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Amazon admits giving police Ring camera footage without consent

theintercept.com

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Re: Amazon admits giving police Ring camera footage without consent

#91

Post by mindslight »

heywot wrote: post #52
MichaelZuo wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If your houses are close together I don't think it's reasonable to have an expectation of privacy on the driveway or front porch. After all sound at normal speaking volume can easily travel 100 feet on a quiet day, if there's nothing in-between.

There's a huge difference between casually overhearing a conversation because you also are outside versus having actions/words recorded for eternity, and potentially analyzed by a third party (Amazon, Google, etc).

I'd say an apt comparison would be a neighbor occasionally hearing what you're saying (and possibly cozying up to their closed front door to listen), versus your neighbor coming out onto the porch every time you're talking, attempting to join the conversation, and even filming you with their cell phone to share with their friends. The latter is wildly socially unacceptable, and at the very least we'd shun someone who did this. Unfortunately most people seem to ignore electronic devices in their social analysis.

Re: Amazon admits giving police Ring camera footage without consent

#93

Post by unfocused »

rootusrootus wrote: post #63
unfocused wrote: post #31

My next door neighbor (we share a wall) had their bicycles stolen twice, so they installed Ring (floodlight) cameras in both the backyard and the front porch. After a year, the cameras have yielded no added security, or caught any "bad guys" as far as I can tell and from what they told me. What I realized, is they use it to keep track of their kids, funny cat videos that trigger the recording, and most importantly, a…

Ha, you'd hate me. I have cameras pointing out the front of my house that record my driveway, the road, and incidentally the neighbor's driveways and front yards and such. No audio, though. But they're all cool with it, so there's that.

I wouldn't hate you! :) Clearly you've engaged your neighbors if they are cool with it. You also mentioned no audio. I even told them it's fine with audio, now that I understood how the system works. Alas, no audio is obviously better as I don't have to ask my friends to walk further away from the line of side of the camera.

Re: Amazon admits giving police Ring camera footage without consent

#94

Post by corrral »

giraffe_lady wrote: post #65
dylan604 wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

from your comment, it doesn't sound like anyone was deterred.

yeah my personal view is that these cameras do nothing except widen police surveillance capacity but I'm somewhat interested in what the people who buy them think they are doing.

I expect people who buy them haven't personally witnessed what it looks like to report property crime—even fairly major property crime—to the police. Which is to say, they don't realize that there's almost no chance they'll do anything about it at all except issue a report for insurance (if you want one, and probably for a fee just to add insult to injury) even if you come to them with all kinds of evidence, up to and including clear video of faces and license plates. They probably imagine it going very differently from how it actually goes.

Re: Amazon admits giving police Ring camera footage without consent

#95

Post by lmkg »

unfocused wrote: post #31

My next door neighbor (we share a wall) had their bicycles stolen twice, so they installed Ring (floodlight) cameras in both the backyard and the front porch. After a year, the cameras have yielded no added security, or caught any "bad guys" as far as I can tell and from what they told me. What I realized, is they use it to keep track of their kids, funny cat videos that trigger the recording, and most importantly, a…

This type of thing is actually one of the cases were GDPR has been enforced, although it varies from country to country. Seems CCTV is most heavily enforced in Spain.

Go to https://www.enforcementtracker.com/ and filter by "CCTV," a few are for residential cases, e.g. https://www.enforcementtracker.com/ETid-1226.

Re: Amazon admits giving police Ring camera footage without consent

#96

Post by bogomipz »

dm319 wrote: post #47
unfocused wrote: post #31

My next door neighbor (we share a wall) had their bicycles stolen twice, so they installed Ring (floodlight) cameras in both the backyard and the front porch. After a year, the cameras have yielded no added security, or caught any "bad guys" as far as I can tell and from what they told me. What I realized, is they use it to keep track of their kids, funny cat videos that trigger the recording, and most importantly, a…

I am also no fan of Ring or similar, though the reasons are slightly different. We lost our cat recently, and I went round my neighbourhood knocking/ringing on every door to ask around. It was a strange experience as around 30% had these ring doorbells. It was unpleasant to know I was being recorded and judged, and often as a result, not answered. I vowed at that point we would never consider one, if only because I d…

>"It was a strange experience as around 30% had these ring doorbells. It was unpleasant to know I was being recorded and judged, and often as a result, not answered."

Ugh, the idea that these things would be encouraging neighbors to become unneighborly by using Ring cameras as screening devices is truly dystopian. Helping neighbors with pets that have gone astray seems like one of the most basic neighborly and and potentially reciprocal interactions. I really hope you found your cat. I agree with commenter above that the prime utility of these for Amazon is as a form of delivery receipt mechanism for the army of Amazon's last mile contractors. The panopticon eye effect of the Ring network appears to be just another externality foisted on society by Mega Corp.

Re: Amazon admits giving police Ring camera footage without consent

#97

Post by unfocused »

gist wrote: post #78
unfocused wrote: post #31

My next door neighbor (we share a wall) had their bicycles stolen twice, so they installed Ring (floodlight) cameras in both the backyard and the front porch. After a year, the cameras have yielded no added security, or caught any "bad guys" as far as I can tell and from what they told me. What I realized, is they use it to keep track of their kids, funny cat videos that trigger the recording, and most importantly, a…

> I believe these cameras haven't decreased crime. They also don't really add more security. It's a shame though they are everywhere, with disregard for privacy right on people's property. So yes, I'm biased. I have no love for Ring. Impossible to believe with the ubiquity that they haven't decreased crime. Or at least certain types of crimes. Prior to this type of video only a small amount of people had security cam…

I live downtown. The same "folks" that steal things, that I've seen for a better part of a decade, drug addictions and all, still steal stuff. It's just the police are not going to bother with it. One of them tried to steal our plant! Yes, our $5 plant. But I caught them in person, and they apologized, but they were high on some drugs.

No camera will deter someone like that.

Re: Amazon admits giving police Ring camera footage without consent

#98

Post by kodah »

unfocused wrote: post #31

My next door neighbor (we share a wall) had their bicycles stolen twice, so they installed Ring (floodlight) cameras in both the backyard and the front porch. After a year, the cameras have yielded no added security, or caught any "bad guys" as far as I can tell and from what they told me. What I realized, is they use it to keep track of their kids, funny cat videos that trigger the recording, and most importantly, a…

I don't mind people in my neighborhood running security cameras as long as they store the footage locally. I can't consent to the terms that a managed service provider presents them with respect to footage I am in or conversations I have. I am concerned that given a sizeable enough populace with locally stored footage, that it could become the target of robo-warrants for proxy-surveillance, but we're a bit off from that.

The reason I support people running their own security cameras is because I recently had a woman go off on some wild diatribe about how my property looked (which actually belongs to my landlord) and she became very upset to the point of trying to force my front gate open as I shut it. Since then she's gone on some proxy wars with other people in the neighborhood. Obviously her behavior will continue to escalate and because I have no cameras I have no way to show she was willing to use force and intimidation from step 1.

Re: Amazon admits giving police Ring camera footage without consent

#100

Post by cronix »

BurningFrog wrote: post #21
fotta wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In your situation, the police should be asking YOU not Amazon for the footage. I don’t have a problem with turning over footage, but not without my consent. I want to be able to decide when to give it to police.

In an emergency, you might not be home, or you might be shot.

None of which precludes them from asking first, or attempting to.
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