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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

#91

Post by openasocket »

happyringuser wrote: post #80
openasocket wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What jurisdiction is this? Generally two-party consent laws have an explicit exemption for places where you don't have a reasonable expectation of privacy, and exemptions for recording on your own private property. There can also be different standards depending on whether you are taking the pictures for commercial use or not. I'm curious what jurisdiction has a blanket ban on audio recordings without consent, no exc…

This is MA. Unlike nearly everywhere in the US, the state does not have the common-sense exemptions for "you should have known you were being recorded because [you were on a public street|you should have seen the sticker on my window]". See Commonwealth v. Jackson, 370 Mass. 502 (1976), saying that the MGL 272 sec 99 prohibition on "secret" recording is so broad that it is possible to "secretly" record someone even i…

Ah, I didn't know MA didn't have an exemption for public locations.

Re: Amazon's Ring Police Portal For Mass Surveillance

#92

Post by fixermark »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #73
fixermark wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is that tradeoff worth seeing many, many fewer Amazon packages stolen wholesale from front porches? ... if you ask around, you may find the average neighborhood resident's answer is "yes." Especially if one finds the average neighborhood citizen isn't living under a corrupt police hierarchy, but instead an underfunded / understaffed one.

If you're willing to trade your privacy and security for reduced Amazon package theft, I'm unable to reason with you as my neighbor.

Sounds like you live in one of the neighborhoods that doesn't have a rampant theft problem, but okay. ;)

FWIW, the bias I approach this from is that we can't order packages delivered to my relatives because petty theft is so rampant in their area that packages will, on average, go missing. And the police are too underfunded to do anything about the new trend of theft right now. This technology would be life-changing in terms of convenience to them; it's a non-trivial expenditure of resources to schlep out to an Amazon pickup center of the post office to get anything large.

Re: Amazon's Ring Police Portal For Mass Surveillance

#93

Post by toomuchtodo »

fixermark wrote: post #92
toomuchtodo wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're willing to trade your privacy and security for reduced Amazon package theft, I'm unable to reason with you as my neighbor.

Sounds like you live in one of the neighborhoods that doesn't have a rampant theft problem, but okay. ;) FWIW, the bias I approach this from is that we can't order packages delivered to my relatives because petty theft is so rampant in their area that packages will, on average, go missing. And the police are too underfunded to do anything about the new trend of theft right now. This technology would be life-changing…

> Sounds like you live in one of the neighborhoods that doesn't have a rampant theft problem, but okay. ;)

My neighborhood does have the occasional Amazon package theft. Why do you assume consumer convenience is so important compared to fundamental rights?

> it's a non-trivial expenditure of resources to schlep out to an Amazon pickup center of the post office to get anything large.

This doesn't excuse the implementation of a surveillance machine.

Re: Amazon's Ring Police Portal For Mass Surveillance

#95

Post by fixermark »

epicide wrote: post #58
fixermark wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Amazon/Ring/whoever doesn't need to be involved with what is a local/neighborhood issue In what way? Who on Earth is going to set up and maintain those tools, pay for the hardware, provide service channels for the hardware, etc.? Technological sophistication is by no means uniformly distributed.

I don't take issue with them making the hardware and selling a product. I have an issue with them being so heavily involved with the police side of things. There's a big difference between a feature that allows consumers to report a video and a feature that allows police to demand a video.

(Also, FWIW, "request to voluntarily divulge video" is not the same as "demand").

Re: Amazon's Ring Police Portal For Mass Surveillance

#96

Post by fixermark »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #93
fixermark wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds like you live in one of the neighborhoods that doesn't have a rampant theft problem, but okay. ;) FWIW, the bias I approach this from is that we can't order packages delivered to my relatives because petty theft is so rampant in their area that packages will, on average, go missing. And the police are too underfunded to do anything about the new trend of theft right now. This technology would be life-changing…

> Sounds like you live in one of the neighborhoods that doesn't have a rampant theft problem, but okay. ;) My neighborhood does have the occasional Amazon package theft. Why do you assume consumer convenience is so important compared to fundamental rights? > it's a non-trivial expenditure of resources to schlep out to an Amazon pickup center of the post office to get anything large. This doesn't excuse the implementa…

Where you see "consumer convenience," I see "breakdown of law and order" that this technology could help ameliorate.

I think we're just coming at this from different biases. You see the risk of abuse of power as much, much higher than street crime (if I take your "occasional" literally, then I humbly suggest you haven't experienced it to the level my relatives have). I see the threat of street crime as much, much higher than risk of abuse of power (because while those abuses do happen, they are so rare relative to the street crime this system could prevent that it's a viable tradeoff).

Re: Amazon's Ring Police Portal For Mass Surveillance

#97

Post by chaostheory »

_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…

I'm a Ring customer. The Ring Portal is optional and opt-in. People want this. This is similar but not the same as Yc's Flock https://www.flocksafety.com/ but it doesn't require a home owner's association to set up and it's inexpensive. (Flock focuses on storing license plates.)

Stuff like this helps police do something about robberies and burglaries. It's harder to ignore and file away when there's video evidence.

Megapixel IP cameras are getting cheaper and cheaper every day. We already live in a mass surveillance society with microphones and cameras in almost all of our rooms, with some people even installing Echos in their bathrooms. Instead of bad Big Brother, we get helpful Little Sister (Alexa, Siri, Kortana, ...). imo The only real way to completely escape it, is to avoid technology and live outside of large metros; away from civilization

Re: Amazon's Ring Police Portal For Mass Surveillance

#98

Post by fixermark »

maxxxxx wrote: post #74
15155 wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the United States, your consent is not needed to film you in places with no expectation of privacy.

I think this is an area where the constitution needs an update to reflect current technology. With the possibility of entities doing complete surveillance of the whole public space we need to refine the concept of privacy. I don't think it's acceptable that the only place where people are protected from surveillance and have privacy is their home.

We may need a new philosophy of privacy to account for big data analysis.

This feels related to the question of identification by DNA in large databases. It's pretty clear I own my own DNA, but if enough of my relatives upload their own that an association map of information about me can be discerned without my consent? What right do I have to prevent that?

Currently, pretty much none. Should I have one?

Re: Amazon's Ring Police Portal For Mass Surveillance

#99

Post by java_script »

alphabettsy wrote: post #25

Can’t say why this feels strange, but’s it’s also not as sensational as the title. Ring Users have to choose to share the information. As someone who has a Ring device, I find the neighborhood feature more a nuisance than anything. It’s mostly people posting videos from their doorbell cams asking if anyone knows why’s the guy with a clipboard was at their door, or posting videos of “suspicious” people in their neighb…

Ah, good thing users can deny the request. American police are famous for their willingness to take no for an answer (insert world's biggest "/s").

Re: Amazon's Ring Police Portal For Mass Surveillance

#100

Post by dragonwriter »

will_brown wrote: post #65

There is significant room for private policing in this space. This past Saturday I went for my run at approximately 9:45AM, on my run I got a text from my bank of suspicious activity on both my credit and debit card for a total of $1,000. When I got back to my car it all made sense as my passenger window was smashed and my “run bag” with my keys and wallet stolen. By the time I the cops got there for the report, I sp…

> I’d love to have a public platform where victims of crimes could force corporations to playall and publish the facts of these cases and crowdsource the identity of the criminals. Any advice?

Well, it's not exactly crowdsourcing, but the “private injured parties force corporations (or anyone else) to play ball and provide factual evidence related to the identity of wrongdoers” facility exists, and is called “the civil courts”.

File a John Doe lawsuit. Identify the entity in possession of evidence useful for identifying the actual perpetrator and issue a subpoena to that party for the evidence. (You might recognize this from how media companies go after copyright pirates with IP information, but the same can be done for other civil offenses, too.)

You can also publish, in any medium, a request for people to voluntarily provide information for the crowdsourcing part; I'm not sure a special platform helps since you then depend on the informants not only being willing to provide info but being reachable via a dedicated purpose-specific platform, and who is going to do that in advance?

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