21–30 of 173 posts
A spy camera that looks like a towel hook seems like a product that should be illegal to sell. For what legitimate purpose would somebody want a towel hook camera? Don't most people put towel hooks in bathrooms? It seems perfectly reasonable to hold Amazon legally responsible for selling this product even if it was a 3rd party seller (not clear from the article). A product whose intended use is to secretly record vid…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Perhaps most alarming to the plaintiff, Amazon's Product Safety Team specifically inspected the camera to "ensure" that Amazon wasn't platforming a product being used to “infringe privacy,” “surreptitiously record others for sexual purposes,” or “create and store child sex abuse material.” This is the key bit that makes it different from your examples.
That is kinda tricky because >Tech legal expert Eric Goldman wrote that a victory for the plaintiff could be considered "a dangerous ruling for the spy cam industry and for Amazon," because "the court’s analysis could indicate that all surreptitious hook cameras are categorically illegal to sell." That could prevent completely legal uses of cameras designed to look like clothes hooks, Goldman wrote, such as hypotheti…
A spy camera that looks like a towel hook seems like a product that should be illegal to sell. For what legitimate purpose would somebody want a towel hook camera? Don't most people put towel hooks in bathrooms? It seems perfectly reasonable to hold Amazon legally responsible for selling this product even if it was a 3rd party seller (not clear from the article). A product whose intended use is to secretly record vid…
A spy camera that looks like a towel hook seems like a product that should be illegal to sell. For what legitimate purpose would somebody want a towel hook camera? Don't most people put towel hooks in bathrooms? It seems perfectly reasonable to hold Amazon legally responsible for selling this product even if it was a 3rd party seller (not clear from the article). A product whose intended use is to secretly record vid…
But that's a BS answer IMO. If you actually want to prevent the crime, the criminals have to know the surveillance is there. Make the cameras visible, or take the doors off the bathroom stalls[1]. People will be outraged at that; but hidden surveillance is even worse.
1: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/kitchener-waterloo/some-water...
Is there an archive snapshot of the Towel bar Cam product page as displayed by Amazon? Kinda wondering what the product actually looks like, and how Amazon allowed it to be presented. Edit: whoa, @navels how'd you do that?! Thank you, amazing: https://web.archive.org/web/20230527030738/https://www.amazo... The product reviews are creepy. -- Rest of my comment for posterity: There's an image in TFA, though it's only a…
https://web.archive.org/web/20230527030738/https://www.amazo...
It was sold as a nanny cam which is really a legitimate, if slightly distasteful, function. There is an image of it shown with towels on the hook, but it isn't stated or implied that it should be used to spy on people as they use the bathroom.
I'm a big fan of holding tech companies to the same standards as other industries, but not a big fan of holding them to unreasonably high standards.
I love technology, but some things we're able to build today cheaply and using mass-market parts concerns me. Hidden cameras can be so good now that it is impractical for someone to find them. You may disagree with that assertion, but I'd put to you that maybe you just haven't seen some of the top-end products where the only clue is pin-hole sized, or even invisible like hidden behind the LCD screen of a set top box/…
Miniaturization has and will lead to these devices becoming more powerful and everywhere in our environment.
Is there an archive snapshot of the Towel bar Cam product page as displayed by Amazon? Kinda wondering what the product actually looks like, and how Amazon allowed it to be presented. Edit: whoa, @navels how'd you do that?! Thank you, amazing: https://web.archive.org/web/20230527030738/https://www.amazo... The product reviews are creepy. -- Rest of my comment for posterity: There's an image in TFA, though it's only a…
I mean I also have a morbid curiosity, but is there anything that could have been there that would have made it ok? This isn't lock picks were a lot of people buy them to mess around with and to get back into their own property
A spy camera that looks like a towel hook seems like a product that should be illegal to sell. For what legitimate purpose would somebody want a towel hook camera? Don't most people put towel hooks in bathrooms? It seems perfectly reasonable to hold Amazon legally responsible for selling this product even if it was a 3rd party seller (not clear from the article). A product whose intended use is to secretly record vid…
The standard answer is to prevent the crime that happens in bathrooms: drug use, rapes, bullying, et cetera. But that's a BS answer IMO. If you actually want to prevent the crime, the criminals have to know the surveillance is there. Make the cameras visible, or take the doors off the bathroom stalls[1]. People will be outraged at that; but hidden surveillance is even worse. 1: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/kitchene…
[flagged]
It's a pretty new thing to have online market places with the kind of scale that exists today while claiming no duty to know about the things being sold. If Walmart or your neighborhood mom and pop tried to sell this everyone would be up in arms so it's weird that some people think it's a good idea to structure society in a way where we strip any responsibility away. On the gun shop we do actually require some duty o…
Fb marketplace takes inspiration from Craigslist which takes inspiration from newspaper classified ads.
If you went to a classified ad and bought a toaster or something and it was bunk, would you think about holding the newspaper accountable?