Ring fired employees for watching customer videos • Hacker News Board

Re: Ring fired employees for watching customer videos

#81

Post by tensor » Thu, Jan 09, 2020, 7:14 PM UTC

bshacklett wrote: post #27

teraflop wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's always somebody with root access to the servers.

Encryption with customer managed keys solves that pretty easily. It also solves any ethical questions with regards to furnishing data to comply with warrants. This creates a new problem of managing keys, of course, but that's been solved many times now in other parts of the industry.

There are numerous logistic issues with this approach. How would you implement a feature where users could log in to view the footage while away from home? They would need the decryption key, and if the server doesn't have it how would they get it? The only secure option is from the device itself, which is a pretty big UX challenge.

However, worse, features that use AI to detect movement/people/etc can't be implemented without access to the underlying video stream. The only remotely viable way would be via homomorphic encryption, which has serious limitations still.

It's far easier to do what they did, and just limit root access to a very small number of trusted people.

Re: Ring fired employees for watching customer videos

#82

Post by TeMPOraL » Thu, Jan 09, 2020, 7:16 PM UTC

stevenicr wrote: post #77

TeMPOraL wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's absolutely not true. Most doors are trivial to pick and as easy to break down. The main, and usually only, real reason for the lock on the door is to serve as a physical symbol which establishes a particular legal status of the property behind the doors, with associated consequences for unlawful entry. The legal apparatus - penalties, punishments - is what deters crime. Lock is an XML tag made of matter. (The…

I must disagree, although I find what you are saying an important part of the defenses, and likely a larger issue in certain parts of the country and certain neighborhoods.. I think the gp is not 'absolutely not true'.. I have a fair amount of hobby interest experience dealing with petty thieves / criminals for the past couple decades; studying them locally and through polls and news articles... stories about locked…

You're right that I shouldn't have said "absolutely not true", but I stand by my general message. Regular locks are inconveniences for thieves, not deal breakers.

> In most neighborhoods seeing someone crouched down playing with a door lock would attract attention and likely calls to the police.

Not if that someone is wearing a hi-vis safety vest (perhaps with "Cory & Trevor Locksmith Company" or something similar written on it).

My point is that the effectiveness of locks primarily comes from laws and economics, not from their physical properties.

Re: Ring fired employees for watching customer videos

#83

Post by michaelmrose » Thu, Jan 09, 2020, 7:17 PM UTC

TeMPOraL wrote: post #53

coralreef wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The easiest way to keep someone out is to lock the door. You can create penalties, punishments, hire security guards to watch the door. But the most efficient and effective way is just a lock.

That's absolutely not true. Most doors are trivial to pick and as easy to break down. The main, and usually only, real reason for the lock on the door is to serve as a physical symbol which establishes a particular legal status of the property behind the doors, with associated consequences for unlawful entry. The legal apparatus - penalties, punishments - is what deters crime. Lock is an XML tag made of matter. (The…

Forget the analogies having to explicitly misuse the system to violate customers privacy creates a strong disincentive.

All accesses to customers data should require multiple people not by policy but by mandatory access controls.

The fact that employees could hack their employer is true and not meaningful.

The number willing to commit felonies is less than the number willing to risk termination.

Re: Ring fired employees for watching customer videos

#84

Post by TeMPOraL » Thu, Jan 09, 2020, 7:21 PM UTC

michaelmrose wrote: post #83

TeMPOraL wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's absolutely not true. Most doors are trivial to pick and as easy to break down. The main, and usually only, real reason for the lock on the door is to serve as a physical symbol which establishes a particular legal status of the property behind the doors, with associated consequences for unlawful entry. The legal apparatus - penalties, punishments - is what deters crime. Lock is an XML tag made of matter. (The…

Forget the analogies having to explicitly misuse the system to violate customers privacy creates a strong disincentive. All accesses to customers data should require multiple people not by policy but by mandatory access controls. The fact that employees could hack their employer is true and not meaningful. The number willing to commit felonies is less than the number willing to risk termination.

I was addressing the lock analogy itself, but going back to the original topic, I believe this line of thinking still applies to an extent. Setting up hoops one has to jump through to do something nefarious is as much about the difficulty of jumping as it is about the very act of jumping. If you have to work around some security features to access customer data, you can't defend yourself by saying you've accessed it "somehow" or by accident.

Re: Ring fired employees for watching customer videos

#85

Post by wil421 » Thu, Jan 09, 2020, 7:21 PM UTC

mi100hael wrote: post #8

chrisballinger wrote: post #6

Whenever end-to-end encryption is not used, scenarios like these are bound to happen eventually. As far as I know, the only home surveillance products that use E2EE are ones that support HomeKit Secure Video [1]. 1. https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT210538

I don’t know if Ubiquiti’s feeds are streamed encrypted, but at least the recording infra is 100% local and can be accessed locally without any cloud middleman if desires.

Best I could find[1] but I think the forum question is about having a NVR in another site with a VPN connection in between the site and camera.

[1] https://community.ui.com/questions/Are-Unifi-Video-streams-e...

Re: Ring fired employees for watching customer videos

#86

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Jan 09, 2020, 7:22 PM UTC

alias_neo wrote: post #78

JackRabbitSlim wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would end-to-end help when it's the other end that's watching?

The other end should be you too? Unless you intend for someone else to oversee your surveillance operation, your footage shouldn't leave your premises unless encrypted, using keys which don't leave your possession. You enter them out-of-band on the device on which you wish to watch remotely. Is there some implied benefit to not encrypting end-to-end or are they just being lazy and using nothing more than TLS because…

[deleted]

Re: Ring fired employees for watching customer videos

#87

Post by JshWright » Thu, Jan 09, 2020, 7:24 PM UTC

98codes wrote: post #48

michaelt wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In an ideal world, sure. But it's easy enough to imagine how you'd end up with this situation. For example, you have a customer support phone number, and you want your call centre workers to be able to see exactly what the user sees, and help the user do anything the user can do through the website. After all, if you're keeping your support costs down, the website should be able to do 99% of what users call support f…

Sure, but with just-in-time approvals for a specific time window, for a specific customer, with approval coming from management. Anything else is asking for abuse.

How does that prevent abuse? It might reduce it, but as long as it is technically possible to view forward without user consent, it will be abused.

Re: Ring fired employees for watching customer videos

#88

Post by justanotherc » Thu, Jan 09, 2020, 7:24 PM UTC

shadowgovt wrote: post #75

ryukafalz wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Typically, at least in the US, a locked door can be opened from the inside without a key for that reason.

So while that is true (and not to go too far off into the weeds on an analogy), in an emergency, people are trying to follow procedure under pressure and the odds of error in operation of an interface increase. You want the interface that is used in an emergency situation to either be well practiced or absolutely as intuitive as possible. To destructure the analogy and give a concrete example, if I'm dying of allergi…

Your concrete example would never happen the real world. If you were in anaphylactic shock, no doctor is going to go off looking for your medical records first, even if they were sitting on the table next to him. He's just going to stick you with epinephrine and then MAYBE look at your medical records later.

All that said, I get your point, but I'm not sure how it applies to this discussion anyway.

Re: Ring fired employees for watching customer videos

#89

Post by rebuilder » Thu, Jan 09, 2020, 7:26 PM UTC

shadowgovt wrote: post #75

ryukafalz wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Typically, at least in the US, a locked door can be opened from the inside without a key for that reason.

So while that is true (and not to go too far off into the weeds on an analogy), in an emergency, people are trying to follow procedure under pressure and the odds of error in operation of an interface increase. You want the interface that is used in an emergency situation to either be well practiced or absolutely as intuitive as possible. To destructure the analogy and give a concrete example, if I'm dying of allergi…

If you keep the door locked at all times, unlocking it should be pretty routine.

Re: Ring fired employees for watching customer videos

#90

Post by jerf » Thu, Jan 09, 2020, 7:26 PM UTC

tensor wrote: post #81

bshacklett wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Encryption with customer managed keys solves that pretty easily. It also solves any ethical questions with regards to furnishing data to comply with warrants. This creates a new problem of managing keys, of course, but that's been solved many times now in other parts of the industry.

There are numerous logistic issues with this approach. How would you implement a feature where users could log in to view the footage while away from home? They would need the decryption key, and if the server doesn't have it how would they get it? The only secure option is from the device itself, which is a pretty big UX challenge. However, worse, features that use AI to detect movement/people/etc can't be implement…

"How would you implement a feature where users could log in to view the footage while away from home?"

The "decryption key" can be a password-like object rather than an AES key, though that does require some security, and browsers are, if not quite ready to decrypt a stream and then render it as a video file, getting pretty close to that.

However, any client provided to the user by the video company itself, web or app, has the risk of exfiltrating the key back up to the video company, and I don't think the market will support a video company where you have the inconvenience of being required to get a third-party client to use it.

"However, worse, features that use AI to detect movement/people/etc can't be implemented without access to the underlying video stream."

The hardware to do this locally isn't that expensive, but again, the market would have a hard time standing for it, because this is inevitably going to be more expensive than the competition.