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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

#431

Post by sacrosancty »

pera wrote: post #300
dionidium wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My view on this is that we're not going back and it would be silly to try to do so. Once you have the technology to record, track, and ultimately apprehend criminals, simply not doing so in the name of ideological purity becomes increasingly obscene. What we need are courts that understand the technology, prosecutors who fear censure for overreach, and fair laws about standards of access to the data. It's here to sta…

This isn't about "ideological purity" nor technology: My home is literally the only place where my family and I still have some form of privacy, is it too hard to understand that we don't want random strangers having the power to lurk into our lives 24/7?

You're confusing random people looking whenever they feel like with a well run system the GP is asking for.

Maybe the way is to store the footage or a decryption key locally so the police have to physically get it off you (and you can't refuse) if they want access and can't drag-net. That's what's traditionally done with business's surveillance cameras.

Re: Amazon admits giving police Ring camera footage without consent

#432

Post by [deleted] »

StanislavPetrov wrote: post #413
MacsHeadroom wrote: post #347

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't have a legal expectation of privacy anywhere visible from public property, including even the inside of your house viewable from a public easement/street. Because of this, it's legal for someone to point a camera right inside your window or front door. It's also illegal (public indecency) for you to be naked in your own window or open door.

If I set up a telescope to look inside your window most people would call that an invasion of privacy, even if the telescope was set up on public property. Having a high resolution digital camera where images can be zoomed and a very sensitive microphone that can pick up conversations is similar, in my opinion.

[deleted]

Re: Amazon admits giving police Ring camera footage without consent

#433

Post by jcranberry »

helen___keller wrote: post #2

TLDR: > Although Ring publicizes its policy of handing over camera footage only if the owner agrees — or if judge signs a search warrant — the company says it also reserves the right to supply police with footage in “emergencies,” defined broadly as “cases involving imminent danger of death or serious physical injury to any person.” (…) > it has provided police with user footage 11 times this year alone. I would actu…

I think there was also similar reports with Apple recently. There was some kind of emergency hotline contact or something like that where authorities could request information where it was extremely time sensitive (I think the example given was human trafficking? although my memory was hazy), and they would be provided information without a warrant.

Re: Amazon admits giving police Ring camera footage without consent

#434

Post by rolph »

StanislavPetrov wrote: post #413
MacsHeadroom wrote: post #347

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't have a legal expectation of privacy anywhere visible from public property, including even the inside of your house viewable from a public easement/street. Because of this, it's legal for someone to point a camera right inside your window or front door. It's also illegal (public indecency) for you to be naked in your own window or open door.

If I set up a telescope to look inside your window most people would call that an invasion of privacy, even if the telescope was set up on public property. Having a high resolution digital camera where images can be zoomed and a very sensitive microphone that can pick up conversations is similar, in my opinion.

in my neck of the woods if your far enough away that someone has to use binoculars or some other artficial means, even eyeglasses, they are breaking the law. you, the one being observed are not at fault.

Re: Amazon admits giving police Ring camera footage without consent

#435

Post by cm42 »

gffrd wrote: post #199

It blows my mind how quickly people put up home cameras with zero thought to * (1) what gets captured * (2) who gets what gets captured Walk down the street of any middle-class neighborhood in a major suburb: a healthy chunk have cameras. Let's say 60%. So, you and your family are being passively surveilled on a massive scale … for the benefit of someone who's not you preventing another someone from stealing their bi…

I suppose it's a reasonable tradeoff to people who can't quantify risk and treat everything as uncertain, have too much money, too few problems, oh! - and whose neighbor just got one.

The same busy-bodies posting long Facebook screeds about how they narrowly avoided a pack of child traffickers at Local Suburbia Shopping Plaza with a picture of two hispanic dudes in work clothes and a work van buying diapers.

I find them to be generally unconcerned with anybody else except for the monthly PFP change.

Re: Amazon admits giving police Ring camera footage without consent

#436

Post by rolph »

libria wrote: post #165
pc86 wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

A US law is shaped by what we think is 1) acceptable behavior 2) enforceable, practically I think video recording laws are largely influenced by 2). I can angle my Ring camera to my smoking hot neighbor so I can record her doing yardwork. Creepy AF (breaks rule 1) but at what angle is it not obviously deliberate? Turned 10 degrees toward her lawn? 30? Point being, I think US recording laws are too liberal but we need…

i would ask my nieghbour if they care about it or not, perhaps make a guest feed if they are agreeable to mutual camera coverage, let them have some opportunity to see what is on camera and where it points

Re: Amazon admits giving police Ring camera footage without consent

#437

Post by Pakdef »

arwhatever wrote: post #427

Do you wonder if the SWAT team ever needs to bulldoze your wall in (rightly or wrongly), whether they might get a warrant to disable your cloud-based security camera(s) just beforehand?

Apparently they don't need a warrant for that... Amazon just demonstrated that.

Re: Amazon admits giving police Ring camera footage without consent

#438

Post by brokenmachine »

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…

You should keep your cat inside and not leave it free to roam the neighborhood killing wildlife, and then going to disturb your neighbors when it does exactly what a cat does and runs away.

Re: Amazon admits giving police Ring camera footage without consent

#439

Post by nmeagent »

chickenpotpie wrote: post #338
jjulius wrote: post #332

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>That means they're life is worse. It doesn't, though. If they are aware of the tradeoff (that in order to have the privacy they want, it will take longer to get any footage they may need), and they find that the tradeoff is worth it, then their life is not "worse". After all, that's why they made the decision to begin with - because they believe that their life is worse with them than without.

But it's not more privacy, that's the entire basis of what I'm saying. In this hypothetical, you're already monitored by cameras. The only difference is that the subject doesn't own them. The privacy is the exact same in both.

One person making such a principled choice may encourage another, who may encourage another, and so on. If enough of us make principled choices we don't necessarily have to live like this.

Re: Amazon admits giving police Ring camera footage without consent

#440

Post by crusty »

heavyset_go wrote: post #369
themitigating wrote: post #356

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"When there's a mysterious box that does some vague thing that you don't care about, it's safe to hate it. It's not helping you in any observable way, so opposing its existence is a safe, easy decision" This sounds like the justification of stupidity. If you don't know what it does it ignoring may or may not be safe. If you can't observe a benefit to you (I assume you mean obvious and causual observation) doesn't mea…

Maybe I'm wrong, but it sounds like the OP is not justifying such a view, but explaining how others tend to see things in general.

You are clearly not wrong.
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