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A podcast that hacks Ring camera owners live

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Re: A podcast that hacks Ring camera owners live

#191

Post by mikepurvis »

prepend wrote: post #186
kaikai wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any time someone brings out the “bicyclists break laws, too” argument I’m surprised to hear what people think the laws actually are. I’ve heard people complain about bicyclists taking the full lane, using the turn lane to turn left instead of crossing at a crosswalk, moving to the front of the line at stoplights, etc as broken laws. Turns out, they’re not. Just because something might slightly inconvenience you as a…

I think we should allow cars to roll through stop signs. I think it’s comical because here’s the laws broken by cyclists every day- running stop signs, right turn on red without stopping, turning without signalling, running red lights, using phone, using headphones. I typically don’t care because bikes aren’t very dangerous to cars. But I think it’s comical that a cyclist thinks they citizen reported traffic citation…

Using a phone or headphones while riding a bike is idiotic, but for these:

> running stop signs, right turn on red without stopping, turning without signalling, running red lights

It's important to understand a few things:

a) A person on a bike is 1000x more vulnerable than a person in a car, and will definitely lose (physically, legally) if they misjudge the situation and end up getting struck.

b) A person on a bike has way better situational awareness than a person in a car— they have a higher vantage point, and a very wide field of view. They're extremely well equipped to judge distances and speeds and to catch things in their peripheral vision.

c) A person on a bike often faces obstacles you wouldn't be familiar with as a driver. For example, a red light that can only be changed by triggering the in-pavement car sensor or riding up on the sidewalk to push the beg button.

I have such a light on my commute, and I feel that it's safe for me to look both ways and proceed when it's clear (treating the red light as a stop sign). You may disagree on this choice and call me a scofflaw cyclist, but at the end of the day I'm still basically just endangering myself. When drivers whip around a RTOR with their head hanging out the window looking at the traffic they're trying to merge with, they're endangering anyone who might step out to cross the road.

All that said, if my local PD committed to broad and consistent enforcement of minor traffic violations, I would absolutely get on board and either commit to riding/walking up on the sidewalk to use the beg button or choosing a route that avoids that intersection. But as it is, they don't have any interest in enforcing any of it, so I think it's reasonable and non-hypocritical for me to make a choice that slightly improves my commute and endangers only me to a degree that I am comfortable with.

Re: A podcast that hacks Ring camera owners live

#192

Post by mikepurvis »

fencepost wrote: post #190
mikepurvis wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a four season bike commuter, and have been wearing a helmet cam for the past year or so— it's just breathtaking the amount of small violations I catch on camera: I don't even go looking for them or dwell at hotspots, and I pick up probably 5-10 instances per week of things like cars turning right on red without fully stopping, going through stop signs without fully stopping, not fully yielding to pedestrians in c…

As it is, it's a huge amount of effort to slice out these clips, upload them somewhere, figure out the plates involved, and then go through my police department's clunky incident reporting system. Hm. What's your stance on mandatory visible license plates for all bicycles on the street so people with dash cams can clip video and report bicyclists who improperly use lanes or who blow through stop or yield signs? Or wh…

Opposed, but not on principle. It's been studied and tried in many places [1] and just doesn't make any sense pragmatically. It doesn't make people safer and erects yet another barrier to cycling at a time when we need to be making it _more_ attractive and accessible.

And the people who propose such schemes are usually not doing so in good faith. It's not because they actually want to make cyclists safer, they're typically just making a "gotcha" argument that attempts to equate irresponsible cycling and irresponsible driving in terms of the danger that each poses.

[1]: https://www.toronto.ca/services-payments/streets-parking-tra...

Re: A podcast that hacks Ring camera owners live

#193

Post by throwawaysea »

heavyset_go wrote: post #58
throwawaysea wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree that it is a 'dragnet'. That seems like an emotionally-colored take. It is camera owners voluntarily sharing footage with police when they request it. Citizens are allowed to lawfully film in many locations (their own homes, public spaces, etc.) and citizens are allowed to voluntarily exchange information they own with entities of their choosing.

> It is camera owners voluntarily sharing footage with police when they request it. Police can request that you share the footage you have, or police can get a warrant and obtain the footage directly from Ring. The difference between a camera whose footage you control and Ring is that Ring provides a nice interface to let police know that potential video evidence that you captured exists . A camera system that you ro…

So what? I think it’s OK for them to know that footage exists. That’s not an invasion of anyone’s privacy. Using warrants to get evidence is a legitimate part of our justice system.

Re: A podcast that hacks Ring camera owners live

#194

Post by throwawaysea »

throwaway393955 wrote: post #76
heavyset_go wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It is camera owners voluntarily sharing footage with police when they request it. Police can request that you share the footage you have, or police can get a warrant and obtain the footage directly from Ring. The difference between a camera whose footage you control and Ring is that Ring provides a nice interface to let police know that potential video evidence that you captured exists . A camera system that you ro…

They don't need a warrant. They only need to make a friendly administrative subpoena to Amazon, which will happily fork over the data without challenging the order, even if the owner has refused. https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2019/08/police-can-get-y...

This is a false story that relies on an incorrect statement from someone in the Fresno police department. Your own article contains this update:

> UPDATE 5:55pm ET: After we published our story, a representative from Ring responded to our request for comment to deny all allegations in the Government Technology report.

> "The reports that police can obtain any video from a Ring doorbell within 60 days is false," a spokesperson said. "Ring will not release customer information in response to government demands without a valid and binding legal demand properly served on us. Ring objects to overbroad or otherwise inappropriate demands as a matter of course. We are working with the Fresno County Sheriff's Office to ensure this is understood."

Re: A podcast that hacks Ring camera owners live

#195

Post by throwawaysea »

HarryHirsch wrote: post #9
throwawaysea wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree that it is a 'dragnet'. That seems like an emotionally-colored take. It is camera owners voluntarily sharing footage with police when they request it. Citizens are allowed to lawfully film in many locations (their own homes, public spaces, etc.) and citizens are allowed to voluntarily exchange information they own with entities of their choosing.

Just the sheer scale of data collection by the Ring public-private partnership is worrisome already. Some of us worry about the amount of information held by Facebook, even those that do not have a Facebook account . The same principle applies here.

If it is legally filmed footage (for example on public spaces or in a private residence), then there is no legitimate expectation of privacy.

Re: A podcast that hacks Ring camera owners live

#196

Post by mikepurvis »

pc86 wrote: post #121
mikepurvis wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a four season bike commuter, and have been wearing a helmet cam for the past year or so— it's just breathtaking the amount of small violations I catch on camera: I don't even go looking for them or dwell at hotspots, and I pick up probably 5-10 instances per week of things like cars turning right on red without fully stopping, going through stop signs without fully stopping, not fully yielding to pedestrians in c…

> in one case an indication that they would be unable to charge the person unless I also had a face shot of who it was in the driver's seat. Because it's the truth. A driver receives a citation, not a vehicle. And a vehicle owner is under no legal obligation to say who was driving a given car at a given time. So based on those two facts alone, I don't see how you think the police can just drop citations in the mail b…

Fair, but in the case of crimes that the police take more seriously, a license plate is important evidence. If there's a hit and run and a bystander remembers "silver sedan" and half the plate number, you'd better believe they'll be looking it up and paying the owner a visit.

Is an in-depth investigation like that realistic over a citizen submitted video of a minor traffic violation? No, of course not.

But the other side of this is that if you had more automation in place and could see the data in aggregate, you could get a much better picture of where the problem spots are (for active enforcement or infrastructure improvements) and also potentially identify problem vehicles making the same errors day after day in the same spot (and then either go after them or put them on some kind of watch-out-for list).

Re: A podcast that hacks Ring camera owners live

#197

Post by HarryHirsch »

throwawaysea wrote: post #195
HarryHirsch wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just the sheer scale of data collection by the Ring public-private partnership is worrisome already. Some of us worry about the amount of information held by Facebook, even those that do not have a Facebook account . The same principle applies here.

If it is legally filmed footage (for example on public spaces or in a private residence), then there is no legitimate expectation of privacy.

There's the tiny issue that storage became so cheap over the last 20 years that recordings can now be kept indefinitely. In the past you had a CCTV camera, and you could store maybe a month's worth of movie (on tapes, in a safe), until you had to overwrite it.

Now you just keep filming and have a never forgotten record of who lives in the neighbourhood. And if Facebook runs it though its face recognition system they get names, friends and other preferences. That completely changes the nature of CCTV recordings.

The law just hasn't caught up with it, also because of prolific lobbying by the usual bigdata actors.

Re: A podcast that hacks Ring camera owners live

#198

Post by susijdjdjxa »

anarchodev wrote: post #115
susijdjdjxa wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If someone robbed your home and you recognized them, would you report them to the police?

Absolutely not. I don't want police anywhere near my community. EDIT: Yeah I don't call the cops. Go ahead and downvote I guess, or feel free to try another hypothetical you came up with in your head for this discussion.

I didn’t downvote you.
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