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Amazon Ring's lost dog ad sparks backlash amid fears of mass surveillance

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Re: Amazon Ring's lost dog ad sparks backlash amid fears of mass surveillance

#91

Post by bayindirh »

mjr00 wrote: post #20

The Dark Knight was released in 2008. In that movie, Batman hijacks citizens' cellphones to track down the Joker, and it's presented as a major moral and ethical dilemma as part of the movie's overall themes. The only way Batman remains a "good guy" in the eyes of the audience is by destroying the entire thing once he's done. Crazy to think that less than two decades later, an even more powerful surveillance technolo…

In the series Person of Interest, there's a scene where you can see racks of servers which allows to track everyone in a city (New York?).

When I first saw the scene I said: "This amount of servers is not remotely enough to pull something like this".

When I think of the scene now: "These amount of servers can do much more than the scene portrays".

I mean, most of the tech presented in the series is almost standard operations procedure via mundane equipment now.

Scary.

Re: Amazon Ring's lost dog ad sparks backlash amid fears of mass surveillance

#92

Post by tsunamifury »

b00ty4breakfast wrote: post #45
mjr00 wrote: post #20

The Dark Knight was released in 2008. In that movie, Batman hijacks citizens' cellphones to track down the Joker, and it's presented as a major moral and ethical dilemma as part of the movie's overall themes. The only way Batman remains a "good guy" in the eyes of the audience is by destroying the entire thing once he's done. Crazy to think that less than two decades later, an even more powerful surveillance technolo…

This is a bit orthogonal to the article, but Christopher Nolan gives me the willies. Almost all his films have this kind authoritarian apologia in them.

Do not mistake Nolan's ability to call out the failures of both absolute freedom and absolute control and their interaction with him advocating for any of them.

Don't get the willies from the warning, learn from it.

His brother and the writer, Jonathan Nolan, is the greatest prophet of our era.

Re: Amazon Ring's lost dog ad sparks backlash amid fears of mass surveillance

#93

Post by seg_lol »

culi wrote: post #68
cyode wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pulled from IMDB, Morgan Freeman as Lucius Fox voices the consternation perfectly: > Batman: [seeing the wall of monitors for the first time at the Applied Sciences division in Wayne Enterprises] Beautiful, isn't it? > Lucius Fox: Beautiful... unethical... dangerous. You've turned every cellphone in Gotham into a microphone. > Batman: And a high-frequency generator-receiver. > Lucius Fox: You took my sonar concept an…

Lmao did they really say it's null-key encrypted? Unfortunately a very realistic depiction of how many of the brands advertising their security the strongest often have the most ridiculously broken security (flock)

They should have used base64 encryption.

Re: Amazon Ring's lost dog ad sparks backlash amid fears of mass surveillance

#95

Post by Dylan16807 »

bradley13 wrote: post #58

Recording public spaces should be illegal. Public street? Public sidewalk? Not your turf, no cameras, no recording.

I think that goes too far, but limiting public space recordings to a camera you're operating in person would be a good starting point.

Re: Amazon Ring's lost dog ad sparks backlash amid fears of mass surveillance

#96

Post by mlsu »

slg wrote: post #29
mjr00 wrote: post #20

The Dark Knight was released in 2008. In that movie, Batman hijacks citizens' cellphones to track down the Joker, and it's presented as a major moral and ethical dilemma as part of the movie's overall themes. The only way Batman remains a "good guy" in the eyes of the audience is by destroying the entire thing once he's done. Crazy to think that less than two decades later, an even more powerful surveillance technolo…

It's hard to not become disillusioned with our industry when most of it is just the manifesting of that Torment Nexus tweet. It's like no one in the tech world actually understands any piece of fiction that they have ever consumed.

I've had a startling number of conversations exactly like this:

"Oh, you read as well? What do your read?"

"[this book], [that book]"

"Those are all non-fiction, any fiction?"

"I don't read fiction. If I'm not going to learn anything, it's a waste of time."

"..."

Re: Amazon Ring's lost dog ad sparks backlash amid fears of mass surveillance

#97

Post by whatthe12899 »

toephu2 wrote: post #88
text0404 wrote: post #19

Even more concerning is that Ring is partnering with Flock [1], which has been the subject of quite a bit of controversy recently [2][3][4], with the CEO lashing out at critics with inflammatory language [5][6]. [1] https://www.flocksafety.com/blog/flock-safety-and-ring-partn... [2] https://www.aclu.org/news/privacy-technology/flock-roundup [3] https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/feb/10/ice-school-c... [4] https…

[flagged]

> the reduction in crime is not solely due to Flock, but is has definitely helped.

what's the theory? murderers see flock cams and decide not to murder? most of the general public doesn't even know what these cameras are (or that they even exist).

Re: Amazon Ring's lost dog ad sparks backlash amid fears of mass surveillance

#98

Post by dyauspitr »

toephu2 wrote: post #88
text0404 wrote: post #19

Even more concerning is that Ring is partnering with Flock [1], which has been the subject of quite a bit of controversy recently [2][3][4], with the CEO lashing out at critics with inflammatory language [5][6]. [1] https://www.flocksafety.com/blog/flock-safety-and-ring-partn... [2] https://www.aclu.org/news/privacy-technology/flock-roundup [3] https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/feb/10/ice-school-c... [4] https…

[flagged]

That has always been the question. Are you willing to be constantly surveilled for marginally more security?

Re: Amazon Ring's lost dog ad sparks backlash amid fears of mass surveillance

#99

Post by trevwilson »

b00ty4breakfast wrote: post #84
dylan604 wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is that the same willies as something like 1984 or Black Mirror? All they are doing is taking some idea present now, and just taking it too the darker places of it while society is currently only seeing the rosy side of things. It's stories like this that might be first time someone might actually consider other implications of ideas.

No, it's more like the militarism in a Heinlein novel. It is, at best, an unexamined assumption and, at worst, a celebration, or sometimes a passive acceptance, of violence to enforce the status quo.

In the context of the Dark Knight/surveillance example, it comes across to me as more of a recognition that the arguments in favor of these things can easily be made compelling if you evaluate them with no tradeoffs (don't you want to catch the bad guys??).

Then again, I guess the film ends up doing the same thing by only demonstrating concrete benefits alongside theoretical, but unrealized, harms...

Re: Amazon Ring's lost dog ad sparks backlash amid fears of mass surveillance

#100

Post by wat10000 »

steezeburger wrote: post #81
dylan604 wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is that the same willies as something like 1984 or Black Mirror? All they are doing is taking some idea present now, and just taking it too the darker places of it while society is currently only seeing the rosy side of things. It's stories like this that might be first time someone might actually consider other implications of ideas.

I think they take issue with how it was ultimately okay to do to catch the Joker as long as Batman didn't use it and gave power to Luscious who resigned, instead of just calling it out as terrible and not doing it. That's how I read their comment anyway. "apologia"

Most (all?) of Batman is based on the idea that sometimes you need a good guy who operates outside of the law. Given that Batman isn't real but the problems he encounters often are real, the natural conclusion is that we should make up for our low Batman levels by letting law enforcement off the chain.

But this is hardly unique to Nolan. Probably 90% of Hollywood movies that involve crime have this message in some form.

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