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Amazon's Ring Police Portal For Mass Surveillance

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Re: Amazon's Ring Police Portal For Mass Surveillance

#31

Post by amyjess »

__blockcipher__ wrote: post #19
chrisfosterelli wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, it looks like: 1. Users opt to share video clips 2. Police can't view unshared videos without requesting 3. The whole thing is opt-in I don't see an issue here. It's a technical framework around something that already exists: police going door-to-door and asking for video clips. Why not make this more efficient? I can see the potential for abuse, as it is all centralized. But I think "portal for mass surveillan…

Right on time. I’ll take “bootlicking fascist apologist” for $10 Alex. Notice you didn’t even discuss encryption. Shows how little thought you’ve put in. And that’s ignoring the ethical side entirely. Why do so many of the people I interact with seem to have absolutely no fear of government abuse, despite 10,000 years of evidence to the contrary? It boggles the mind

The fact that you immediately jumped to personal attacks demonstrates that you don't have a valid argument.

Re: Amazon's Ring Police Portal For Mass Surveillance

#33

Post by En_gr_Student »

adventured wrote: post #17
codezero wrote: post #11

Something similar to this which I think has gone totally unreported is that large chains like Walmart are feeding their security cameras in real-time to the US government, which is being used to find and track wanted criminals. Edit: Most of the above is speculation based on stuff I've been observing over the past few years. I don't have any evidence that the system exists, or that it is real-time.

Do you have substantive links supporting that real-time claim?

Also, cities do it. They have real-time feeds from traffic cams. Phoenix comes to mind. Every big-block, every direction at the intersection, relatively high resolution realtime video feed.

Re: Amazon's Ring Police Portal For Mass Surveillance

#34

Post by kentm »

__blockcipher__ wrote: post #19
chrisfosterelli wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, it looks like: 1. Users opt to share video clips 2. Police can't view unshared videos without requesting 3. The whole thing is opt-in I don't see an issue here. It's a technical framework around something that already exists: police going door-to-door and asking for video clips. Why not make this more efficient? I can see the potential for abuse, as it is all centralized. But I think "portal for mass surveillan…

Right on time. I’ll take “bootlicking fascist apologist” for $10 Alex. Notice you didn’t even discuss encryption. Shows how little thought you’ve put in. And that’s ignoring the ethical side entirely. Why do so many of the people I interact with seem to have absolutely no fear of government abuse, despite 10,000 years of evidence to the contrary? It boggles the mind

This is an unhelpful comment. Rather than attacking chrisfosterelli you could explain your point of view.

Re: Amazon's Ring Police Portal For Mass Surveillance

#35

Post by codezero »

adventured wrote: post #17
codezero wrote: post #11

Something similar to this which I think has gone totally unreported is that large chains like Walmart are feeding their security cameras in real-time to the US government, which is being used to find and track wanted criminals. Edit: Most of the above is speculation based on stuff I've been observing over the past few years. I don't have any evidence that the system exists, or that it is real-time.

Do you have substantive links supporting that real-time claim?

Nope, I'm making some assumptions, I'll edit my comment to that effect. This came to my attention when a news article about an abduction mentioned he was caught on Walmart security cameras. Usually these are tied to a credit card purchase, but this person was said to have paid in cash, so it piqued my interest. There's also a huge settlement Walmart had with the US government that was quickly followed by a big improvement in their security systems. I'm getting real close to tin-foil hat territory, and I acknowledge that :)

Re: Amazon's Ring Police Portal For Mass Surveillance

#36

Post by fixermark »

lmz wrote: post #24
happyringuser wrote: post #14

I use the Ring security system at home and own a couple of the cameras. The security "history" feature is dirt simple but very cool -- I can trivially see when I use different doors in my house. The Ring smartphone app also shows me the Neighbors view for my area, which is very similar to this product being advertised here (a feed of locations, comments, and videos posted by smart device owners and others). I think p…

Can't you just block the mic somehow?

Exactly. This feels like a feature that can be disabled with a steady hand and a power-drill.

But I expect there's still a trap here for customers who don't know their local laws and buy these items thinking it's compliant with local ordinances. OP's comment is reasonable.

Re: Amazon's Ring Police Portal For Mass Surveillance

#37

Post by happyringuser »

lmz wrote: post #24
happyringuser wrote: post #14

I use the Ring security system at home and own a couple of the cameras. The security "history" feature is dirt simple but very cool -- I can trivially see when I use different doors in my house. The Ring smartphone app also shows me the Neighbors view for my area, which is very similar to this product being advertised here (a feed of locations, comments, and videos posted by smart device owners and others). I think p…

Can't you just block the mic somehow?

It does seem like you should be able to find the mic and cover it enough to effectively disable audio, but I wasn't able to figure it out in 10 min and worried that whatever I did might not be permanent.

I couldn't find any disassembly/DIY repair guides or teardowns for the Ring Cam products so I'm not sure I'd know what I was doing when looking to cut the mic. (I have thought about doing this before with other consumer hardware, like disabling an always-on buzzer on a dryer.)

Some products (e.g. fellow Amazon subsidiary Blink) offer this feature in software but I don't know of any consumer-grade security cameras that have an explicitly supported hardware off switch.

Re: Amazon's Ring Police Portal For Mass Surveillance

#38

Post by [deleted] »

_r3e4 wrote: post #4

Here is an example of Ring partnering with a police department - Orlando - to offer discounted video surveillance IoT devices to citizens, with caveat that they can share their videos with cops to fight crime. Orlando police department was called out for civil rights violations when they partnered with Amazon's facial recognition technology. The thing about Ring is it's marketed to consumers as a cheap camera....not…

[deleted]

Re: Amazon's Ring Police Portal For Mass Surveillance

#39

Post by alphabettsy »

_r3e4 wrote: post #2

I found this dropbox link to Ring's marketing video for Police Departments to use their smart video cameras for mass surveillance. This was made before Amazon acquired them. At the end of the demo the CEO states that their facial recognition search feature will be available soon. This software is made in Ukraine and the hardware is manufactured in China. There was no private company contract bid - Ring is just giving…

Huh? How did you get something entirely different from the article. The article says police will have access to the neighborhoods law enforcement portal, which only gives them access to public posts of Ring users. The only addition that the law enforcement portal appears to give is the fact that they can request video clips from homeowners.

There are some valid concerns there but you’re mischaracterizing this tool and how it works.

Re: Amazon's Ring Police Portal For Mass Surveillance

#40

Post by kentm »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #15
chrisfosterelli wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, it looks like: 1. Users opt to share video clips 2. Police can't view unshared videos without requesting 3. The whole thing is opt-in I don't see an issue here. It's a technical framework around something that already exists: police going door-to-door and asking for video clips. Why not make this more efficient? I can see the potential for abuse, as it is all centralized. But I think "portal for mass surveillan…

> I can see the potential for abuse But that is the problem. The potential exists, and without proper governance and oversight, you don't have the ability as a citizen to walk back abuse when it begins to occur. You only have the options of submitting to continued abuse, moving to a more sane locale, or the uphill political battle of defending your rights. Authoritarianism is a slow boil, and doesn't happen overnight…

I agree with your point. To elaborate my position, once one builds an opt-in surveillance network, it only requires a shift in public policy to remove the opt-in nature. You would have to have strong confidence in the safeguards against such a thing -- mainly the court system siding with privacy, which is not a sure thing historically speaking.

I would cooperate with the police to help solve an actual crime, but I certainly would not opt in to this. I would even go one step further and say that I likely wouldn't buy this product at all.

I would prefer home automation systems that have basically no cloud infrastructure. It is unfortunate that, if such a thing even exists, it is poorly marketed.

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