Yes
| wongarsu wrote:
| That's fun. If you have an account you can use
| https://wigle.net/mapsearch to search for bluetooth devices
| with that prefix from other people's wardrives. There are
| definitely some results coming up. A wildcard search for
| bluetooth devices named "Ring %" also seems to work
| wongarsu wrote:
| Maybe less common in America, but in Europe it's not uncommon
| to have multiple people going around town delivering various
| things to your mailbox: a postman for letters, some poor
| student delivering grocery store brochures once a week,
| somebody delivering the local newspaper at the break of dawn,
| somebody else delivering the local church newspaper once a
| month, etc. And all of them are going door to door. If just
| one of them is an openstreetmap fan you quickly have all
| doorbell cameras in their delivery district mapped
| spyder wrote:
| You don't need to walk up: 1. You can do wardriving and
| identify them by MAC address. 2. You can use object
| recognition on google street view photos or your own photos
| while you're wardriving.
| Aachen wrote:
| If I can see them, they can see me. No need to walk onto
| anyone's property, the whole point (for me at least) is to
| map things that surveil public spaces
|
| It's more casual than surveying e.g. addresses that may be
| hard to see if the building is recessed, but you'd still want
| to capture it because someone will want to route there sooner
| or later. Not so for cameras that only capture own property
|
| StreetComplete has a "things" overlay that makes it very
| quick to add these at the position of a front door
| Arrowmaster wrote:
| A lot of doorbell cameras use infrared for night vision and
| motion detection. You could probably just drive down a street
| at night with a camera tuned to show infrared and they would
| all be bright beacons.
| nedrylandJP wrote:
| And (several times previously on HN), Flock and other ALPR
| cameras are mappable too.
|
| https://deflock.me/identify
| nerdsniper wrote:
| That doesn't seem to work for me. Can you correct my query/URL?
|
| https://www.openstreetmap.org/search?query=surveillance%3Aty...
| habi wrote:
| The search directly on osm.org is optimzied for address
| things.
|
| For a "complete" search in the OpenStreetMap-data I suggest
| [Overpass
| Turbo](https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Overpass_turbo).
|
| In this specific case I'd take a little detour over taginfo
| (https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Taginfo), e.g. search
| for `surveillance`
| (https://taginfo.openstreetmap.org/search?q=surveillance)
| there. A little bit of clicking (Type > Values > ALPR) leads
| to https://taginfo.openstreetmap.org/tags/surveillance%3Atype
| =A... If you click on 'Overpass turbo' on the top right, you
| get to a pre-filled search on Overpass turbo. Scroll the map
| to the region you want to search (start small), and click
| 'Run' on the top left.
|
| Voila.
| nerdsniper wrote:
| Fantastic! Thank you :)
|
| However, even ALPR doesn't show any devices for me:
|
| I'm glad citizens in the EU are more on top of this. I
| really wish we as USA citizens had access to the same
| database of GPS coordinates for each Blink, Ring, and
| Amazon Key device that police do. Does anyone know how/if
| something like that could be FOIA'd? This seems it would be
| particularly fruitful if FBI/DHS has a comprehensive
| dataset for the entire nation.
|
| Though I do worry that they may not "have" the dataset, but
| rather just have "access" to it via a queryable
| Amazon/Palantir database/API.
| statuslover9000 wrote:
| Great job giving the government a live dossier of all the
| political volunteers canvassing out there. This makes me feel so
| much safer!
| olex wrote:
| And this is why my setup will be using Reolink cameras integrated
| locally via HomeAssistant and Frigate. Detection runs locally on
| cameras and/or in Frigate, HA manages events and UI, and the only
| way to access any of it remotely is via VPN, no "cloud" anything.
|
| If the authorities come knocking with a warrant, or frankly, even
| a nicely-worded sensible request, sure, have at it. But ain't
| nobody accessing the footage unnoticed and without my approval.
| sterwill wrote:
| I bought Reolink PoE cameras because they support standard RTSP
| and I could put them on their own VLAN where they can't get to
| the Internet. I can still use the Reolink app to view them when
| I'm on the LAN, or through Wireguard when I'm not. I use ffmpeg
| to save streams to a big disk. Works great.
| olex wrote:
| Yeah, this is my idea as well. Good to know that the Reolink
| app still works locally and via Wireguard, that means I'll
| have less UI to set up in HomeAssistant.
| dhacks wrote:
| I do the same and it works well. But do you see the Reolink
| app hammering domains of the form p#p#.reolink.com? I have to
| kill the app between uses it it drains my phone's battery
| because of this.
| sterwill wrote:
| I've never looked at what the Android app is doing on the
| network, but maybe I should. I usually just keep it open
| for a few minutes when I'm waiting for a delivery or I hear
| someone ring the doorbell, so I'm not too worried about it
| piping lots of video to Reolink HQ. I haven't noticed much
| of a battery drain having used it earlier in the day.
| normie3000 wrote:
| Don't Reolink cameras require the Reolink mobile app for setup?
| olex wrote:
| Initially I believe so, but they can then be isolated via
| VLAN / firewall rules and cut off from internet access.
| sterwill wrote:
| I have 2 Reolink PoE cameras, and they just hopped on the
| network with DHCP and I used a web browser to configure them.
| No app needed. I did install the app later, once the cameras
| were safely on their own VLAN, and I could connect to them by
| internal host name or IP address.
| Flere-Imsaho wrote:
| My reolink runs off power over Ethernet. Here in the uk, there
| have been reports of Amazon drivers using wifi deauth-ing
| devices to kill the ring cameras when they are near your
| property. My parents recently experienced this.
| olex wrote:
| Absolutely, I will be running PoE wherever possible,
| definitely for the doorbell. Not just because of Amazon
| drivers, I've read reports of burglars using WiFi jammers to
| make sure wireless cameras are useless during a break-in.
| MSFT_Edging wrote:
| Cops will also go after your networking prior to busting
| down your door. Same applies regardless of a correct and
| valid warrant so do with that as you will.
|
| I'm sure the cops who trashed Afroman's place would have
| loved that ability.
| olex wrote:
| I realize that if the authorities target me specifically,
| there's not much I can do. Even though I am not in the
| States and do not expect my local police to be quite
| as... forceful.
|
| However, I do not intend to make it easy to just grab my
| footage along with any other that can be found, without
| at least asking.
| MSFT_Edging wrote:
| Yeah, this is more of a "If police screw up, they'll
| still make it a 'you' problem". IIRC the example I was
| thinking of was federal agents attempting to threaten an
| anti-ICE activist.
| beala wrote:
| Well this is disturbing. I guess my weekend project is
| running ethernet to my front door.
|
| My problem is that the area around my front door where the
| doorbell is installed is solid timber, so it's not just a
| simple ethernet drop. I'm honestly not even sure how the
| builders ran the existing wire to that location. Maybe my
| only option is to add a second backup camera in a location
| where an ethernet install is easier.
| runlaszlorun wrote:
| I'm not disputing this but I'm not sure if I understand what
| it is they're doing or why but am curious.
| jamiecurle wrote:
| Same here, only I used Hikvision PoE cameras.
|
| If I had of had a webcam on my front door a few weeks ago I
| would have been able to identify the thieves that broke into my
| car and stole a bunch of stuff whilst I was asleep.
|
| Since then I have "cammed" up, but I use my own hard wired
| network and connected to a Pi5 with a Hailo8 chip running
| frigate.
|
| No third party apps, just the fun of more stuff on the network.
| I do run a Cloudflare tunnel on the PI so that I can connect to
| Frigate from anywhere when I get alerts.
|
| But basically, it's me and only me accessing the content of
| those cameras. However I do plan to configure Frigate to upload
| the alerts and detections into S3 with a three month lifecycle.
| nullwarp wrote:
| I've had better experience with Armcrest cameras but same
| setup. Moved from using Arlo to a completely local setup and do
| not regret it one bit.
|
| Worst part was just running ethernet to the spots where the
| cameras needed to go (only crawlspace access) but nice not
| having to charge batteries and even nicer knowing i'm not
| sending video to netgear anymore.
| red-iron-pine wrote:
| dude thinks reolink is more secure -- awful lot of 9.9 CVSS
| vulns for them
| wpm wrote:
| What are the nature of those vulnerabilities though? How many
| require physical access or network access to exploit?
|
| If someone is in my house tapped into the network, cameras
| are the least of my problems.
| AlexandrB wrote:
| Who cares? If you're doing local-only cameras they're not
| internet accessible. Who's going to try to hack those vulns?
| The mailman?
| beala wrote:
| Oops I initially posted this comment at the top level before I
| saw this thread:
|
| I assume some of the concern around this is that folks don't
| want to live in a panopticon. If that's your objection, I can't
| really help with that. On the other hand, if your objection is
| that you don't want a backdoor built into your video doorbell
| (even one that you must opt into), I'm happy to report that
| there are good non-Ring options.
|
| I switched to a Reolink video doorbell, and it has decent
| support for local-only operation. It has the ability to save
| footage to a local micro SD card, and if you're worried about
| someone stealing the entire doorbell and losing your footage,
| it also supports RTSP (a common IP camera protocol). You can
| even have it upload footage to a FTP server on a schedule. It
| also supports PoE if you're lucky enough to have ethernet at
| your doorbell, or don't mind doing the drop yourself.
|
| Set up does require an app, but you don't need to use the app
| after that. Push notifs also require egress, but, iiuc, this is
| mostly because of how push notifications work. Push does NOT
| require a paid subscription.
|
| I personally just use the app, but it's nice knowing that if
| Reolink tried to pull a fast one, I could just block egress on
| my VLAN and use it locally.
|
| If you'd rather just go completely app-less, I imagine a dumb
| doorbell paired with an IP camera and a local ZoneMinder [1]
| install would provide most of the benefits of something like
| Ring. Of course, the tradeoff is you now have a second job
| being sys admin of your homelab. Pick your poison, I guess.
|
| [1] https://zoneminder.com/
| muwtyhg wrote:
| This won't matter when all of your neighbors have a Ring
| doorbell, you will still be recorded every time you leave your
| house. You are just making yourself more noticeable and
| disagreeable to the surveillance apparatus.
| shrubble wrote:
| When you take this info and combine it with the ability of Wifi7
| routers to "see" where people are in their house, you realize
| that the recent demo of Anduril's helmet that gives an
| information display that the soldier/cop wearing it can use to
| "see who is in the house" or "see around corners" etc. is not
| sci-fi but instead, something they can do today.
| CaptainOfCoit wrote:
| I hate that all our favorite sci-fi books were used as manuals
| for what to build next, instead of trying to avoid creating
| those futures in our real lives.
| dv_dt wrote:
| Read more Solarpunk? From a writers standpoint though, I
| suspect its easier to weave a dramatic plot through a
| dystopic background than a more optimistic one
| red-iron-pine wrote:
| all happy futures are the same, all terrible ones are
| terrible in their own, unique way
| rollcat wrote:
| Hard disagree.
|
| Yes, it's easier to captivate attention by evoking primal
| instincts - avoid predator, find food, reproduce, etc.
| These stories stick around in your head, the memetic
| survivors. They are easier to feed off.
|
| But "Happy" doesn't mean a perfect utopia. The entire
| "classic" Star Trek is set in a utopian future, yet with
| plenty of space for intrigue. Usually a commentary on a
| contemporary problem, with a "happy ending" that's
| supposed to show us the road to a better solution, rather
| than a bland "forever after".
|
| Even "First Contact" (a zombie/survival horror) is spun
| around the theme of "this is the history/future that
| we're saving".
|
| Bonus: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cq4QY0LGOiI>
| IAmBroom wrote:
| "It's about a family with a robot helper, that doesn't go
| beserk, and eventually recreates their late grandmother's
| casserole recipe using AI. It's a guaranteed bestseller!"
| james_marks wrote:
| You're joking, but you're not far off from Murderbot by
| Martha Wells, which has done phenomenally well.
|
| Swapping grandma's casserole recipe for fighting mega-
| corps might be the big difference.
| cyanydeez wrote:
| Whats important to understand about the indeterminacy of
| peoples minds is that if we could read each others thoughts,
| we would be vulnerable.
|
| Now with the written word and how seemingly determinant
| people are in large numbers we are again super vulnerable.
| andrepd wrote:
| Many people (including in this website) are hard at work
| creating the torment nexus.
| CaptainOfCoit wrote:
| No doubt. The question is, is that the explicit goal, and
| if so, why? And if not, don't they consider the effects of
| their actions, if they aren't, why?
| moffkalast wrote:
| The torment nexus is very interesting from a research
| standpoint and very profitable for investors. There's
| many military and industrial applications.
| red-iron-pine wrote:
| the torment nexus can't torment you specifically, you're
| overreacting.
|
| i am totally a real person and use the nexus every day to
| improve my productivity -- it is a simple and intuitive
| tool.
| Mtinie wrote:
| At this point, the path from what these teams of people
| are building to dystopian outcomes is well-mapped.
| Whether it's an explicit goal is irrelevant because if
| you can reasonably foresee the harm and proceed anyway,
| you're making a conscious choice to enable it.
| nxor wrote:
| Gotta bring home that stable paycheck (not justifying it)
| dbetteridge wrote:
| > It is difficult to get a man to understand something,
| when his salary depends on his not understanding it.
|
| Rich or poor, smart or dumb. We all are slaves to the
| mighty dollar.
| Noaidi wrote:
| When one is fascinated with building a gear, they might not
| see the machine they are creating.
|
| AI/Surveillance are only gears in the machine.
| bentcorner wrote:
| A lot of aspirational tech was consumed by builders. I dare
| you to find a nerd who has watched Star Trek and hasn't once
| thought "wouldn't it be cool if I could interact with the
| computer with my voice", or "using touchscreens for
| everything looks so futuristic"?
|
| And yet here we are complaining that our phones are over-
| listening to us and our cars no longer have knobs.
| rkomorn wrote:
| Personally, I think it's the other way around.
|
| Sci-fi writers understood both what technology could create
| in the future (and what would be desirable), and also
| understood how people abuse power and the tools available to
| them to stay in power (or gain more).
|
| In other words: they predicted the future, more than they
| inspired it. IMO, that also makes their writing that much
| more interesting.
| CaptainOfCoit wrote:
| Surprisingly, I never considered that, and agree that it
| makes the writing more interesting, I'm gonna keep this in
| mind for future stories. Thanks a lot for sharing that :)
| rkomorn wrote:
| Relatedly, somewhat, I've been reading a lot of 19th
| century French literature (because I'm French and because
| my sister is a literature teacher who's been "assigning"
| me stuff to read).
|
| It has been somewhat shocking to see how relevant the
| writing is seen through a 21st century lenses. Whether
| it's how media works, how cliques of people function,
| etc.
|
| It truly feels timeless in a way that I've found very
| surprising. It also very much supports notions that
| people don't change even if means and methods do.
| nerdponx wrote:
| Pros: potentially greater safety for police and EMS when
| dealing with touchy people, obvious benefits for fire rescue
| (assuming it works in a fire).
|
| Cons: use your imagination.
| throwway120385 wrote:
| The police have a very safe job, generally. They've done
| studies and construction workers have a much higher rate of
| injury and death than the police in the US. People have this
| idea that being a police officer is really unsafe and that
| they're throwing themselves in the line of danger just by
| doing their jobs, but most people are law-abiding and civil.
| There are people who are not, but that's not a good reason
| for the police to pretend like nobody is.
| mlinhares wrote:
| Its great for the narrative though, if you don't think
| they're special human beings risking their lives every day
| to save you how else can you convince the general
| population they should venerate them?
| reaperducer wrote:
| _if you don 't think they're special human beings risking
| their lives every day to save you how else can you
| convince the general population they should venerate
| them?_
|
| Along those lines, I think it's weird that in some
| cities, a cop who dies choking on a chicken bone on his
| day off in his own kitchen gets the same benefits and
| massive traffic-clogging live-streamed publicly-funded
| funeral with politicians and media spectacle as a cop who
| gets killed by a bad guy while on duty.
| Aurornis wrote:
| > They've done studies and construction workers have a much
| higher rate of injury and death than the police in the US.
|
| Sure, but both construction worker and police officer are
| significantly more dangerous jobs than most of us here have
| sitting behind a desk.
|
| Obviously it's not a job where people are dying routinely,
| but suggesting death or serious injury are the only two
| risks of interacting with the public and responding to
| threatening or unstable situations is ignoring the reality.
| It's a tough job. Much tougher than my time spent sitting
| at a desk.
| throwway120385 wrote:
| No I completely agree that the police need things like
| health care and mental health and training on dealing
| with crises and all of this stuff we expect. But the idea
| that they need better weapons to do their job or that
| everyone they encounter should be treated like Afghani
| insurgents using the cameras they've installed in their
| own homes is beyond dystopian. Getting shot or stabbed,
| in my understanding is way less likely than just getting
| yelled at and traumatized by someone. And so I think the
| things that actually would add value would be things that
| either help you avoid those situations in the first place
| or things that help you process and lay down the trauma
| after the fact.
| IAmBroom wrote:
| This I can agree with. I have experience with the local
| PD in handling "no good answer" domestic violence
| situations with a neighbor's mentally ill kid; they
| clearly had training to guide them. I'm grateful for
| that, although they still couldn't resolve much (the
| mental health system is still dysfunctional in the US).
| PaulHoule wrote:
| Partly it's dysfunctional but the options for treating
| severe mental illness (schizophrenia spectrum, bipolar,
| major depression) aren't that great.
|
| When you seem some guy screaming on the street corner a
| monthly depot injection of an antipsychotic drug would
| probably calm them down but overall the drugs are
| unpleasant [1] and have serious side effects,
| particularly sedation, weight gain, and high blood sugar
| [2] A "functional" system would probably be one that can
| get people like that a diagnosis and get them treatment
| _against their will_.
|
| Kanye West is a good example. He has a bipolar diagnosis
| but now thinks he is fashionably autistic so he quit
| taking his meds and now he is shooting music videos of
| black people in blackface giving the Hitler salute after
| a whiney autotuned complaint that they won't let him see
| his kids after he posted something on Twitter [3]. For
| him responsibility is not "don't cosplay as a Nazi" but
| "face up to your condition and take your meds" and he
| won't want to cosplay as a Nazi and they might let him
| see his kids.
|
| I've known quite a few people who are schizophrenia
| spectrum without a diagnosis: one of them lived at our
| house for a year and a half until she threatened my wife
| with a knife and she took her own life a year later,
| another one called us up five times in one day last week
| with a scrambled story about how she got bit by a dog, I
| sat down and listened to her for about 20 minutes in
| which she got lucid just a few times and I was able to
| piece together the place where it happened, that she's
| talked to the security guard and the EMT but not the
| police, that she did see a doctor and get a Tetanus shot
| though she wasn't sure if it was a Rottweiler or a Pit-
| bull.
|
| The good news is that new drugs are here and more are
| under development:
|
| https://www.cobenfy.com/
|
| [1] no diversion risk!
|
| [2] last year my condition got worse and my doc put me on
| the minimum dose of seroquel before going to sleep which
| is 1/10 the dose they'd give to someone who is really
| psychotic. It was effective at getting me quality sleep
| and avoiding "paranoia against objects" in the morning
| but I gained 15 lbs and my A1C was borderline in my last
| bloodwork and my doc thinks I should get off it. Even the
| smallest dose is so sedating I can't believe anyone could
| take it during the day, my guess is that if I cut the
| pills in half the sleep promoting effect will still be
| strong enough.
|
| [3] oddly not "X"
| IAmBroom wrote:
| And nurses have even a more dangerous job.
|
| I'm not convinced that being a cop is such a tough job.
| Most of it is sitting in your car waiting for speeders,
| or to warn traffic about road construction, or driving
| around looking for something unusual happening.
|
| US courts have determined they don't even have a duty to
| risk their own lives to save civilians. Kinda the entire
| purpose of their job's existence, removed.
|
| There's a lot of aggrandizement by and for cops; it's
| completely parallel to the worship of the military.
| Aurornis wrote:
| > I'm not convinced that being a cop is such a tough job.
| Most of it is sitting in your car waiting for speeders,
| or to warn traffic about road construction, or driving
| around looking for something unusual happening.
|
| The tough parts of a job aren't defined by the routine
| work. It's the risks and edge cases. That's like saying
| most of a construction worker's job is measuring things
| and reading plans so it can't be that tough.
|
| It's pretty obvious that a lot of commenters here have
| never known an actual police officer. They're just
| choosing between two extreme archetypes that aren't
| accurate: Either the heroic person risking their life on
| the daily to protect to the public, or the bumbling
| donut-eating cop who has been relegated to traffic duty
| only. Neither are true and comparing it that way is a
| false dichotomy.
|
| The irony of us sitting at desks in our warm and
| comfortable offices while calling the job of someone who
| gets called to deal with troubling public situations "not
| tough" is ironic. I wouldn't want to do that job and I
| bet you wouldn't either.
| hitarpetar wrote:
| just to make this explicit, protecting civilians has
| never been the purpose of modern police forces. they were
| developed to put down rebellions/catch slaves/protect
| rich people's property
| bpt3 wrote:
| Just to make this explicit, you are incorrect.
|
| There are plenty of instances where you would be correct,
| such as the origin of police forces in the American South
| (which were initially slave patrols), but that doesn't
| mean you are correct in all instances.
|
| I'm not sure what joy you derive from spreading
| misinformation, but you should probably reconsider it.
| pyth0 wrote:
| You didn't refute anything in the comment, other than
| saying one part of it was correct. This comment would be
| more useful if you actually made an argument.
| bpt3 wrote:
| A cursory internet search would back up my statement.
| Feel free to do that if you're interested. I note that
| you aren't asking the parent poster for any citations for
| their claim, which I would say is quite extraordinary.
|
| And to be clear, my "argument" is that the parent poster
| is objectively incorrect, which is accurate. I decided
| not to posit on why the parent poster made an objectively
| incorrect statement, though I am curious.
| hitarpetar wrote:
| > I decided not to posit on why the parent poster made an
| objectively incorrect statement
|
| you accused me of intentionally spreading misinformation
| for my own joy. bad faith argument is bad faith.
| bpt3 wrote:
| Well, why exactly are you doing it?
| hitarpetar wrote:
| begone troll
| bpt3 wrote:
| This is about the response I expected. God forbid you
| consider whether your feelings and preconceived notions
| align with reality.
|
| FYI, my response to your initial post wasn't for you.
| hitarpetar wrote:
| God forbids I engage in bad faith arguments with trolls
| who put words in my mouth
| bpt3 wrote:
| Exactly what words did I put in your mouth?
|
| This is your statement: "just to make this explicit,
| protecting civilians has never been the purpose of modern
| police forces. they were developed to put down
| rebellions/catch slaves/protect rich people's property"
|
| That statement is incorrect, no matter what your
| definition of "modern police force" is. That's it. It's
| not complicated, despite your attempts to deflect from
| the invalidity of that statement.
| pear01 wrote:
| Funny to accuse someone of "spreading misinformation"
| while agreeing there are instances where they are
| correct, then asserting there are some instances where
| they are incorrect while giving no concrete examples
| yourself.
|
| So saying something that is correct but not for all cases
| (which ones would those be) is now "spreading
| misinformation"?
|
| I'm not sure what joy you derive from dismissing
| statements you already acknowledge have an element of
| veracity with some blanket label of "misinformation", but
| you should probably reconsider it.
| bpt3 wrote:
| > Funny to accuse someone of "spreading misinformation"
| while agreeing there are instances where they are
| correct, then asserting there are some instances where
| they are incorrect while giving no concrete examples
| yourself.
|
| It's not funny, it's accurate.
|
| Spending seconds looking into the history of policing
| worldwide, or in the US, would back up my claim.
|
| Had the parent poster bothered to post evidence backing
| up their comment, I probably would have made the effort
| to post citations refuting it.
|
| > So saying something that is correct but not for all
| cases (which ones would those be) is now "spreading
| misinformation"?
|
| When you say that something is correct in all cases, yes.
|
| > I'm not sure what joy you derive from dismissing
| statements you already acknowledge have an element of
| veracity with some blanket label of "misinformation", but
| you should probably reconsider it.
|
| Nice try, but there is no "element of veracity" to an
| absolute statement that is objectively false.
| FireBeyond wrote:
| > US courts have determined they don't even have a duty
| to risk their own lives to save civilians.
|
| Not only "not risk their lives", US courts have ruled
| they have no duty to act to prevent any crime in
| progress.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| I think those narratives aren't really correct either. At a
| 50,000 foot level, yes those numbers work out. But
| occupational numbers look at all sworn officers and don't
| necessarily tell the story about the line police on the
| street. That said, the harrowing tales weaved by the unions
| in their negotiations or in TV don't tell it either.
|
| Highway patrol officers have a similar risk profile to
| construction workers. Mostly car accidents. Patrolmen in
| cities or towns get hurt in town or in altercations all of
| the time.
|
| Court officers do not. Detectives largely do not. Police
| are more likely to get shot at, but way more likely to get
| hurt in a bunch of acute and long term ways. The nature of
| the stress that many police experience measurably shortens
| their lives.
|
| The biggest issues with police with regard to officer and
| public safety are poor governance and macho culture. I live
| in New York so I'll use them as an example. NY State Police
| are highway patrol focused - they wear grey and black
| uniforms and Stetson hats. NYPD Highway patrol units wear
| black leather jackets and cavalry breeches. It looks cool
| and has a certain elan -- but officers would be safer in
| more functional dayglo attire.
|
| In terms of governance, like many areas of American
| governance, checks and balances are weak. Example: Cozy
| relationships between various departments, prosecutors, and
| perhaps elected judges mean that many NY police avoid
| prosecution or and sanction for DWI.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| See https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6400077/
|
| My understanding is that the most predictive thing that
| harms you after traumatic events is
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_injury
|
| which can even come from situations where you want to
| help people but you can't so it also badly affects
| teachers, nurses and other people who come across
| people's dysfunction and suffering. It's worse to be made
| to feel that you violated your own values than it is to,
| say, get shot.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| Great points. I have several people close to me who are
| firemen. They see shit you're not really intended to see,
| and often don't have a way to work through it. My mom was
| a nurse, mostly in CCU and ICU. She was an incredible
| advocate for her patients and profession, but she
| witnessed a lot of death and her way of intellectually
| processing that made her seem harsh about certain things,
| but it's really perspective -- most of us see death as a
| concept not reality.
|
| It's part of the reason why an observant person can
| usually spot a cop or firefighter in plain clothes. They
| put on a facade as a coping mechanism that leaks into
| life.
|
| Most problems at their root are a result of people not
| treating people like people. Many "advocates" for police
| are really just attracted to the perception of power, and
| see failures of accountability as a sign of strength.
| It's the opposite.
| _DeadFred_ wrote:
| If they cared about police safety, they wouldn't do warrant
| checks at every interaction. If they cared about community
| policing, they wouldn't do warrant checks at every
| interaction. Because warrant checks make every situation
| potentially one where they are interacting with someone who
| has a life sentence over their head and might do something
| crazy.
|
| Removing that one step just for community policing would
| completely change police interactions. Community policing
| is not the place to inject warrant enforcement, it too
| completely changes the dynamics.
| cassepipe wrote:
| A country like the US has around 0.47 deaths in the line of
| duty per million per year whereas a country like Germany
| where people can't buy gun just like that is at 0.37 and a
| country like the UK where normal cops do not have guns is at
| 0.05
|
| Which is easier, Wifi 7 in all homes or gun restrictions ?
| IAmBroom wrote:
| False dichotomy.
| onlyrealcuzzo wrote:
| I got hit by a car in a hit and run, and despite there being
| dozens of cameras, and me getting the footage of the car
| hitting me and driving off (not clear shot on license plate),
| the police immediately called it a cold case and refused to
| even try to get footage from any other cameras nearby - so
| I'll hold my breath that they use this for anything to
| prevent crime.
| endymion-light wrote:
| In reality - I think this will be far worse than that. Why send
| in an expensive soldiers or a cop when you could just filter in
| a drone
| InsideOutSanta wrote:
| "Just trust us, the people on that boat were definitely
| smuggling drugs."
| moffkalast wrote:
| Back in the good old days police had some dedication to
| their work and some professional integrity. They would at
| least go through the effort of planting the drugs
| afterwards...
| hopelite wrote:
| "Just trust us" ... said the people who constantly
| instigate conflicts and wars and orchestrate and perpetrate
| false-flag operations to then claim they had to attack and
| murder people.
|
| What the public does not understand though is that THEIR
| complicity and facilitation is not only integral, it is
| even necessary in a "democracy" where a psychological
| "consent" must be manufactured, not dissimilar to basic
| grooming tactics. And no, it's no coincidence that all the
| western leadership and institutions are effectively all
| various types of groomers, i.e., psychological manipulators
| and abusers.
| throwway120385 wrote:
| "The guys we blew up with a drone were definitely
| jihadists."
| red-iron-pine wrote:
| some of them were definitely jihadists.
|
| but the other half of the wedding party they hit were
| not...
| brandonmenc wrote:
| Next time a jihadist invites you to their wedding...
| politely decline.
| mothballed wrote:
| At one point I volunteered to join an anti-jihadist
| Syrian militia (YPG) that was backed by the US
| government. When I returned to the US, they flagged my
| passport (and interrogated me everytime I crossed a
| border for about a decade).... thinking I was a
| _jihadist._
|
| So yeah consider that the government is so dumb that one
| half of the government thinks the secular anti-jihadist
| militias supported by the other half of government are
| actually jihadists.
| IAmBroom wrote:
| Not any better, nor different, than a missile from a
| piloted plane, or a guided missile.
|
| Yes, the current administration is morally capable of
| destroying random ships to claim victories over "bad
| guys". But they always had that ability.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| No, it's not. Whataboutism is collaborating. Don't be
| that guy.
|
| The difference with this administration is that they
| aren't even pretending to follow the nominal controls or
| rules to wield that force.
|
| There was a legal concept around the
| drone/missile/commando/aerial strikes to assassinate
| targeted individuals in the Middle East. The morality of
| that action was dubious at best, but what's happening in
| the Caribbean doesn't even meet that very low moral,
| ethical, or legal bar.
|
| This administration, with their craven collaborators on
| the Supreme Court, is solely focused on asserting
| virtually unlimited executive power to a fairly obvious
| end.
| nonford150 wrote:
| As was the administrations of Clinton and Obama. The real
| issue is they (whomever is currently in power) can do
| these things, and there's nothing we can do to stop it
| from happening.
| esafak wrote:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=901lYbPmqu4
| grafmax wrote:
| Yikes. Talk about imperial boomerang.
| aesh2Xa1 wrote:
| Cellular radios also have this capability. There's work done to
| track individuals in this way (matching your walking
| pattern/gait).
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44416761
|
| Signal processing is probably a general problem. This month we
| had news about transcribing speech from sound waves jiggling a
| regular computer mouse.
|
| https://www.theregister.com/2025/10/07/mouse_microphone_secu...
| Aurornis wrote:
| > When you take this info and combine it with the ability of
| Wifi7 routers to "see" where people are in their house,
|
| WiFi routers can't tell you where people are in the house. The
| routers don't even know their own location within the house.
|
| All of those papers you see on the topic have extensive
| additional information being put into their models. The routers
| don't magically know the layout of your house.
|
| At most, a WiFi device could infer movement in a house if the
| RSSI of devices is fluctuating where it is normally stable.
| Almondsetat wrote:
| The police has access to the planimetry of your home.
| Secondly, if they get close enough they can measure the
| distance between the agent and the router, and then deduce
| all the relative distances from the router to the people
| inside.
| Aurornis wrote:
| This is sci-fi fantasy mixed with paranoia.
|
| The floor plan of every home is not on file, especially
| older homes.
|
| Police aren't accessing your floor plan and then accessing
| your router and combining these into a perfect model that
| maps people's locations. Where in this supposed plan are
| the police deducing the location of your WiFi router in the
| house and constructing a model of all materials and objects
| in the house that impact the model?
|
| This just isn't how those research papers work. It's not
| something the police are going to combine with a file from
| the planning office and magically have a map of you in your
| house like in a movie.
| mothballed wrote:
| They could easily find it for most people. It is
| generally public record, in my county it's available
| online, unless the individual built the home themselves
| (mine isn't on file because I opted out of building codes
| and planning, but commercial home builders can't do that
| here).
|
| But let's be real, police constantly barge in to the
| wrong address, looking for people that have been gone for
| years, accomplishing not much more than shooting a
| beloved dog on a hair-brained last second witch hunt.
| It's not that they can't do it, it's that they have the
| attention span and executive planning facilities of a
| burnt out coke addict 3 hours post their latest scratch
| off ticket winnings.
| nedrylandJP wrote:
| (fyi, hare-brained... like a hare)
| mathgeek wrote:
| Depends on how far you go back with the language.
| https://grammarphobia.com/blog/2013/10/harebrained-
| hairbrain...
| Aurornis wrote:
| A floor plan is not equivalent to a complete RF
| characterization of an environment. Ignore the floor plan
| comments because they don't enable WiFi positioning.
|
| Think through it: Does your floor plan contain info about
| the precise location of your WiFi devices and any
| obstructions between them? Even that isn't enough to get
| a WiFi location model, but it's not in there regardless.
| chaostheory wrote:
| Yet. Given the availability of the data online and that
| most new startups are defense or security oriented, it's
| only a matter of time.
| addicted wrote:
| Yeah, your local friendly police officer isn't gonna do
| that.
|
| They're gonna pay Anduril, Palantir, and a whole host of
| other business or consulting firms a ton of your money to
| do that.
|
| The criticism that "it's technically too challenging for
| the police department therefore its sci-fi" is extremely
| silly given that the current article literally is about
| private companies that are building surveillance networks
| that they will then sell to the police.
|
| Which makes the entire situation a lot worse.
| wildzzz wrote:
| It's a lot cheaper to just bust the door down, toss in a
| bunch of flash bangs and light up anyone who doesn't have
| their hands raised. Maybe they'll just send an armed
| robot in first if there's a specific threat involved.
| _DeadFred_ wrote:
| Everything about our world today was the stuff of
| dystopian paranoia 20 years ago.
| array_key_first wrote:
| Police aren't _doing_ anything, they 're worthless.
|
| Tech companies are doing stuff and giving police free for
| all access and use. Which is worse, because as stated,
| police are worthless. You think they consider the
| consequences or the rights of the people they use those
| tools on? Come on now.
|
| This can be provided as a service, if it isn't already.
| Im sure something similar already exists.
| msie wrote:
| Police won't even check the address before they raid a
| place, so I don't think so.
| hollywood_court wrote:
| Yep. I used to be a building/remodeling contractor. If I
| accidentally showed up to the wrong address and
| demolished the wrong deck, I'd be responsible for making
| the property owner whole again.
|
| If a cop serves a warrant and the wrong address and ends
| ups murdering a child, that cop will receive sympathy and
| paid time off.
| FireBeyond wrote:
| Yeah, people have (attempted to) sue PDs and cities for
| even woefully negligent wrong address raids (different
| street to warrant and documentation), and the courts have
| happily told them "sucks to be you, they have no
| requirement to pay for any damage".
| noja wrote:
| So combine it with a plan made from a social media posting.
| zoklet-enjoyer wrote:
| Or a robotic vacuum. Or one of the other thousand houses
| with the same layout in the neighborhood
| addicted wrote:
| Or a Roomba... One of the first things they want to do is
| make a plan of the house.
|
| But also, don't builders have to submit plans of homes to
| the local government when building them for approval?
| Aurornis wrote:
| Floor plan isn't enough for a location model. These have to
| be learned in from accurately tagged data combined with
| measurements taken at the precise time of the tagged
| location data. A lot of tagged data.
|
| You're not going from a floor plan to a precise location
| model. Just think about how different the WiFi environment
| would be if someone put their router next to their steel
| computer case versus someone setting it on a nice MDF
| cabinet with no wires nearby. Completely different RF
| environment and pathing.
| matt_heimer wrote:
| Not just social media postings but past real estate listings
| can probably provide floor plans.
|
| And if you don't have those, a lot of buildings have common
| patterns. Its very much in the realm of possibility to train
| a model using exterior and interior information so that you
| could have AI generate a floor plan using only exterior data.
|
| Combine that with a small drone that could fly around a
| building and take different wifi signal readings to
| triangulate access point positions.
|
| Once you have all that don't you have everything you need to
| detect movement in the building based on signal disruptions?
|
| Yes, seems like a bit of work but it absolutely seems like
| the type of effort some governments would put effort into.
| aftbit wrote:
| >Combine that with a small drone that could fly around a
| building and take different wifi signal readings to
| triangulate access point positions.
|
| That seems like all you'd need anyway, skip the rest of
| this. Small autonomous drones with simultaneous location
| and mapping capability will absolutely revolutionize
| warfare (and firefighting, but I digress) whenever they
| stop being sci-fi.
| Aurornis wrote:
| > Not just social media postings but past real estate
| listings can probably provide floor plans.
|
| I regret even engaging with the floor plan debate.
|
| It doesn't matter if they have a floor plan. That's not
| enough information to characterize the RF environment of a
| house and how it responds to people moving through it.
|
| A floor plan won't tell you the position of all the WiFi
| devices, obstructions, and how the environment responds to
| moving those around. It won't even tell you where the
| router is with any precision or if it's next to a big chunk
| of metal like a computer case that's blocking half the
| house and causing reflections.
|
| It's a red herring.
| pavel_lishin wrote:
| Couldn't someone standing outside figure out where interior
| routers are by triangulation, simply by walking around the
| house?
| adolph wrote:
| Kinda: ESPARGOS: ESP32-based WiFi sensing array
|
| https://espargos.net/
| ddxv wrote:
| Isn't that already enough for a heads up display? Direction
| relative to where I am point and shoot? I don't think the
| layout of the house matters that much since the person using
| the 'wifi' router strapped to their back/head can already see
| what's in front of them?
| bongodongobob wrote:
| A flashbang or tear gas will also do the trick, they don't need
| fancy wifi tricks.
| fhdkweig wrote:
| Today? No, 30 years ago.
|
| https://www.militaryaerospace.com/communications/article/167...
| zitterbewegung wrote:
| I question where it's a good idea to give police / solider a
| big reflective helmet that can cause headaches, eye strain, and
| nausea (the previous system from Microsoft before Anduril took
| over). There were constant complaints by the users that it
| wasn't useful. I see Anduril using less lenses but the
| reflective ness of this helmet makes it a huge threat to the
| user of the product.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integrated_Visual_Augmentation...
| https://www.cnbc.com/2025/02/11/anduril-to-take-over-microso...
| flanked-evergl wrote:
| Everybody is a libertarian when their political opposition has
| power.
| InsideOutSanta wrote:
| The corollary is that, when in power, many "libertarians" are
| only concerned with their own rights and nobody else's, failing
| to understand that any rights they give up for others may soon
| be lost for them too.
|
| It's just the brown people who are put in detention centers,
| isn't it?
| hopelite wrote:
| Do you believe burglars have more rights in your home and to
| your things than you do? Then why do you apply that logic to
| others that then must suffer your abusive imposition of
| abuse? How about you just abuse yourself if you want to
| abuse.
|
| Why does in your mind a "brown person" that is a foreign
| national who broke the law in and of America by entering
| and/or remaining in the USA, have more rights to have a job,
| make money, and even receive public assistance in America
| than a non-"brown person" that is a legitimate citizen of the
| USA?
|
| What is worse, is that you don't even understand that your
| support of this kind of lawlessness is only for the purpose
| of allowing the rich to plunder the working and lower middle
| class, the real victims that through your words and actions
| hate with a passion.
|
| Sure, burglars also benefit from burglarizing, but that does
| not make it any better than foreign nationals benefitting
| while the rich also use them like some crime boss in control
| of a burglary ring. How do you think, e.g., the home builders
| who make ~30% gross profit on homes that are poorly built due
| to "immigrant labor" report triple digit billion dollar
| returns?
|
| You people baffle me that you cannot connect two dots as you
| at the same time lament that wages are too low, as you
| support floods of wage decreasing supply flooding
| "immigration".
|
| No one is targeting "brown people" they just happen to be the
| majority of brown people the ruling class loves importing to
| profit from at the expense of the indigenous people, just
| like when the British and Hispanics did it through slavery.
| You are no different than the slavery rationalizers of the
| 17th-19th century. Today the ruling class just figured out
| how to manipulate you into supporting importation of brown
| people to undermine the indigenous people, and you don't have
| the intellect or integrity to understand you are being
| manipulated.
| vkou wrote:
| > Do you believe burglars have more rights in your home and
| to your things than you do?
|
| Do you believe that you aren't presenting a ridiculous
| false dichotomy?
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| I wouldn't say that. I put what's good for our community first
| -- above my own individual rights. That is not Libertarian and
| I have not wavered from that.
| Spivak wrote:
| Like HN hasn't been railing against Ring and Flock since their
| inception. The only difference today is that there's a
| dangerously stupid arm of the government that now has access to
| it.
|
| It's the exact same problem HN has been talking about for years
| except now a group of wannabe commandos who stake out in the
| parking lots of Mexican restaurants now have a tool where they
| can just type in their stereotypes and have the AI find them.
| agigao wrote:
| This is why I never bought anything Amazon owned, other than
| Kindles; and I have dropped the latter, too.
|
| I was always suspicious of Ring and never understood the people
| using it.
| gilfoy wrote:
| My entire neighborhood came with ring doorbells pre installed
| and eero routers.
|
| I swapped out to the Logitech doorbell which I like better
| anyway
| troyvit wrote:
| So like it just came with the houses as they were built? If
| that's the case I wonder what kind of deal Ring make with the
| builders of new neighborhoods.
| Aachen wrote:
| Here in the Netherlands, the government gave them away for
| free
|
| They're also illegal because you're not allowed to film
| public spaces without a good reason (it's up to the judge and
| case law to decide, e.g. if there has been arson in the area
| recently then it's reasonable to monitor your car that's
| parked at the kerb, for example). Nobody has yet gotten in
| trouble to my knowledge
|
| Gotta love hypocrisy
| IT4MD wrote:
| Agreed. Ring has a proven track record of giving up whatever
| video law enforcement wants, regardless of your choice or
| privacy laws.
|
| If it was free, I could almost understand. Nothing is free, and
| if it cost the customer nothing, then the customer is the
| product. However, people paid for Ring gear and as a thanks
| have their privacy violated with no notice, no info and no
| choice.
| array_key_first wrote:
| Forget law enforcement, for years they allowed all their
| employees to access literally any camera whenever they want.
|
| There were women being stalked by ring employees. It was that
| bad. Teslas had (has?) a similar problem.
| nbngeorcjhe wrote:
| I _hate_ walking down the block and hearing their dumb "Hi! You
| are being recorded!" jingle. Ffs if you're going to record me at
| least do it quiely
| kylehotchkiss wrote:
| Me too, but these people probably aren't having their cars
| pilfered in the middle of the night.
| pjmlp wrote:
| Look the outcomes from past history to understand how future will
| become.
|
| Sadly it is only going to get much worse before it gets better.
| hopelite wrote:
| I am not sure how that would be helpful, regardless of how you
| mean that. Nothing in the past has ever even gotten remotely
| close to what even exists today, let alone what will exist in
| all of our lifetimes, no matter how old you are.
| pjmlp wrote:
| I am quite sure there are a few lessons from the past that
| can be used to guess where current administration is going.
|
| Then is up for the citzens to let it happen or react.
| danparsonson wrote:
| Humans are basically the same, even if the technology is
| different.
|
| "History doesn't repeat itself but rhymes a lot" (or words to
| that effect). What is happening now in the US (and many other
| places) strongly echoes the events leading up to WW2.
| idiotsecant wrote:
| Stop paying companies to put spyware in your house. Don't connect
| your smart TV to the network, don't buy cloud cameras, and above
| all don't run a phone with an OS that they phone company gives
| you.
| BaudouinVH wrote:
| My first thought : Orwell's 1984 Telescreen is happening.
| add-sub-mul-div wrote:
| In 1984 I can't remember if they prostrated themselves so
| fully, purchasing the screens that would spy on them, and did
| it all come about because they were sucking on the tit of
| "free" shipping that costs $139/year?
| linuxftw wrote:
| Keep voting for politicians that spend our money on weapons and
| violence, this is the stuff we'll keep getting. This applies to
| both major political parties in the US.
| scottydelta wrote:
| Flock is funded and supported by YC.
|
| Not sure how YC sees this.
| badgersnake wrote:
| If it brings in ARR it makes an exit more likely and that makes
| them happy.
|
| They're "investors, not bosses" -
| https://www.ycombinator.com/principles/
| reaperducer wrote:
| _They 're investors, not bosses_
|
| Being an investor is not an excuse. It makes you amoral, too.
|
| "I didn't build the bomb, I just funded the company that
| built it."
| Refreeze5224 wrote:
| That's the beauty of capitalism, its very foundation allows
| you to act immorally or amorally, and pretend that it's ok
| because of "the market", "invisible hands", "revealed
| preferences", etc. If it's immoral but done in pursuit of
| maximizing shareholder value, it's magically allowed.
| red-iron-pine wrote:
| why do you think YC have any more morals than Ring? or
| Palantir?
| buellerbueller wrote:
| This is YC.
|
| In case you haven't noticed, the surveillance state is 100% YC
| adjacent.
| femiagbabiaka wrote:
| This is the logical conclusion to the state of irrational fear
| that Americans perpetually live in, that causes them to feel they
| need 24/7 surveillance of their homes, no matter the
| consequences.
| dormento wrote:
| "Land of the free".
|
| I struggle to reconcile.
| pear01 wrote:
| A line from George Carlin comes to mind...
|
| https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=-54c0IdxZWc
| troupo wrote:
| Unfortunately this is contagious. During the last election
| cycle in Sweden the Moderate party (third-largest in
| parliament, and part of the government) literally ran ads like
| "More cameras on our streets for safety"
|
| _Edit_ : added country
| nielsbot wrote:
| We need a competent counter-narrative but no one (few)
| figures in the federal government are offering one. The media
| also loves to report on crime. Etc.
|
| I hope people will join their local community groups.
| xysix wrote:
| It's about control, not fear.
|
| Nobody is consenting to it out of fear.
| Noaidi wrote:
| I disagree. Fear is the tool authoritarians use to control
| people. First they make you fear the other, then they make
| you fear their force.
|
| When your fear the other the consent is internal.
| pavel_lishin wrote:
| Do you mean about the folks with Ring cameras needing to feel
| control over their environment, and feeling like giving
| access to the Police/Flock/ICE will help gain that sort of
| control?
| array_key_first wrote:
| You control people by instilling fear.
|
| Anybody can merely force someone else to do something. I can,
| you can. That's small fry stuff.
|
| The real ticket is getting people to do the things you want
| with no force. Convincing them to act against their own
| interests. Now, thats much harder, and that's the type of
| thing the big dogs are looking at.
| IncreasePosts wrote:
| I think most people with video door bells just like being able
| to answer the door when they aren't at home and to see who is
| there without getting up from the couch
| femiagbabiaka wrote:
| This program would literally not be possible if that was the
| case, as it's completely opt-in. Citizen, Flock, Ring,
| they're all symptoms of the same disease.
|
| But let's say you're right: that means that laziness is
| enough to bring on the surveillance state.
| IncreasePosts wrote:
| It's "opt in by default" - aka opt-out.
| femiagbabiaka wrote:
| Getting the notifications is opt-in by default, choosing
| to hand over your video footage is not:
| For Ring users, the process is the same. Your privacy and
| control over your videos and information are non-
| negotiable, and your participation is completely
| optional. Public safety agencies can't see who received a
| notification or who chose not to respond. You can even
| turn off Community Request notifications altogether if
| you prefer. By combining community safety with strong
| privacy protections, Community Requests respects
| individual choice while helping neighborhoods thrive.
| kylehotchkiss wrote:
| Video door bells are a massive safety feature for people
| living by themselves.
| kylehotchkiss wrote:
| Yup! I've had my car stolen and broken into in the past. So I
| have a rational fear the same thing could happen to my house,
| so I have a ring system. Out of respect for my neighbors, I'll
| go the E2EE pathway and make sure my camera isn't tilted
| towards the road, but I'm not going without cameras again.
| femiagbabiaka wrote:
| Unfortunately the advent of the IP camera, or the Citizen
| app, and decreases in crime, have no correlation. It just
| makes one feel better, which is fine in the same way that
| smoking in public is fine.
| buellerbueller wrote:
| The camera will not prevent it.
| tommaho wrote:
| I'm surprised to not see more noise about Rings new "search
| party" features, for... Finding dogs?
| Jupe wrote:
| So, rather than Big Brother being government-imposed monitoring
| paid for by all taxpayers, the concerned citizenry is flipping
| the bill for the devices, network connectivity and electricity.
| Fascinating.
| downrightmike wrote:
| always, flock just charges local governments and then charges
| the police too to get access. They get us coming and going, and
| yet most crimes and murders go unsolved still. If a cop can
| track his Ex through hundreds of cams, why aren't the solve
| rates better? (Its not about crime)
| PaulHoule wrote:
| Flock is controversial in my area
| https://transparency.flocksafety.com/ithaca-city-ny-pd
| macNchz wrote:
| Not clear to me what the "External organizations with access"
| actually means or who decided which organizations to add to the
| list, but it's curious to me that the campus patrol for a
| college 250 miles away (SUNY Old Westbury) has access to camera
| data from Ithaca.
| FireBeyond wrote:
| (Ex Flock Employee) It's as simple as that agency saying
| "Hey, can we have access to your camera data?" and the
| originating agency saying "Sure".
|
| Flock (deliberately, IMHO) has no verification on whether
| said agencies are allowed by law or regulation or whatever to
| have that access, it's just a free-for-all.
| Noaidi wrote:
| Louis Rossmann has been going of a lot about Flock lately, and
| not only in Austin:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mQxQpzNSNZU&pp=0gcJCfwJAYcqI...
| MereInterest wrote:
| And actively ignoring state law in others, then violating
| cease-and-desist orders when told to remove the cameras.
|
| [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45382434 (discussion
| from 2025-09-26)
| righthand wrote:
| People need devices that will protect them from this mass
| surveillance. Plausible deniability needs to be restored.
|
| Some sort of jamming tech or scrambling tech. There's no reason
| to lock everyone into a surveillance state when we should be
| fighting it. Fighting through legislation isn't tenable anymore.
| xbar wrote:
| With the stroke of a key, 100 million customer-installed cameras
| become part of the surveillance state.
| AlexandrB wrote:
| This was always the end game for Ring. I think people were
| saying this since before the Amazon acquisition. The
| acquisition itself always struck me as Amazon attempting to
| reduce "shrinkage" - brick and mortar stores have their "loss
| prevention" team and Amazon has Ring.
|
| The bottom line with technology is that you either host and
| control it yourself or you're at the whims of the vendor's
| business strategy.
| an0malous wrote:
| This is also the end game for LLMs
| grafmax wrote:
| Unfortunately you can't opt out. The surveillance network
| blankets virtually everyone - friends, family, all of
| society.
| ChrisArchitect wrote:
| Official post: https://blog.ring.com/about-ring/ring-expands-
| community-requ...
| prayerie wrote:
| Having tried to do this already to no avail, does anyone know if
| as an owner of one of these Ring devices if it's possible to take
| it offline and handle everything locally?
|
| I'm usually against these types of "smart" devices, but only
| bought it because my house got burgled as a student (whilst I was
| asleep!), so I got pretty shaken up and got the cheapest thing I
| could find. Currently, I do have it connected to a local HA
| instance, but I'm pretty sure that relies on Ring's online
| services to access it, unless I'm mistaken.
| baby_souffle wrote:
| Ring has better than typical device security. If you're not
| looking to reverse engineer a brand new exploit, there are
| other devices that do the same thing but are designed to be
| local first.
|
| Google for rtsp doorbell and you'll find many discussion
| threads
| foobarian wrote:
| Unfortunately MAC addresses are hard to mask. With a DIY camera
| you could customize the MAC address, but it would still be
| visible. To truly hide it I suppose you'd need to use a wired
| interface. Ubiquiti used to make 700MHz WiFi adapters but I
| don't think those are a thing any longer
| Noaidi wrote:
| Why not just get rid of it? Your anxiety is triggered from the
| past, not the present. We have lived without these devices in
| perfect safety and security for a long time. Simplify and be
| free!
| tamimio wrote:
| To control the public, just play on the fear or safety part, and
| they will just follow mindlessly.
| msie wrote:
| Doesn't matter, cops will raid a home on no more info than
| intuition.
| Noaidi wrote:
| Some serious boycotts need to be happening, and soon. I do not
| care if this was an R or a D administration, this has been out of
| control and just getting worse.
|
| This is us against the oligarchs, not us against each other. And
| something makes me worried that there is an impending
| recession/depression and that these surveillance devices will be
| use to quell any dissent. (I say this because of the insane rise
| in the price of gold)
|
| I, for one, am canceling my Amazon Prime account and avoiding
| amazon as much as I can in this dystopia where it is the only
| place you can buy many goods anymore.
| JeremyHerrman wrote:
| Unifi G4 Doorbell Pro [0] is a great self-hosted option. I've
| been very happy with mine over the last year, but I was already
| bought into the unifi ecosystem with a UDM Pro SE and U6 mesh
| APs.
|
| 0: https://store.ui.com/us/en/category/cameras-
| doorbells/collec...
| IT4MD wrote:
| I just installed mine (last weekend) and use a Unifi stack at
| home.
|
| 100% recommended alternative.
| nerdsniper wrote:
| Alternatively, the Reolink Doorbell cameras for anyone who
| doesn't want to be on the Unifi/Ubiquiti platform. Also I
| believe all these cameras provide a generic RTSP feed which can
| be consumed by any computer running Frigate[0], an open-source
| NVR/AI platform.
|
| 0: https://frigate.video
|
| (Reolink, Unifi/Ubiquiti, and Frigate are all good solutions
| for anyone who is not interested in supporting the
| proliferation of a police-state)
| mway wrote:
| Unfortunate that there's no stock except for the PoE variant.
|
| I wonder if it's because the G6 is (afaict) launching in Q4? I
| guess we'll just have to hold tight for now.
| zrail wrote:
| I have a Unifi Protect system and am generally pretty happy
| with it. The biggest problem I have is similar in spirit to the
| Ring problem: remote access is required to get push alerts from
| the mobile app.
|
| Unifi had an issue at the end of 2023 where users could access
| consoles they didn't own through remote access:
| https://www.theregister.com/2023/12/15/ubiquiti_camera_priva...
|
| If I (or more specifically my spouse) could work the mobile app
| without SSO I'd be thoroughly satisfied. As it stands I have
| some regrets.
| vanc_cefepime wrote:
| I have the same UI protect system w 7 cameras. After that
| incident, I made it local only. I like Unifi gear, but I
| became super paranoid after that incident.
|
| After some digging around, I found homebridge [0] (with the
| homebridge-unifi-protect plugin by hjdhjd [1]) which fixed
| that for me by tying the UI Protect system into Apple's
| HomeKit ecosystem (which also leverages the homekit secure
| video that keeps alerts/motion/snapshots on iCloud). Now all
| our devices are able to have it popup alerts for motions,
| packages, etc.
|
| It's not perfect, but this way I'm able to get alerts without
| tying in to Unifi's SSO system. I also still like to open the
| UI Protect app when I'm not on the local network to sometimes
| archive videos, view cameras, mess with one of the new UI PTZ
| cameras, so I have backup access options, including
| Tailscale. Tailscale doesn't give me the alerts I want, but
| lets me access the app as if I were still at home. I also
| have it tied in with HomeAssistant and recently began playing
| around with go2rtc.
|
| I'm a super-newb when it comes to all this but 2022 is when I
| began getting fed up with all these privacy nightmares and
| began to teach myself selfhosting, docker, etc so I can
| mitigate all this. Unfortunately, I'm the only one who knows
| how to tinker and keep all this updated. However, I do have
| documentation for my wife how to access everything and start
| fresh to make it easier on her by using UI's SSO way so it
| "just works" as they say in the Macintosh World, when I'm no
| longer around.
|
| [0] https://homebridge.io/ [1]
| https://github.com/hjdhjd/homebridge-unifi-protect#readme
| zrail wrote:
| That's a really interesting setup, thanks for the links!
| I'm pretty deep into Home Assistant but that plugin looks
| amazing.
| tptacek wrote:
| _However, AI-powered technology used by law enforcement has been
| proven to exacerbate racial biases._
|
| This is a little misleading. Flock is primarily an ALPR that can
| identify make/model/color/identifying-feature of vehicles. It's
| not facial recognition. It doesn't itself have a racial
| component. The modal "proactive" Flock intervention (as opposed
| to investigative searches after crimes) is to flag a moving
| vehicle as stolen.
|
| But in practice, the outcomes of deploying Flock are racialized,
| because the hot lists states keep of stolen vehicles aren't
| accurate enough for real-time enforcement, so recovered vehicles
| stay on the lists and false-positive. You're disproportionately
| likely to have a vehicle on a hot list if you live in a low-
| income neighborhood.
|
| Even then: it's not clear how any of this is apposite to a
| Ring/Flock partnership. You can't use a Ring camera to do
| realtime ALPR flagging of cars. Presumably, this supports Flock's
| "single pane of glass" product; they just want police going to
| Flock for all their video needs. Police _already_ canvass Ring
| and Nest cameras during investigations.
| gigel82 wrote:
| They're a lot more than "license plate readers", they're
| complete AI surveillance systems:
| https://consumerrights.wiki/w/Flock_License_Plate_Readers
| tptacek wrote:
| They're license plate readers, make/model/identifying-feature
| databases, and search engines. I didn't say they were just
| "license plate readers".
| puppycodes wrote:
| have you seen this?
|
| https://www.flocksafety.com/products/flock-dfr
|
| much much more dystopian...
| tptacek wrote:
| What's your point? Obviously we wouldn't allow something
| like this to be deployed in our community. But what does
| that have to do with Flock providing an interface to
| police departments for collecting Ring camera footage?
|
| I don't think that's a good thing --- I think PDs should
| continue to manually canvass for footage and specifically
| ask residents for footage when they need it, I think
| that's actually the right public policy and we don't need
| to innovate past it. But good or bad, it has nothing to
| do with Flock's "AI".
| giantg2 wrote:
| Zoneminder is a good alternative
| beaker52 wrote:
| This combined with all the price increases makes me hate the fact
| I bought a ring doorbell.
| buellerbueller wrote:
| It was only a matter of time.
| jajuuka wrote:
| I think Amazon hired the bizarro team to run Ring. Because they
| just keep giving reasons NOT to get a Ring device.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2025-10-17 23:01 UTC)