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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

#101

Post by mrbombastic »

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…

It sucks that criminals get away with this crap all the time and I am sorry that happened to you but do you really think releasing videos of alleged criminals to the public is a good idea?

https://www.businessinsider.com/reddit-falsely-accuses-sunil...

Re: Amazon's Ring Police Portal For Mass Surveillance

#102

Post by jschwartzi »

adrr wrote: post #71
rayvy wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your statement reads in a pretty funny way: > This seems fairly reasonable... > ...as long as they keep the commitment... I mean, I feel as if everything seems reasonable as long as the original commitment is kept. Thing is, the original commitment is rarely if ever kept at all. This is nothing more than a problem waiting to happen, as are most things where large bureaucracies involve themselves. Once I read that the…

If I was Amazon or any other security cam company, my biggest fear would be government using my equipment to spy on customers. Because if that ever became public, it would kill adoption. If I was Amazon, I'd be lobbying to codify protections against warrantless surveillance and mass pulls of data.

Why not just design a system where you do not have access to the data? Using symmetric encryption it's possible for you to create a system where only the end customer can decrypt any of the data. Because of the mathematics involved it's effectively impossible for you to respond to a subpoena and law enforcement must make requests of each customer individually.

Re: Amazon's Ring Police Portal For Mass Surveillance

#103

Post by balls187 »

joering2 wrote: post #78
_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…

> There is no encryption. There is no 2FA. There is no legal protection for privacy of citizens face's caught in these cameras and added to their facial recognition algorithms. Yes and no lawsuit will be won either. Every judge will strike it based on being in public assumption of lack of privacy. If you walk on public street, don't assume your privacy is protected :(

These are cameras installed in doorbells on private property, there wouldn't be any expectation of privacy.

Re: Amazon's Ring Police Portal For Mass Surveillance

#104

Post by mattferderer »

I've argued for a long time, that Nest, Ring, etc., will all become free or highly discounted services soon as long as you're willing to allow them to share the video data.

Based on your camera's location they would have tons of valuable data about the people who live in that area.

Do they go on walks? If so, with who & what.

Do they go to nearby stores?

I can see coming home & getting ads for "winter clothes" & "dog food" after walking my dog in shorts on a cold day.

I'm curious if people who live in more optimal areas would get any additional benefits. Kind of like social media influencers.

"Live in a popular metro area? Receive $100/month for installing a camera in your apartment."

Re: Amazon's Ring Police Portal For Mass Surveillance

#105

Post by balls187 »

joering2 wrote: post #86
monocasa wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's way more complex than that. For instance here the evidence from a webcam filming from a public vantage point was struck down. https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2014/12/cops-illegally-n... I've also seen SCOTUS rulings that they see a difference between public ancillary recordings, and mass surveillance of all public actions.

Great example +1; however in this example cops assumed Mr. Vargas to commit crime and hence setup cam to watch aka surveillance his property 24/7. Very difference from situation where average citizens records their front yard 24/7 not expecting or assuming a crime will occur, and then having that video being obtained when the crime happens. In other words, this case is about active surveillance, versus Ring cams are…

Ring is marketed as a security camera, and one of it's primary use cases is providing video recording in the event of a crime.

Re: Amazon's Ring Police Portal For Mass Surveillance

#106

Post by ant_li0n »

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…

So this is just anecdotal, but here's my 'running and car broken into story': I parked next to a busy dog park and went for my run. Came back to broken window. There was a lady there who took pictures of the perpetrators and their license plate. I filed a report with the police. Guess what the police did. That's right! Absolutely nothing. Not even swing by the people's house and ask for my shit back (I was cool with paying for the broken window, even).

The idea that this kind of surveillance will be used for your benefit is simply wrong, in my opinion. It's a weapon. How does that NWA song go? The one about the police?

Re: Amazon's Ring Police Portal For Mass Surveillance

#109

Post by adrr »

jschwartzi wrote: post #102
adrr wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I was Amazon or any other security cam company, my biggest fear would be government using my equipment to spy on customers. Because if that ever became public, it would kill adoption. If I was Amazon, I'd be lobbying to codify protections against warrantless surveillance and mass pulls of data.

Why not just design a system where you do not have access to the data? Using symmetric encryption it's possible for you to create a system where only the end customer can decrypt any of the data. Because of the mathematics involved it's effectively impossible for you to respond to a subpoena and law enforcement must make requests of each customer individually.

You'll lose lots of functionality since the provider just becomes dumb storage. I am not sure how you would even do machine learning on the data, you can't put it on the device unless it had its own massive storage and rings are just dumb battery powered cameras. You'll need a host device to crunch data before shipping it off to cloud for storage.

Re: Amazon's Ring Police Portal For Mass Surveillance

#110

Post by logfromblammo »

ncallaway wrote: post #63
logfromblammo wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also in the United States, you have the right to video-record anything you can see from where you are if you have the right to be present. You have the right to record any happenings on or in your dwelling and its curtilage. There is no question whatsoever that everyone has the right to mount a doorbell camera and do whatever they like with the recordings. The only exception is that if you are not in a single-party c…

But what if we changed those laws? We could, for example, make it such that you can continue to record, but that those recordings couldn't be used as input to facial recognition software without the consent of the person being recorded. Just because you _currently_ can do something legally does not mean that it _must_ be that way.

You cannot abridge freedom of expression without an amendment. Nor can you abridge freedom of computation.

You should perhaps instead endeavor to strike down anti-mask laws as being contrary to existing freedoms. The logical counter to automated facial recognition technology is facial concealment practices. It is the least harmful to liberty.

Alternatively, we could all wear--with our masks on--t-shirts with other people's faces printed onto them (especially Batman's face). And we can, of course, ban the government from using facial recognition technology without a specific, limited reason for doing so.

Just because I can record you from my porch and identify your face as appearing often, doesn't mean I would be able to tie that image in to a compulsory national identity database with facial photograph data included. Individuals might instead be able to identify a face as "John Doe #154" on their own server, and maybe match it to "YourMetroArea Serial Package Thief #15" on neighborhood-watch.net . Maybe I can set up an alert if any of the shared criminal faces show up and get recognized, or I can voluntarily forward my video to the cops when an incident actually happens. Giving cops unrestricted access to everyone's raw feeds is a bad, bad, bad idea. You bring in the cops only when it is apparent that a crime has been committed, an identifiable individual is responsible, and there is now a tangible reason to deanonymize the culprit.

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