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Amazon’s Disturbing Plan to Add Face Surveillance to Your Front Door

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Re: Amazon’s Disturbing Plan to Add Face Surveillance to Your Front Door

#31

Post by whoisjuan »

jbigelow76 wrote: post #27

Likewise, homeowners can also add photos of “suspicious” people into the system and then the doorbell’s facial recognition program will scan anyone passing their home. This has to be the worst part of it, if you've ever been part of a suburban neighborhood that uses NextDoor as a community tool you'll know that Ring doorbell videos of "others" crank the pearl-clutching paranoia of bored homeowners up to 11. The comme…

I get why this could be problematic under the wrong context.

But if I have video footage of someone approaching my door, not knocking and just looking aroud to then leave; and I'm given the option to track if that person shows up again in future video footage, you bet I would use that option.

This is not because I'm paranoic and I think right away that anyone showing up to my door will murder or rob me, but because said person already exhibited suspicious activity around my private property.

Why would I take for granted that this person was simply lost or innocently looking around? If that's the case, then my camera would never see them again. But if they show up a second time, I want to know that.

Re: Amazon’s Disturbing Plan to Add Face Surveillance to Your Front Door

#32

Post by maxxxxx »

bilbo0s wrote: post #11
Santosh83 wrote: post #2

It is not the technology that is dangerous but the scale and manner of its deployment. Patented, opaque, closed source, championed by mega-corporations closely allied with powerful governments, entirely beyond the analysis or oversight of the vast majority of citizens, completely connected realtime to various other systems, automated, eternally slurping up data for indefinite storage... these are the real concerning…

> society will get sharply stratified into the 'watched' and the 'watchers' and the latter will get access to nearly limitless data and power... Don't kid yourself, even the 'watchers' will be 'watched'. The people bringing all these systems together will not be your local yocal Barney Fifes. They will be professional and highly intelligent technical teams whose members have likely studied little other than security…

"Taken as a whole, the technologies coming out today will enable surveillance regimes the likes of which even the UK and China never previously would have dared to dream up. "

thay's really important. Hitler, Stalin, the Stasi and many others would have been very pleased to have the systems we are building right now. Once a full country surveillance system gets in the hand of a ruthless dictator it will be very hard to get rid of that dictator.

Re: Amazon’s Disturbing Plan to Add Face Surveillance to Your Front Door

#33

Post by SubiculumCode »

mosselman wrote: post #3

News messages such as these are increasingly scary and alarming. They paint a picture of a very nearby dystopian society that, until now, was the stuff of fiction. The news is successful in scaring us, but what can we do against this type of thing? What can I as an individual do? I can install ad-blockers, etc on my PC, but how can I prevent the technology described in the article from impacting my life or that of my…

Don't buy a door bell camera, discourage your neighbors from doing so. Tell them you think the whole thing is crass.

Re: Amazon’s Disturbing Plan to Add Face Surveillance to Your Front Door

#34

Post by daveFNbuck »

whoisjuan wrote: post #31
jbigelow76 wrote: post #27

Likewise, homeowners can also add photos of “suspicious” people into the system and then the doorbell’s facial recognition program will scan anyone passing their home. This has to be the worst part of it, if you've ever been part of a suburban neighborhood that uses NextDoor as a community tool you'll know that Ring doorbell videos of "others" crank the pearl-clutching paranoia of bored homeowners up to 11. The comme…

I get why this could be problematic under the wrong context. But if I have video footage of someone approaching my door, not knocking and just looking aroud to then leave; and I'm given the option to track if that person shows up again in future video footage, you bet I would use that option. This is not because I'm paranoic and I think right away that anyone showing up to my door will murder or rob me, but because s…

So under this system if I walk up to your door mistakenly before realizing I'm at the wrong place, the police will be alerted any time I walk past a house.

Re: Amazon’s Disturbing Plan to Add Face Surveillance to Your Front Door

#35

Post by nepeckman »

whoisjuan wrote: post #31
jbigelow76 wrote: post #27

Likewise, homeowners can also add photos of “suspicious” people into the system and then the doorbell’s facial recognition program will scan anyone passing their home. This has to be the worst part of it, if you've ever been part of a suburban neighborhood that uses NextDoor as a community tool you'll know that Ring doorbell videos of "others" crank the pearl-clutching paranoia of bored homeowners up to 11. The comme…

I get why this could be problematic under the wrong context. But if I have video footage of someone approaching my door, not knocking and just looking aroud to then leave; and I'm given the option to track if that person shows up again in future video footage, you bet I would use that option. This is not because I'm paranoic and I think right away that anyone showing up to my door will murder or rob me, but because s…

I think it gets more problematic when the data is shared and human judgement is eliminated. What happens if someone is lost in a neighborhood and accidentally displays "suspicious" behavior in multiple locations? They are then logged in a database as a suspicious person and potentially pointed out to law enforcement as a suspect without any chance to explain themselves. I don't think this technology would be quite as bad if the data was kept local to a house, but as is there could be so many terrible consequences.

Re: Amazon’s Disturbing Plan to Add Face Surveillance to Your Front Door

#36

Post by laumars »

daveFNbuck wrote: post #34
whoisjuan wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I get why this could be problematic under the wrong context. But if I have video footage of someone approaching my door, not knocking and just looking aroud to then leave; and I'm given the option to track if that person shows up again in future video footage, you bet I would use that option. This is not because I'm paranoic and I think right away that anyone showing up to my door will murder or rob me, but because s…

So under this system if I walk up to your door mistakenly before realizing I'm at the wrong place, the police will be alerted any time I walk past a house.

While that is a valid concern about the abuse of such technology, I couldn't see that ever happening if just because it would generate far too many false positives to render the technology useful (not to mention that most police forces in the world are under funded so they're not going to be the slightest bit interested in people walking past a house).

This kind of alerting is a bit like any of the automated alarms we have in IT (be it Nagios, CloudWatch, or whatever). They're necessary to tell us when things have gone wrong if they go off too frequently then they'll just get ignored.

In fact there was a parable about this as well, called "The boy who cried wolf".

Re: Amazon’s Disturbing Plan to Add Face Surveillance to Your Front Door

#37

Post by jonathankoren »

SubiculumCode wrote: post #30
jbigelow76 wrote: post #27

Likewise, homeowners can also add photos of “suspicious” people into the system and then the doorbell’s facial recognition program will scan anyone passing their home. This has to be the worst part of it, if you've ever been part of a suburban neighborhood that uses NextDoor as a community tool you'll know that Ring doorbell videos of "others" crank the pearl-clutching paranoia of bored homeowners up to 11. The comme…

I kept arguing with others on the Nextdoor app to keep a lid on their paranoia so much that I ended up leaving. The story that led me to leaving that community? A van drove down a cul de sac and turned around. A homeowner thought that was suspicious and so jumped in their car and followed. They followed for a long time, then suddenly the van dips into another neighborhood, goes down a street, turns at the last moment…

Next time, on Nextdoor...

I was across town trying to get back to the highway, when I get confused in this residential neighborhood and end up on a dead end street. (Why so many dead ends?) As I get ready to turn back onto Pine, I notice this guy run out and hop in his car and start tailgating me. No way am I going home now, with this weirdo following me and probably wanting to steal my stuff. So I hit the gas, and duck down some side street hoping it’s not another dead end, but he stays on me. Luckily, I got a picture of him from the side mirror. If anyone sees this car CALL THE POLICE!

[ Thanked by 15 people ]

Re: Amazon’s Disturbing Plan to Add Face Surveillance to Your Front Door

#39

Post by JohnFen »

Santosh83 wrote: post #2

It is not the technology that is dangerous but the scale and manner of its deployment. Patented, opaque, closed source, championed by mega-corporations closely allied with powerful governments, entirely beyond the analysis or oversight of the vast majority of citizens, completely connected realtime to various other systems, automated, eternally slurping up data for indefinite storage... these are the real concerning…

"After all, a good old security guard also does 'face recognition' of everyone passing by"

Yes, but the essential difference is that the good old security guard isn't photographing everyone passing by and putting those pictures into a database.

Re: Amazon’s Disturbing Plan to Add Face Surveillance to Your Front Door

#40

Post by JohnFen »

SubiculumCode wrote: post #33
mosselman wrote: post #3

News messages such as these are increasingly scary and alarming. They paint a picture of a very nearby dystopian society that, until now, was the stuff of fiction. The news is successful in scaring us, but what can we do against this type of thing? What can I as an individual do? I can install ad-blockers, etc on my PC, but how can I prevent the technology described in the article from impacting my life or that of my…

Don't buy a door bell camera, discourage your neighbors from doing so. Tell them you think the whole thing is crass.

I think "crass" is understating it. "Invasive and antisocial" seems closer.
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