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Ring has partnered with 400 police forces

washingtonpost.com

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Re: Ring has partnered with 400 police forces

#71

Post by Paul-ish »

hanniabu wrote: post #58
5440 wrote: post #24

My ring camera caught a murderer breaking a door down last year and it's been a headache for me ever since. Even though I didnt actually see the murder,I've been called to several depositions and had to take three unpaid weeks off of work because of trial stuff. It's so frustrating. All I say everytime, is "Yes, I own the camera" I regret ever buying it at this point.

I don't see why this is necessary. If it's on camera why would it matter who it belongs to? Is some legal letter not sufficient? Something along the lines of "I, name, live at this address and own the device that captured said footage". It's not like it was a witness account or anything.

I wonder what a lawyer would say, but I suspect this has something to do with the right to cross examine evidence. It might be hearsay to just use a pre-recorded statement. If the defense thinks the evidence is bunk, they should be able to question 5440 about the camera. Cynically, this could also be a tactic using the right to cross examine to wear 5440 down. I'm not a lawyer though, so who knows.

Re: Ring has partnered with 400 police forces

#72

Post by [deleted] »

vgoh1 wrote: post #38
5440 wrote: post #24

My ring camera caught a murderer breaking a door down last year and it's been a headache for me ever since. Even though I didnt actually see the murder,I've been called to several depositions and had to take three unpaid weeks off of work because of trial stuff. It's so frustrating. All I say everytime, is "Yes, I own the camera" I regret ever buying it at this point.

Not sure what country you are in, but that's called civic duty, and helps society work.

[deleted]

Re: Ring has partnered with 400 police forces

#73

Post by somethoughts »

Is this an example of Paul Graham's concept of a submarine article? [1] At least they are honest about the relationship:

"Ring is owned by Amazon, which bought the firm last year for more than $800 million, financial filings show. Amazon founder Jeff Bezos also owns The Washington Post."

[1] http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html

Re: Ring has partnered with 400 police forces

#74

Post by derefr »

ProAm wrote: post #63
vorpalhex wrote: post #17

This headline leaves out an important detail from the article: > Officers don’t receive ongoing or live-video access, and homeowners can decline the requests, which Ring sends via email It's not as if the police are pulling a Batman and watching every ring simultaneously, but instead they can do the digital equivalent of going door-to-door and asking "Hey, did you catch footage of your neighbors house being broken in…

> It's not as if the police are pulling a Batman and watching every ring simultaneously I have serious doubts this can't happen with a keystroke if deemed necessary to protect citizens from imminent danger or terrorism. It's cynical but we also thought there was no chance the government was spying on all Americans telecommunications either.

I mean, yeah, probably, but on the scale that organizations like the NSA operate on, making deals with smaller IoT manufacturers like Ring is pretty inefficient. They’d probably rather just use that keystroke to pull the video straight out of whatever cloud object storage Ring relies on, in a way that’s generic to many IoT video-capture devices by many manufacturers, such that their software can pull all those assets in at once.

Re: Ring has partnered with 400 police forces

#75

Post by derefr »

Paul-ish wrote: post #71
hanniabu wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see why this is necessary. If it's on camera why would it matter who it belongs to? Is some legal letter not sufficient? Something along the lines of "I, name, live at this address and own the device that captured said footage". It's not like it was a witness account or anything.

I wonder what a lawyer would say, but I suspect this has something to do with the right to cross examine evidence. It might be hearsay to just use a pre-recorded statement. If the defense thinks the evidence is bunk, they should be able to question 5440 about the camera. Cynically, this could also be a tactic using the right to cross examine to wear 5440 down. I'm not a lawyer though, so who knows.

Not a pre-recorded statement; a notarized declaration letter. “At some point I declared in person, to a reliable witness, that I own this camera, and they wrote that down.”

Re: Ring has partnered with 400 police forces

#76

Post by HarryHirsch »

mikeash wrote: post #13
danepowell wrote: post #3

The headline neglects to mention that the system is opt in and per-incident, which I think is a critical detail. It's not like police have 24/7 involuntary access to everyone's video.

Do police have any obligation to be honest in these requests? Even if it’s opt-in, I’d be afraid of cops using the system to harass personal enemies by making requests that say they’re looking for an active serial killer or whatever.

Do police have any obligation to be honest in these requests?

No. Infractions would have to be prosecuted by the district attorney, who has no interest to get on the bad side of the police because he needs them to be successful.

Consider the case of Arlington police! Arlington cops were in bed with a drug dealer because he supplied the force with steroids. In return for the goodies, the police informed their supplier about the competition. The maximum penalty for improper access of records would be 10 years in prison, but they gave the bent cop just 1 year. It really does wonders to restore trust in the system.

https://www.dallasnews.com/news/crime/2014/02/12/ex-arlingto...

Re: Ring has partnered with 400 police forces

#77

Post by balls187 »

cypherpunks01 wrote: post #70

> To seek out Ring video that has not been publicly shared, officers can use a special “Neighbors Portal” map interface to designate a time range and local area, up to half a square mile wide, and get Ring to send an automated email to all users within that range, alongside a case number and message from police. Is "half a square mile wide" supposed to mean a square that's half a mile on each side?

No, it means total area of 1/2 a square mile.

The sides of the square would be sqrt(0.5).

Re: Ring has partnered with 400 police forces

#78

Post by fpgaminer »

I had an idea for a responsible mass surveillance system.

Say you have cameras all over the city, feeding to the local police station. That's helpful in catching criminals, but obviously easy to abuse. Well suppose instead that the DVR in the police station is encrypted and contains a secure enclave. All the camera feeds are E2E encrypted from the camera to the box. The secure enclave in the DVR enforces rules for how the footage can be accessed. It only allows X amount of video footage to leave the box over time. Say watching 4 camera streams continuously or something (in a city of hundreds of cameras).

So a crime occurs; police know the rough time frame and can easily query footage from the box. But mass surveillance, watching all the camera streams, dumping them to an AI cloud for facial recognition tracking of all your movements, etc, isn't possible.

The secure enclave can also enforce logging; anyone viewing the footage submits authentication, creating a permanent paper trail of who viewed what.

There are endless possibilities for the rules we want to establish, but the thrust of my idea is that we can enforce them using that concept of a secure enclave and encrypted footage, so that we can be reasonably sure that the system can't be abused.

Anyway, it's just an interesting idea I had. I'm not really trying to make an argument for or against widespread surveillance like that. Just, if soceity wants it, there are ways to build systems that enforce rules on how those cameras are used. And what Ring offers is kind of in this vein too; allow camera owners to share footage on a case by case basis when requested. I think it'd be even better if Ring footage was encrypted so that Ring actually really couldn't access the footage without your consent.

Re: Ring has partnered with 400 police forces

#79

Post by refurb »

delfinom wrote: post #65
RandomBacon wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I imagine if you saw the person enter the house and not your camera, the results would be similar: depositions, time away from work, etc? The question is, in this particular case, did the camera help identify an otherwise unknown suspect?

That's not equivalent. In one case you need a human testifying because the memory of the events are stored in their brain that's inaccessible to any other form of retrieval besides giving a deposition. In the other case, the camera caught it on a digital format thats accessible by literally anyone living in the 21st century.

That's not how trials work.

Someone has to testify that yes, they installed the camera on X date, yes, the date/time stamp is accurate, yes, it was working the last time they checked, yes, the video in question was recovered, yes, the video was transferred to the prosecutors office, no, the video was not modified to the best of my recollection.

Saying "hey, I have this mp4 that proves the murder" doesn't work in court.

Re: Ring has partnered with 400 police forces

#80

Post by threwawasy1228 »

garmaine wrote: post #57
loteck wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why can't society compensate this person fairly for his help?

It can. He should be able to invoice the DA for his time. The taxpayers (society) foots the bill.

As someone who just served Jury Duty in the USA. I can tell you the 'bill' for my services was barely minimum wage.
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