[HN Gopher] Amazon Ring's lost dog ad sparks backlash amid fears...
___________________________________________________________________
Amazon Ring's lost dog ad sparks backlash amid fears of mass
surveillance
Author : jedberg
Score : 303 points
Date : 2026-02-11 18:43 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.theverge.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.theverge.com)
| jedberg wrote:
| Amazon also had the ad about Alexa killing you. Not sure what
| they were thinking exactly.
| tantalor wrote:
| That ad was great. I'm not sure how it sells Alexa products,
| but it was hilarious.
| wakamoleguy wrote:
| It was some attempt at reductio ad absurdum. If you are
| concerned about letting Alexa into your home, you must be as
| irrational as Chris Hemsworth. Edit: I'm misusing reductio ad
| absurdum, but somebody will please tell me what the fallacy
| here is called.
| dmoy wrote:
| Straw man?
| 1970-01-01 wrote:
| What backlash? "People voiced concerns" turns out to be 9 people
| if you follow the link. Where exactly is this backlash and why
| can't I smell it?
| wolvoleo wrote:
| Ring has experienced backlash before when they allowed police
| departments to browse the imagery without any kind of oversight
| or warrant. And has changed their policies as a result (in the
| most minimal way but ok)
|
| And these are pretty high profile people whose job it is to
| represent the people who will also have concerns but don't all
| contact the verge about it :)
|
| By the way i use ring cameras too but I've already mitigated
| them a lot. Installed telephoto lenses that can only see the
| specific area I want them to see, and I removed the microphones
| so they can't hear what I'm saying. I got some free with my
| ring alarm so I didn't really want to waste the hardware
| either.
| ranger_danger wrote:
| If you search for this story on other sites, the comments are
| full of backlash.
| igleria wrote:
| At what number of people do you consider it a backlash?
| 1970-01-01 wrote:
| 1% of subscribers
| thesuitonym wrote:
| What about people who aren't subscribers and do not want
| their privacy invaded?
| 1970-01-01 wrote:
| I'm afraid it's GDPR for them
| add-sub-mul-div wrote:
| The subtext is that idiots are buying these things and should
| at least become aware that there are reasons for backlash that
| haven't occurred to them.
| assimpleaspossi wrote:
| I found out that on Reddit people go there and ask things like
| this (someone asked recently): "My girlfriend and I are looking
| for something to do. Are there any protests going on today we
| can go to?"
|
| Can you imagine people actually searching things out like that?
| These "people voicing concerns" are like that. Someone has to
| find something to be enraged about for the sake of finding
| something to do.
| goatlover wrote:
| Or people are concerned about living in a surveillance state
| and wish to protest that or some other issue. Why downplay
| legitimate societal concerns?
| olyjohn wrote:
| Can you imagine people actually believing a post on Reddit,
| and then extrapolating that to everybody who is going to a
| protest?
| wantlotsofcurry wrote:
| What an absurd take.
| nutjob2 wrote:
| So instead of drinking or shopping they want to support a
| cause?
|
| My god how do they live with themselves.
| egorfine wrote:
| Exactly. There are certainly more than 9 of us who value
| privacy and understand where this is going, but in comparison
| to millions of normies we aren't even a screeching voice of
| minority[1].
|
| [1] https://www.howtogeek.com/746588/apple-discusses-
| screeching-...
| teeray wrote:
| Everyone I've talked to about the Super Bowl ads has mentioned
| that one and said that it is creepy af. The backlash is mostly
| word of mouth in my experience.
| gentleman11 wrote:
| Fears of mass surveillance? It's already mass surveillance
| colechristensen wrote:
| This nitpick in language adds nothing to the conversation and
| is fundamentally incorrect. "Fears of" does not imply the thing
| feared doesn't exist.
| raised_by_foxes wrote:
| Fear of bears in the woods? We already had bears.
| davidw wrote:
| The WeRateDogs guy broke character and put out a video attacking
| that ad
|
| https://bsky.app/profile/weratedogs.com/post/3mejrtyvkyc2o
| blell wrote:
| The weratedogs guy has been posting political messages for as
| long as I can remember. This is completely in character for
| him.
| moffkalast wrote:
| "They aren't good politicians, Bront."
| Archelaos wrote:
| What exactly are the "neighborhood cameras" mentioned in the
| article?
| jedberg wrote:
| Everyone's Ring doorbells and cameras.
| wolvoleo wrote:
| https://archive.is/J7KGU
|
| Archive link posted because in some cases (not all, strange
| enough) there's a paywall ("subscribe to continue reading")
| crooked-v wrote:
| That ad gave me a visceral shudder of revulsion, not so much for
| the specific functionality on display as for the timing, which
| absolutely could not have been accidental. They might as well
| have just put 'and we're working on automatic alerts for ICE!' in
| the ad.
| themafia wrote:
| "Helping abusive husbands find their escaped wives."
| blibble wrote:
| that advert is just so horribly manipulative it's borderline evil
|
| how can normal people go to work and produce this output?
|
| (I suppose everyone that is prepared to work at Amazon corporate
| is... a certain type of person)
| idle_zealot wrote:
| It's not really about the individual people. They're probably
| all pretty normal interpersonally. Our systems reward this
| behavior, so people do it. Surveillance is desired by the
| politically and economically powerful, and the contravening
| forces are weak and largely unorganized. Do we punish
| politicians or businesses for bad behavior? No? Then they'll
| engage in whatever behavior advances their interests.
|
| You could purge the world of every single person with evil
| intentions, and things would maybe get better for a little
| while, but without fundamentally changing the underlying rules
| of the system the same thing would play out again with
| different actors.
| blibble wrote:
| > They're probably all pretty normal interpersonally.
|
| have you seen the cult like statements they make you emit if
| you want to pass the interview?
|
| I had a colleague that interviewed there (and was accepted)
|
| over the space of that month he completely changed
|
| (and not for the better)
| gorjusborg wrote:
| > It's not really about the individual people. They're
| probably all pretty normal interpersonally. Our systems
| reward this behavior, so people do it.
|
| Sorry, but people who do things they normally wouldn't
| because they are rewarded are not good people. They may be
| 'normal' in a distribution sense, but that doesn't mean the
| behavior becomes acceptable through it becoming commonplace.
| pbhjpbhj wrote:
| The idea is compelling to consider though - I just saw a
| clip of comedian Romesh Ranganathan saying that a reason he
| hasn't cheated on his wife is lack of opportunity; another
| side of the same idea.
|
| Perhaps we would all be shit-head billionaires if given the
| opportunity.
|
| Most of us stay within our ethical lane, but then we don't
| have the money to afford a private island to abuse people
| on; we don't have to resist the temptation to incite an
| insurrection, or to shift gold markets by threatening a war
| ... perhaps we'd be tempted?
| AlexandrB wrote:
| > Perhaps we would all be shit-head billionaires if given
| the opportunity.
|
| Statistically, if we were living in WWII Germany, most of
| us would not become freedom fighters. We'd keep our head
| down and support the regime. I think most people like to
| think of themselves as the exception but that's just
| "cope".
| foobar_______ wrote:
| I like your take. I see this same thing playing out across
| many parts of the world.
|
| Dont hate the player hate the game
|
| It is about incentives and rules of the "game" that drive
| things. Sure, there are a few evil people but the vast
| majority of it is normal people responding to broken
| rules/incentives. Probably you and I both fall in this
| category :)
| AlexandrB wrote:
| > Surveillance is desired by the politically and economically
| powerful
|
| It's also desired by consumers. Parents love tracking their
| children, spouses track each other. Everyone wants to get a
| camera to catch porch pirates. Let's not pretend this is
| something being forced on us by some external evil. The evil
| is coming from inside the house.
| blibble wrote:
| this is entirely misses the point about exactly what makes
| it dangerous
|
| there's nothing bad with having a camera to spot porch
| pirates, as long as the data stays private
|
| it becomes problematic when everyone's hooked up to one
| central place (plus the "AI")
|
| same as the common talking points about CCTV, which always
| miss the distinction that there's minimal risk if it's only
| going to some video recorder in the back of the store
|
| it only becomes dangerous when every shop and house are fed
| back to one central location
|
| and the general public do not understand the difference
| AlexandrB wrote:
| > there's nothing bad with having a camera to spot porch
| pirates, as long as the data stays private
|
| It's still surveillance, and it's subject to subpoena so
| it can become government data as needed. The
| centralization makes things _worse_ , sure, but the
| desire to monitor others often comes from individual
| actors.
|
| I can walk down my street and I will be recorded every
| step of the way by _someone_. The government didn 't
| mandate this, each homeowner decided they "needed" a
| camera.
| themafia wrote:
| You pay a third party to make something like this for you. They
| can best be described as nihilists.
| text0404 wrote:
| Even more concerning is that Ring is partnering with Flock [1],
| which has been the subject of quite a bit of controversy recently
| [2][3][4], with the CEO lashing out at critics with inflammatory
| language [5][6].
|
| [1] https://www.flocksafety.com/blog/flock-safety-and-ring-
| partn...
|
| [2] https://www.aclu.org/news/privacy-technology/flock-roundup
|
| [3] https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/feb/10/ice-
| school-c...
|
| [4] https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2025/12/effs-investigations-
| ex...
|
| [5] https://www.aclu.org/news/privacy-technology/flock-ceo-
| goes-...
|
| [6] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46903556
| mjr00 wrote:
| _The Dark Knight_ was released in 2008. In that movie, Batman
| hijacks citizens ' cellphones to track down the Joker, and it's
| presented as a major moral and ethical dilemma as part of the
| movie's overall themes. The only way Batman remains a "good guy"
| in the eyes of the audience is by destroying the entire thing
| once he's done.
|
| Crazy to think that less than two decades later, an even more
| powerful surveillance technology is being advertised at the Super
| Bowl as a great and wonderful thing and you should totally
| volunteer to upload your Ring footage so it can be analyzed for
| tracking down the Jok... I mean illegal imm... I mean lost pets.
| ViktorRay wrote:
| The Dark Knight was released in the summer of 2008. This was
| almost 7 years after 9/11.
|
| Many aspects of that film were deliberately done to explore
| post 9/11 America. This includes the methods Harvey Dent uses,
| the things the Joker says, and the surveillance scenes and
| more.
|
| These discussions surrounding surveillance have been around
| long before 2008.
| mjr00 wrote:
| Of course. The use of mass surveillance in the movie is not-
| so-subtly referencing the PATRIOT Act. But again, it's
| presented as a moral dilemma, and multiple protagonists
| acknowledge that it's far too powerful to exist, and its use
| is a last resort. It falls into the larger theme of Joker
| pushing Batman to violate his ethics for the greater good.
|
| One could argue that because it was successfully used to
| catch Joker, the movie concludes that mass surveillance is
| sometimes necessary to stop evil, but it's at least presented
| as a dilemma. A massive corporation coming out and saying
| "mass surveillance is awesome because you can find lost pets"
| is a crazy escalation of the surveillance state.
| slg wrote:
| It's hard to not become disillusioned with our industry when
| most of it is just the manifesting of that Torment Nexus tweet.
| It's like no one in the tech world actually understands any
| piece of fiction that they have ever consumed.
| RankingMember wrote:
| I knew plenty of people growing up who thought Fight Club was
| just a fun movie about guys who like to fight and make a club
| to do so and it gets a little crazy, then cut to credits.
| They then theorized making their own such club. This to say,
| yeah, I think sometimes the audience can be overestimated in
| their ability to understand deeper meaning in art.
| sandworm101 wrote:
| And some extreemist are using fight clubs to gather
| followers, emulating the movie in the other direction. So-
| called "active clubs" are springing up using "fitness" to
| gather young angry males to the cause. Most join without
| realizing. Even gym owners are surprised to discover thier
| facilities have become clubhouses.
|
| https://www.jfed.net/antisemitismtoolsandresources/neo-
| nazi-...
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Active_Clubs
| hydrogen7800 wrote:
| And Scarface was an inspiring rags-to-riches story.
| pbhjpbhj wrote:
| It's said that Starship Troopers failed to do as well in
| USA because people thought it was pro-fascist propaganda
| ... it doesn't seem possible that could genuinely be the
| case.
| mrob wrote:
| Starship Troopers (the movie) is a terrible example of
| satire because it fails to show anything substantially
| bad. When you present a society that's more ethical than
| real life, nobody's going to care if some people wear
| uniforms that look a bit like Nazi uniforms.
|
| There is a genuine existential risk, and it's addressed
| in the best way possible. Military slavery
| ("conscription") is more evil than disenfranchisement,
| especially when citizenship is not required to live a
| good life. Nobody is tricked or coerced into signing up
| for military service. Potential recruits are even shown
| disabled veterans to make the risk more salient. There
| are no signs of racism or sexism.
|
| Other objections are not supported by the film. There is
| no suggestion that the Buenos Aires attack is a false
| flag. I've seen people claim it's impossible for the bugs
| to do this, but it's a film featuring faster-than-light
| travel. The humans are already doing impossible things,
| so why can't the bugs? I've also heard complaints that
| there is no attempt at peace negotiations. There is no
| suggestion that peace is possible. It's possible among
| humans because most humans have a strong natural aversion
| to killing other humans. Real life armed forces have to
| go to great lengths to desensitize their troops to
| killing to prevent them from intentionally missing. But
| humans generally have no qualms about killing bugs, and
| the bugs in the movie never hesitate to kill humans.
|
| The movie is an inspiring story about people making the
| right choices in a difficult situation. Some people look
| at it objectively, and some only react to the aesthetics.
| Those who look objectively understand it's actually
| faithful to the spirit of the book despite Verhoeven not
| intending that.
| hdgvhicv wrote:
| The only hung I see about the asteroid was that Carmen's
| collision (caused by her showing off) knocked the rock
| which caused it to hit Earth, where originally it may
| well have missed.
|
| Seems reasonable (although clearly not the intent of the
| story and not a deliberate "false flag")
| malfist wrote:
| Never doubt they understand, there's just too much money to
| be made making the Torment Nexus
| mlsu wrote:
| I've had a startling number of conversations exactly like
| this:
|
| "Oh, you read as well? What do your read?"
|
| "[this book], [that book]"
|
| "Those are all non-fiction, any fiction?"
|
| "I don't read fiction. If I'm not going to learn anything,
| it's a waste of time."
|
| "..."
| thadt wrote:
| Oh man, have I gotten to read a lot of history recently.
|
| And also fiction.
|
| Frequently at the same time.
| nektro wrote:
| its far simpler than that; not caring about what they've
| built if the check is big enough. because they've taught us
| that "if i don't build it, they'll just hire someone else.
| might as well be me that gets the money." but if there was
| solidarity or more regulation it'd be much less of a
| guarantee that these things would be built.
| koolba wrote:
| > The only way Batman remains a "good guy" in the eyes of the
| audience is by destroying the entire thing once he's done.
|
| A key part of that is when he tells Alfred that he did not even
| trust himself with that level of surveillance and coded it to
| only grant access to Alfred. Further, Alfred agrees to aid
| Batman by accessing the data but simultaneously tenders his
| resignation.
|
| I doubt Amazon has anyone like Alfred in charge of this thing.
| Because if they did, the resignation would already have been
| submitted.
| polar wrote:
| > Alfred
|
| Wasn't it Lucius Fox?
| loloquwowndueo wrote:
| It was :) Morgan Freeman not Michael Caine.
| hdgvhicv wrote:
| I'd trust Morgan Freeman over Michael Caine any day.
| dylan604 wrote:
| same difference
| koolba wrote:
| Oh you're night! I had Morgan Freeman's face in my mind
| too.
| foobarian wrote:
| These kinds of resignations are interesting. The character is
| such a good protagonist, he resigns rather than do Bad Thing.
| But that pretty much guarantees the boss will hire someone
| more pliable. Why not instead swallow the pride and do Bad
| Thing but with some level of moderation? That would surely be
| a better outcome overall.
|
| The argument is that it would destroy the character's honor
| or whatever. But that is also a kind of sacrifice for the
| greater good. Maybe a lot of those are in fact happening but
| just not visible.
| awakeasleep wrote:
| Dr John wrote a song about this dilemma, "Such a Night"
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| > Why not instead swallow the pride and do Bad Thing but
| with some level of moderation?
|
| A better answer is "refuse to do it without resigning". To
| begin with it gives you a better chance of preventing it,
| because maybe they back down, whereas if you do it _or_
| leave, someone does it. Then if they fire you, well, that
| 's not really that much worse for you than resigning, but
| it's worse for _them_ because now they 're retaliating
| against someone for having ethical objections. How does
| that look in the media or in front of a jury? Which is all
| the more incentive for them to back down.
|
| The problem with "well just do it a little bit" is that you
| can travel arbitrarily far in the wrong direction by taking
| one step at a time.
| Gagarin1917 wrote:
| I mean the message in The Dark Knight is really messy. The
| characters believe it's immoral, but they use it anyway, and it
| saves lives and stops the Joker.
| mjr00 wrote:
| Yeah, as I say in a sibling comment, it's a fair reading of
| the movie that it's ultimately pro-surveillance because it
| shows that despite being immoral, unethical mass surveillance
| catches the bad guy. But "surveillance is unethical but
| necessary when battling the forces of evil" is worlds away
| from "surveillance is totally awesome and everyone should buy
| a Ring camera."
| MichaelZuo wrote:
| That kind of change in morality seems possible for an 18
| year timespan? If anything the slope is closer to typical
| than to the maximum recorded.
|
| The moral norms of societies, in many aspects, changed even
| more from 1928 to 1946.
| b00ty4breakfast wrote:
| This is a bit orthogonal to the article, but Christopher Nolan
| gives me the willies. Almost all his films have this kind
| authoritarian apologia in them.
| dylan604 wrote:
| Is that the same willies as something like 1984 or Black
| Mirror? All they are doing is taking some idea present now,
| and just taking it too the darker places of it while society
| is currently only seeing the rosy side of things. It's
| stories like this that might be first time someone might
| actually consider other implications of ideas.
| steezeburger wrote:
| I think they take issue with how it was ultimately okay to
| do to catch the Joker as long as Batman didn't use it and
| gave power to Luscious who resigned, instead of just
| calling it out as terrible and not doing it. That's how I
| read their comment anyway. "apologia"
| wat10000 wrote:
| Most (all?) of Batman is based on the idea that sometimes
| you need a good guy who operates outside of the law.
| Given that Batman isn't real but the problems he
| encounters often are real, the natural conclusion is that
| we should make up for our low Batman levels by letting
| law enforcement off the chain.
|
| But this is hardly unique to Nolan. Probably 90% of
| Hollywood movies that involve crime have this message in
| some form.
| izacus wrote:
| The fact that Batman is an ultra wealthy 1 % which dishes
| out justice with his expensive toys while hiding from
| most of the authorities is also quite a message.
| hdgvhicv wrote:
| It's not uncommon. Green Arrow the same.
|
| The popular ones with extra-human abilities - Flash,
| Superman, Spiderman, Captain America, etc, have more
| normal backgrounds.
|
| Boys with toys though - Batman, Ironman, The Atom, are
| the 1%. Ant Man I guess is more normal, but he stole his
| suit (but Hank Pym was reasonably normal too)
| AlexandrB wrote:
| There's real media illiteracy in watching a character in
| a film do a thing and assume that means the filmmaker is
| endorsing that thing. This has the same vibe as the Hays
| Code[1] which mandated that the bad guys in film must
| always get their comeuppance.
|
| > All criminal action had to be punished, and neither the
| crime nor the criminal could elicit sympathy from the
| audience, or the audience must at least be aware that
| such behavior is wrong, usually through "compensating
| moral value".
|
| Modern cinema and cinematic critique has been so
| flattened by the constant accusations of filmmakers
| supporting some "-ism" or another by failing to have
| their characters directly speak out against it. It's
| ridiculous.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hays_Code
| JambalayaJimbo wrote:
| Batman is a vigilante using brutal violence to pursue his
| goals outside of any legal system. The whole concept of
| the comics, movies, etc. is predicated on him being a
| virtuous guy that you can trust will always do the right
| thing (mostly, I'm sure he's a villain or anti-hero in
| some of them). The surveillance system really isn't
| anything different and it was ridiculous that Luscious
| had a problem with it in the first place.
| b00ty4breakfast wrote:
| No, it's more like the militarism in a Heinlein novel. It
| is, at best, an unexamined assumption and, at worst, a
| celebration, or sometimes a passive acceptance, of violence
| to enforce the status quo.
| trevwilson wrote:
| In the context of the Dark Knight/surveillance example,
| it comes across to me as more of a recognition that the
| arguments in favor of these things can easily be made
| compelling if you evaluate them with no tradeoffs (don't
| you want to catch the bad guys??).
|
| Then again, I guess the film ends up doing the same thing
| by only demonstrating concrete benefits alongside
| theoretical, but unrealized, harms...
| fwip wrote:
| The Dark Knight Rises (the batman movie with Bane) seemed
| especially notable in this way - almost directly caricaturing
| the Occupy Wall St protests that were relevant at the time.
| tsunamifury wrote:
| Do not mistake Nolan's ability to call out the failures of
| both absolute freedom and absolute control and their
| interaction with him advocating for any of them.
|
| Don't get the willies from the warning, learn from it.
|
| His brother and the writer, Jonathan Nolan, is the greatest
| prophet of our era.
| awkward wrote:
| To be fair that's more than a little bit present in most
| superhero media.
| izacus wrote:
| The whole idea about any superhero media is a special dude
| going on a violent spree because the authorities (in their
| eyes) can't do their job properly. The whole concept is
| anti-government and society as a whole.
| cyode wrote:
| Pulled from IMDB, Morgan Freeman as Lucius Fox voices the
| consternation perfectly:
|
| > Batman: [seeing the wall of monitors for the first time at
| the Applied Sciences division in Wayne Enterprises] Beautiful,
| isn't it?
|
| > Lucius Fox: Beautiful... unethical... dangerous. You've
| turned every cellphone in Gotham into a microphone.
|
| > Batman: And a high-frequency generator-receiver.
|
| > Lucius Fox: You took my sonar concept and applied it to every
| phone in the city. With half the city feeding you sonar, you
| can image all of Gotham. This is _wrong_.
|
| > Batman: I've gotta find this man, Lucius.
|
| > Lucius Fox: At what cost?
|
| > Batman: The database is null-key encrypted. It can only be
| accessed by one person.
|
| > Lucius Fox: This is too much power for one person.
|
| > Batman: That's why I gave it to you. Only you can use it.
|
| > Lucius Fox: Spying on 30 million people isn't part of my job
| description.
| culi wrote:
| Lmao did they really say it's null-key encrypted?
|
| Unfortunately a very realistic depiction of how many of the
| brands advertising their security the strongest often have
| the most ridiculously broken security (flock)
| StilesCrisis wrote:
| I rewatched recently. That's what he says all right.
| seg_lol wrote:
| They should have used base64 encryption.
| CobrastanJorji wrote:
| There are performance concerns with base64. Hardware-
| assisted null-key encryption offers security that's a
| non-strict superset of base64 encryption and with
| superior performance.
| HiPhish wrote:
| How about ROT13? Ideally applied twice for twice the
| encryption.
| rightbyte wrote:
| I mean it is technobabble but in some way it is also
| poetic.
| padjo wrote:
| The Nolan Batman movies are absolutely risible in
| retrospect. It's hard to believe how seriously everyone
| took them back then.
| simmerup wrote:
| They're good entertainment, not a documentary haha
| pc86 wrote:
| Not a single person in the world took any of them
| "seriously."
|
| They're blockbuster movies about a _comic book_.
| reaperducer wrote:
| _Lmao did they really say it 's null-key encrypted?_
|
| You know movies aren't real life, don't you?
| simmerup wrote:
| Wait until he sees the main character is a super hero
| chatmasta wrote:
| That system is nothing compared to the geolocation databases
| curated by Apple and Google, with GPS sensors combined with
| Wi-Fi wardriving, IMEI tracking, cell tower handoffs, and the
| rest of the insane amount of telemetry they collect collect
| in real time. And that's before even considering BLE and the
| Find My network. Imagine the "God mode" dashboards they could
| have in Cupertino (or more likely, in Mountain View).
| bayindirh wrote:
| In the series Person of Interest, there's a scene where you can
| see racks of servers which allows to track everyone in a city
| (New York?).
|
| When I first saw the scene I said: "This amount of servers is
| not remotely enough to pull something like this".
|
| When I think of the scene now: "These amount of servers can do
| much more than the scene portrays".
|
| I mean, most of the tech presented in the series is almost
| standard operations procedure via mundane equipment now.
|
| _Scary._
| whiskey-one wrote:
| Subsequently in PoI we see two imperfect super-intelligent
| AIs let loose in the real world fight each other for
| domination and their objectives.
|
| For me, it's a question of when, not if this happens in real
| life.
| ocdtrekkie wrote:
| Person of Interest is _really_ good. Unfortunately I
| learned too much about the lead 's IRL behavior, and it's
| on my shelf of shows I'll enjoy once the involved parties
| aren't collecting royalties anymore.
|
| It absolutely takes people on a police procedural that
| drags viewers unwittingly into watching a science fiction
| show, and I'm totally here for all of it.
| twostorytower wrote:
| I believe they also pull this off with a fleet of PS3s, at
| one point.
| chrisrogers wrote:
| My read is that it's immoral because it's a surveillance hijack
| without the knowledge of the users, as opposed to an opt-in.
| whattheheckheck wrote:
| And its not just opt in for the camera owner/licensor it
| should be explicitly optin for anyone who gets recorded
| ChrisArchitect wrote:
| [dupe] Discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46950915
| nullbyte wrote:
| I'm afraid that ship has sailed
| Gagarin1917 wrote:
| Bullshit. The only people worried are the ones that were already
| concerned and never bought a Ring.
|
| I guarantee the vast majority of people LOVE this new feature.
| i_love_retros wrote:
| Bullshit to you sir. I have a ring and have cancelled my
| subscription because of their scummy behavior
| JoshTriplett wrote:
| Thank you for that. But please consider taking down the
| camera, too; it's just as much of a problem without a
| subscription, because you are the service being sold, not
| just the customer. Get one that stores and processes video
| entirely locally instead.
| gorjusborg wrote:
| Part of the problem here is that people who love it are
| affecting people who do not. If you want to put cameras to
| record inside your home, fine, but this is people recording
| their neighbors without consent. The sales pitch is finding
| Fido, but I doubt that is the end game here.
| neaden wrote:
| "I guarantee the vast majority of people LOVE this new
| feature." And you base this guarantee on?
| josefritzishere wrote:
| Amazon has a very bad track record in this area.
| https://www.opensocietyfoundations.org/voices/amazon-is-wagi...
| Traubenfuchs wrote:
| > joseffritz
|
| As an Austrian I have to wonder, is this name a homage to Josef
| Fritzl, one of the most well known Austrians of modern time?
| bradley13 wrote:
| Recording public spaces should be illegal. Public street? Public
| sidewalk? Not your turf, no cameras, no recording.
| jedberg wrote:
| I'm not sure you've thought this through. That would mean you
| can't record law enforcement or any other abuse of power.
|
| The issue here isn't the recording, it's the packaging it up
| for sale that's the issue.
| toephu2 wrote:
| So google maps streetview should be illegal?
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| I think that goes too far, but limiting public space recordings
| to a camera you're operating in person would be a good starting
| point.
| gbolcer wrote:
| Yeah in a world where if you post a Ring video of someone taking
| a crowbar to your mailbox which gets a strike in your
| neighborhood group and the video down for "hate", yeah, as useful
| as it is, the mass surveillance stuff is pretty alarming.
| damnesian wrote:
| Know what is super easy to do? Not buy Amazon Ring products.
| mr_machine wrote:
| Know what is super hard to do? Leave your house without being
| caught by someone else's Ring camera.
| foxfired wrote:
| There's no need to fear the construction of mass surveillance
| anymore. It's already here. We built it one convenience at a time
| [0]. When I see all my friends with Alexa devices at home, ring
| cameras, and a million food apps on their phones, it feels like
| it's already too late.
|
| [0]: https://idiallo.com/blog/we-have-all-we-need-for-mass-
| survei...
| an-allen wrote:
| The fears of mass surveillance are some of the funniest things I
| can think of. Do you think a tree grows a leaf and then says I
| don't care what you do leaf.
| pibaker wrote:
| There would be less backlash to the Ring ad if the ad was honest
| about how people actually use it. Show us porch pirates, burglars
| and stupid neighbor who backs into your car being caught on
| camera.
|
| But instead, they have to come up with something "wholesome" like
| finding your lost doggo. The wholesomeness is so forced and
| cringe that it makes you think they have something to hide. It
| almost feels like the people who wrote this ad and the people who
| greenlit it knew something was wrong so they have to come up with
| a cover story. But like a child smiling at you with his biggest
| smile while anxiously keeping his hands behind his back, it only
| makes them more suspicious especially in a time when big tech
| feels more and more like an adversary than a friend.
| wat10000 wrote:
| Isn't the whole point of the ad that they have a new feature
| and they want people to know about it? They're not making up
| the idea of finding lost dogs. They have a new feature where
| you upload a photo of your lost dog and it automatically looks
| for the dog in camera feeds.
| Atlas667 wrote:
| The infrastructure is still there. It's the infrastructure
| that's the problem, the marketing is kind of whatever...
|
| Ring has been a problem and it has only gotten worse now.
| HiPhish wrote:
| > porch pirates
|
| It absolutely boggles my mind that it's legal in the US for a
| deliverer to just leave a package out in the open for anyone to
| pick up and consider it "delivered". Might as well just throw
| it out of the window of your car, it has the same chance of
| getting picked up by the recipient. Where I live the package
| has to be handed over to the recipient. If the recipient is not
| available it will be handed over to a neighbour and this will
| be noted on a little card that's placed in the recipient's mail
| box. If that is not possible it will be taken back to the mail
| office and the recipient can pick it up in person.
|
| Adding video surveillance is no solution. OK, so you saw a
| random stranger pick up your package. Now what? What are you
| going to do with that information? Are the police going to
| start a manhunt because of your 50$ Amazon order?
| dev_l1x_be wrote:
| Are you a dog?? No?? So you do not have anything to worry about!!
|
| So they say.
| Animats wrote:
| They don't have a lost-kid feature?
|
| In China, kids are accustomed to face recognition early.[1] The
| kids are checking into school via fare gates with face
| recognition. Here's an ad for Hikvision surveillance systems
| showing the whole system.[2] Hikvision has a whole series of
| videos presenting their concept of a kindly, gentler Big Brother.
| This is probably the most amusing.[3]
|
| Amazon's concept is in some ways more powerful. They don't need
| full coverage. Just sparse, but widespread coverage. Anything
| that moves around will pass through the view of cameras at some
| point. Suspicious behavior can be detected in the back end cloud
| processing, which improves over time.
|
| Flock has the same concept. Flock coverage is sparse in terms of
| area, but widespread.
|
| "1984" was so last cen.
|
| [1] https://www.youtube.com/shorts/SMKG8aLTJ38
|
| [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XnHFJz-u85A
|
| [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=otAuH6FDhgw
| toephu2 wrote:
| Every technology has pros and cons. Are you insuating Flock is
| bad and evil (with your reference to 1984?)
|
| I don't think Flock is this Big EviL coMpaNy you are making
| them out to be.
|
| SFPD reported a 125% homicide clearance rate in 2025 (solving
| more cases than occurred that year), citing license plate
| readers (read: Flock) and drones as key factors in providing
| digital evidence.
| nilamo wrote:
| That's beside the point? Gaining security by losing freedom
| was always on the table. What's interesting is the cultural
| shift toward not caring about losing freedom.
| toephu2 wrote:
| Everything I want to do in public I can still do.
|
| What "freedom" is lost? I gain security and lose no
| freedoms (unless you are doing something illegal).
|
| When property crime is up 53%.. plenty of people are
| willing to lose "freedom" whatever you are referring to, in
| exchange for safety.
| warkdarrior wrote:
| You were recorded smoking marijuana, an illegal drug at
| the federal level.
|
| You were recorded walking into an abortion clinic,
| although face recognition identified as a resident of a
| state where abortion is illegal.
| chasd00 wrote:
| Well aren't both of those things crimes? I'm not a fan of
| mass surveillance either but maybe pick a different
| example.
| janalsncm wrote:
| I think it is the point: there is a balance between freedom
| and safety.
|
| For example, it is illegal to carry a loaded handgun onto a
| plane. Most people would agree that is an acceptable trade
| of freedom for safety.
|
| There are places with even less safety and more "freedom"
| than the US so people who take an absolutist view towards
| freedom also need to justify why the freedoms that the US
| does not grant are not valuable.
| xboxnolifes wrote:
| Not who you are replying to, but I think mass surveillance is
| bad and evil, period. So, any person or company contributing
| toward mass surveillance is bad.
|
| Most bad things have some good part you can point to. Mass
| surveillance and all of the other police and government
| aiding technologies usually point to improved conviction
| rates or something similar. But making police more efficient
| at convicting people isn't the only goal of society. That's
| only one part of what makes up a country and it's society.
| And, as the saying goes: "Those who would give up essential
| Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve
| neither Liberty nor Safety."
| RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote:
| I think Nancy Guthrie and the release of the doorbell video by
| scouring Google's caches has done far, far more to make people
| want video cameras and cloud storage than any ad.
| russellbeattie wrote:
| Amazon marketing broke a fundamental rule about consumer tech:
| Don't remind users about how much Big Tech knows about you.
|
| Your various devices track everywhere you go, who you communicate
| with, what you search for, what you buy, what audio you listen
| to, what videos you watch, what games you play, who your family
| is, all your pictures and video you take, who comes and goes from
| your house, when you sleep, your health data, and much more.
|
| And as a fundamental part of Big Tech's business they accumulate,
| aggregate and analyze all that information in various ways to
| increase profits. They don't keep this a secret, but wisely they
| normally don't brag about it to the general public.
|
| Consumers have shown that are totally willing to give up privacy
| for convenience. _Just don 't remind them of it._
| manicennui wrote:
| Did they not realize that it is already a mass surveillance
| network?
| isametry wrote:
| The Circle (2017) is by no means a perfect movie, based on a 2013
| book which I'm told is only marginally better.
|
| But it _did_ do a surprisingly accurate job of depicting pretty
| much this exact scenario, 9 (13) years in advance.
|
| As in: sleek FAANG holds a grand showcase of mass surveillance
| using its ubiquitous user-installed smart cameras, under the
| guise of a good cause.
|
| https://youtube.com/watch?v=Mro9RCAhvE4
|
| (The fictional story is slightly more blunt about it, the good
| cause being finding wanted persons, rather than lost dogs).
| kmoser wrote:
| Even if it can and will only be used to track dogs, that means if
| I have a photo of someone's dog I can track it and learn that the
| owner is (likely) away from their house.
| jimt1234 wrote:
| I thought Ring was already sending data to law enforcement
| agencies (that paid Amazon for it). Also, I thought the EULA
| included language that basically said, "All your data are belong
| to us", so they could already do whatever surveillance they want.
| xyst wrote:
| A country ruled by fear has their "security" systems turned on
| themselves. We truly live in an Orwellian dystopia
| CrzyLngPwd wrote:
| A mobile phone is the surveillance dictators' wet dream.
|
| What are my subjects doing...tap tap tap...ah there they are. Oh
| him, he needs to be cancelled, he isn't where I wanted him to be.
| teaearlgraycold wrote:
| Just airtag your dog? Jesus Christ.
| eddyg wrote:
| Quoting from the press release:
| https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2026/01/apple-introduces-new-...
|
| "Designed exclusively for tracking objects, and not people _or
| pets_ "
|
| (emphasis mine)
| VanTheBrand wrote:
| That's just so you don't sue the over your lost dog
| apparent wrote:
| The situation with the Nancy Guthrie disappearance and Nest
| camera footage is related, and interesting. It seems that she had
| a Nest doorbell camera, but didn't pay for the subscription plan
| ($100/yr?). As a result, the camera records short snippets but
| doesn't save them to the cloud in a user-accessible way.
|
| After a week, Google finally hunted down/coughed up the footage.
| I imagine there were some people within Google who realized that
| if they provided the footage immediately, then it could
| discourage people from paying for the subscription.
|
| Of course, they must also realize that by not providing the
| footage sooner, they may have allowed the perp to get away, or
| the victim to be killed.
| ibejoeb wrote:
| It's so overt that I wouldn't blame you for thinking that they
| don't care and that they want you to know.
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