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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

#131

Post by anigbrowl »

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…

There are multiple homes near me that just point cameras straight out into the street, recording everyone else's comings and goings. This seems deeply anti-social to me, not much different from spying on the neighbors with binoculars. Meanwhile, police in San Francisco now propose that they should have realtime access to private networked surveillance systems: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32077528

Re: Amazon admits giving police Ring camera footage without consent

#132

Post by pc86 »

ls15 wrote: post #128
dekhn wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The camera may be acting as a deterrent (if they didn't have any additional thefts) without it being obvious. I never would give a neighbor a hard time about a camera pointing at a publicly visible spot on my property- just into windows and other semi-private locations. That includes both audio and video. I ascribe to the "it's legal for journalists to go through your trash, so if you want privacy, shred your trash f…

> I never would give a neighbor a hard time about a camera pointing at a publicly visible spot on my property In Germany people have successfully sued their neighbours for that and I fully agree with the courts. Filming others without consent is invasive.

In the US you don't have any expectation of privacy in public (or at least severely limited) and the courts have upheld again and again that recording public areas, even from a private area, is completely find. Some jurisdictions require notification or consent for audio recording, but not all.

Re: Amazon admits giving police Ring camera footage without consent

#133

Post by mdp2021 »

bsedlm wrote: post #4
salawat wrote: post #3

If the data is not on your hardware, it is not your data.

what if my data is on my hardware as well as on the cloud hardware? whose data is it anyways?

I was also confused by that expression: the poster very probably meant: "what is stored in the hardware of somebody else you cannot control".

Re: Amazon admits giving police Ring camera footage without consent

#134

Post by bee_rider »

berberous wrote: post #115
jjoonathan wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Amazon used to get stuck holding the bag. Now they can make the customer hold the bag.

I mean, the customer should hold the bag in that scenario. Amazon completed the delivery.

Does Amazon actually offer the option to sign for the package? (I've never really thought about this, living in a nice neighborhood)

I mean, the customers know what they are getting into I guess but it is still bad if the dominant online store doesn't offer any way to securely get their products.

Re: Amazon admits giving police Ring camera footage without consent

#135

Post by horsawlarway »

RNAlfons wrote: post #29
ensignavenger wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are alternative cameras that don't have the same privacy concerns.

Can you recommend some?

Synology has some fairly strong products in this space.

A fairly cheap NAS from them for local storage, and then basically any ip camera you can find will mostly just work. (NAS I'm using: https://www.amazon.com/Synology-Bay-DiskStation-DS220-Diskle...)

They offer surveillance station (https://www.synology.com/en-us/surveillance) as a free app for most of their models.

My entire setup (3 cameras, NAS, hdds, POE switch) cost me under $1000, and I get pretty much every feature that most of these cloud camera services offer.

- Remote viewing on my phone (https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.synology.D...)

- Activity alerts and optional triggers for recording

- Viewing through any browser

- Multiple user accounts

Plus if I want it, Surveillance station has a whole host of other features that I currently don't need, but are nice to have (ex: automated cloud backups, offsite storage, CMS, Action rules, etc)

As a nice little bonus - I pay zero in monthly costs for this outside of the power to run the cameras & NAS

My initial setup cost ran slightly higher than something like Nest or Google Home (ex: I paid 1k vs the roughly 400 it would have cost to buy the cameras from a cloud service) but 4 years in I'm now in the positive on the investment, since I don't have a recurring 14/month subscription charge.

So long story short - It's still my data, it's costing me less over time, and I get feature parity.

The downside is it requires a little more configuration and setup.

Re: Amazon admits giving police Ring camera footage without consent

#136

Post by mikodin »

BeetleB wrote: post #76
doublerabbit wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its more than reasonable. It's called respect. Their house and their drive and just because voice could travel 100-feet sill doesn't mean they have the right to record it. If the speed limit is twenty and someone is driving thirty, does that give you the right to drive thirty too?

You're comparing apples and oranges. One is legal and the other isn't. They absolutely have the right to record audio that is audible on their property. It used to be the norm that if you don't want your neighbors hearing you the onus is on you to speak quietly in a private place. With the increase in such devices the norm too will shift to "know that a device is recording audio in certain zones"

I agree but to a point. I am curious how this plays out when what is recorded wouldn't necessarily be audible or intelligible by the human ear but is able to be picked up and amplified via post processing or more sensitive devices.

Will we then just have to always assume that a device is recording audio in all zones?

Countermeasures will be figured out, but it's an interesting thought process.

Re: Amazon admits giving police Ring camera footage without consent

#137

Post by l33t2328 »

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 understand your concern, but if it’s something that can be seen/heard from the next property over, I don’t know that you can reasonably expect such things to be private.

Although now I’m imagining this taken to the extreme, like if your neighbors set up a 24/7 HD video feed with a hyperbolic microphone etc aimed directly at your front porch. That sort of behavior is certainly weird.

Re: Amazon admits giving police Ring camera footage without consent

#138

Post by remflight »

kcb wrote: post #80
remflight wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Burglars are not deterred by cameras or alarm systems, especially in the age of face masks. They know they will only be in the house for 5 mins or less and face masks make it harder to identify them.

Many ring devices have sirens that I would think would be quite deterent when set off. The Ring Alarm can even act as a proper monitored alarm system.

Burglars target to be in a house for roughly 5 mins. They don’t care what noise they make, they will be out before the cops can come.

Re: Amazon admits giving police Ring camera footage without consent

#140

Post by koonsolo »

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…

In Belgium that would be illegal. It's even illegal to point it at a public space such as the road.

Only your own property is allowed.

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