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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

#121

Post by alphabettsy »

zepto wrote: post #85
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…

Did you miss the part about facial recognition and suspicious activity detection?

Where? The OP combines a Amazon Facial Recognition controversy with Ring Video, which they did just acquire, but provides nothing to support the claim that the information is somehow connected.

The OP also makes the inflated claim saying it will offer facial recognition, when the video actually says person recognition. This is something Nest and other systems have offered for years. Person recognition ensures your system isn’t recording pets or squirrels in your yard and instead records actions by actual people. If you want something to worry about, Nest is actually offering the ability to recognize different people, powered by Google of course.

Re: Amazon's Ring Police Portal For Mass Surveillance

#122

Post by will_brown »

dragonwriter wrote: post #100
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 civ…

Well I did serve Footlocker notice under Florida Civil Statute to preserve the video and confirmed with the store manager the video exists and the events occurred at that store location.

Before I spend a few hundred dollars more on filing a civil suit just to serve discovery on footlocker, I’d go straight to the store and pay the manager to make me a copy (save myself time and money). Either way filing a civil suit or paying of a store manager is not efficient and it’s costly.

At the end of the day you are telling a criminal victim the answer is in the civil courts...which is wrong. I understand police resources, but I did the investigation for them, someone from their department just needs to send an informal email requesting the video, but they won’t. That is a problem. Say I get the video and even identify the individuals, I can give that to the police too but they don’t have to do anything with it. What then, amend the civil complaint from John Doe to said persons and get a default judgment I’ll never collect on? Rather each have a record for felony grand theft and credit card fraud and get my restitution judgment right from the criminal court.

Re: Amazon's Ring Police Portal For Mass Surveillance

#123

Post by ant_li0n »

dragonwriter wrote: post #115
ant_li0n wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The police serve the state, whose interests may or may not coincide with the individual citizen; they don't exist to make you whole when you've lost something to wrongful acts, though they may sometimes help with that incidentally; that's primarily the role of the civil courts and private litigation.

I call bullshit. This is simply a case of the police not doing their job. I filed a police report. Gave them all the necessary information they need to do their f'ing job. And it wasn't like I was talking to a homicide cop, trying to get them to investigate my car burglary. I literally spoke to the detective in charge of this sort of thing.

How am I supposed to find out the people who I should take to court? I do not have access to the license plate database. I suppose I could take the city to court for... something... but we know how far that will go. That's all a moot point, though. My stuff was pawned/traded/fenced/whatever a few days after it was stolen, max. It's not like I can go through a long litigious process to retrieve the ~$500 in stuff that was taken from me.

Re: Amazon's Ring Police Portal For Mass Surveillance

#124

Post by bdamm »

ryanmarsh wrote: post #111

Ok so I'm not following the argument that this is for "mass surveillance" as if this is some gov't intrusion. I understand you might not want to be recorded walking through my neighborhood but hear me out... I have several ring cams and their home security system, I'm also part of "ring neighborhoods". I live in a city with a lot of home break ins (we're number 11 in the US for robberies). With the neighborhoods feat…

The local uses are not the problem. The problem is that neither Ring nor you can really protect against the larger abuses enabled by this: * Racial profiling: Anybody of incorrect race can be automatically reported, then harassment drone can be deployed. * Government directed assassinations are made much easier. If your government wants you dead, you literally cannot go anywhere.

For places with well functioning governments this is all mostly alright. But for places without well functioning governments the expansion of the surveillance sphere becomes pretty much everywhere. Is there a happy ending here? Not likely. But that's not your fault, I totally understand the desire to deploy Ring and kick home intruders and package thieves to the curb.

Re: Amazon's Ring Police Portal For Mass Surveillance

#125

Post by toomuchtodo »

fixermark wrote: post #96
toomuchtodo wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 hig…

I agree.

Re: Amazon's Ring Police Portal For Mass Surveillance

#126

Post by dsl »

sitkack wrote: post #81

The majority of people who I know who have all encompassing security systems are conservative and xenophobic. This system is ripe for abuse by racists and racist organizations. When private camera systems feed into state power, some very bad things are setup to occur.

You should really expand your circle of friends beyond conservatives and xenophobics.

Most of the people I know who have cameras use them to make sure their kids get home safe on time, or keep an eye on the dog in the backyard.

Re: Amazon's Ring Police Portal For Mass Surveillance

#127

Post by pavel_lishin »

alphabettsy wrote: post #118
java_script wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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").

At a local business the police went in to request surveillance footage of an incident that took place off their property, but in view of the camera. This isn’t much different, except that the police now have a map of where Ring cameras might be located. The business owner could comply or the police get a subpoena.

This is very different, because a) the police no longer have to bother to ask as long as the camera's owner has opted in, therefore this can scale much more quickly, b) the police can offload "assessments" to some neural network, and c) as far as I'm aware, you may not be able to control or even be aware of which footage is viewed by the police.

The police absolutely do not have a sufficient reason to know every person who has come over to my house in the past X weeks.

Re: Amazon's Ring Police Portal For Mass Surveillance

#128

Post by sbr464 »

ndespres wrote: post #87

I can not imagine developing this and thinking that it is Good. This type of product and platform completely ignores the reality of how it will be used and how police behave in American society. In the demo video, their example has someone sharing a photo of "suspicious people" walking around outside their house, and has neighbors commenting "oh no!" on it. Now the police are alerted to this "crime" which may not eve…

I agree completely. It also feel's like the worst part of dystopian by integrating a somewhat clean/modern UI, almost like an SNL commercial for a SaaS platform.

Re: Amazon's Ring Police Portal For Mass Surveillance

#129

Post by CamperBob2 »

dragonwriter wrote: post #115
ant_li0n wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The police serve the state, whose interests may or may not coincide with the individual citizen; they don't exist to make you whole when you've lost something to wrongful acts, though they may sometimes help with that incidentally; that's primarily the role of the civil courts and private litigation.

Then why am I paying their salaries?

Re: Amazon's Ring Police Portal For Mass Surveillance

#130

Post by SEJeff »

This type of stuff is specifically why I bought a Doorbird, which is very privacy conscious and made in Germany. Also, Doorbird has public API docs (it is just a bad http "REST-ish" API): https://www.doorbird.com/api

It made it much easier to integrate with Home Assistant: https://www.home-assistant.io/components/doorbird/

Bonus points that the Doorbird is of a much higher build quality than the Ring or Ring Pro.

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