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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

#131

Post by neuralRiot »

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.

Except they have access whenever they want no subpoena needed, no probable cause or suspicion. Obviously people had been desensitized to privacy and rights violation little by little that now they're willing to share their entire life without hesitation just to avoid somebody stealing their garden hose.

Re: Amazon's Ring Police Portal For Mass Surveillance

#132

Post by cycop »

chrisfosterelli wrote: post #12
Kocrachon wrote: post #5

Isn't this an opt in feature? I understand free reign police surveillance is bad, but if a customer opts in, I don't see the issue?

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…

This comes to mind: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/calgary-police-office...

Re: Amazon's Ring Police Portal For Mass Surveillance

#133

Post by dragonwriter »

CamperBob2 wrote: post #129
dragonwriter wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

> Then why am I paying their salaries?

You, individually, are not.

Your shared interests with those with whom you are are collectively doing so are, obviously, not coextensive with all of your personal interests, but are a subset of them. Law enforcement serves (ideally) diffuse public interests, acute private interests are served (in the legal realm) by private civil litigation.

Particularly, you (individually, and society collectively) are not paying enough to have adequste police resources to treat every property crime as worthy of any follow-up beyond taking a report after dealing with every other higher priority as determined by the people elected and given the responsibility for setting police priorities; the fact that a crime affects you doesn't make it a higher public priority than if it affected someone else, even if it does make it a higher personal priority for you.

If you don't like the current law enforcement priorities or the resources available at particular priority levels, you can vote for different leaders or (in states that provide citizen initiatives) for different laws setting enforcement priorities directly, or for more resources for police to work farther down the list of priorities.

Or—or just in the meantime—you can avail yourself of the system set up for dealing with private harms that is largely independent of public enforcement priorities.

Re: Amazon's Ring Police Portal For Mass Surveillance

#134

Post by kakarot »

chaostheory wrote: post #97
_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. M…

> The only real way to completely escape it, is to avoid technology and live outside of large metros; away from civilization

This is an incredibly subservient, defeatist attitude.

I do not allow devices like Alexa into my home. I do not own a smart TV. Besides studio recording equipment, the only microphone in my house is on my phone.

If I have my own cameras, and a burglary takes place, I will share that part of the video with the local police.

Letting them just hook in is positively insane. Saying it's OK to let Big Brother into my house on the basis of fear and because Little Sister is already there is not only completely irrational, but cowardly as well.

As the saying goes, "He who would trade liberty for some temporary security, deserves neither liberty nor security."

Re: Amazon's Ring Police Portal For Mass Surveillance

#135

Post by Spooky23 »

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…

The cops don’t care because it’s a lot of work with little or no outcome.

I had a guy steal deliveries over a period of months and was able to get the video on the TV news. The cops were awesome — they caught him and plead it to petty larceny with a $150 fine. I probably spent more money on vacation time to talk to the cops, parole officer, DA, etc.

Re: Amazon's Ring Police Portal For Mass Surveillance

#136

Post by dragonwriter »

will_brown wrote: post #122
dragonwriter wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 o…

> 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).

The manager may be prohibited by policy from taking money for that purpose, and it's not exactly going to remain a secret, so the cost may not be a savings if the manager sets the bribe at a level sufficient to adequste cover his risk.

But, sure, you can do that.

> 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.

Correct.

> What then, amend the civil complaint from John Doe to said persons

Yes, that's rather the point of a John Doe suit.

> and get a default judgment I’ll never collect on?

Well, if you assume the defendants both won't show up and are completely judgement proof, sure, those are both potential outcomes.

> Rather each have a record for felony grand theft and credit card fraud and get my restitution judgment right from the criminal court.

Sure, we'd all prefer a public subsidy of litigation costs, but public law enforcement doesn't have infinite resources, so not every loss, even where a crime is involved, is going to have public resources expended on it.

And you still have the same issues collecting on a restitution judgment as any other judgement, and a criminal conviction and potential incarceration of the defendant isn't going to make it more likely you'll ever be able to collect anything from them.

Re: Amazon's Ring Police Portal For Mass Surveillance

#138

Post by conquistadog »

Ring customer here. I recently shared a video of crime on my property using the neighborhoods feature. I also downloaded the video to my phone, in order to email a copy of it to cops who asked for it (and apparently don't participate in the portal described here). The offender was subsequently caught thanks to the video, and the cops recovered my property for me.

The opt-in is limited to per video shared, as far as I've been led to believe and in my experience. I'd be quite alarmed to learn anyone could access anything I haven't designated without that specific sharing step on my part.

Re: Amazon's Ring Police Portal For Mass Surveillance

#139

Post by justizin »

dragonwriter wrote: post #113
ryanmarsh wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you walk on public street No, this is not public property, it's if you walk on private property . Ring cams are placed on private property and are targeted at homeowners. They usually don't record or activate outside of a range of 30 feet or so. So if someone drives by my house the ring cam doesn't capture it but if someone walks by my door it does.

> They usually don't record or activate outside of a range of 30 feet or so. 30 feet is often more than the distance from the front door to a sidewalk, and often well into the actual street.

30 feet is often across the street.
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