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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

#121

Post by chrisrogers »

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…

My read is that it's immoral because it's a surveillance hijack without the knowledge of the users, as opposed to an opt-in.

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

#122

Post by chatmasta »

cyode wrote: post #56
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…

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…

That system is nothing compared to the geolocation databases curated by Apple and Google, with GPS sensors combined with Wi-Fi wardriving, IMEI tracking, cell tower handoffs, and the rest of the insane amount of telemetry they collect collect in real time. And that’s before even considering BLE and the Find My network. Imagine the “God mode” dashboards they could have in Cupertino (or more likely, in Mountain View).

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

#123

Post by izacus »

wat10000 wrote: post #100
steezeburger wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 fo…

The fact that Batman is an ultra wealthy 1 % which dishes out justice with his expensive toys while hiding from most of the authorities is also quite a message.

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

#125

Post by toephu2 »

thewebguyd wrote: post #118
dyauspitr wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Me, absolutely not. Unfortunately, my opinion seems to be increasingly in the minority and more and more people will happily be surveilled for even just an illusory promise of safety. The harsh truth is that safety/security can never be guaranteed. No amount of surveillance will 100% prevent any individual from being a victim of a crime. Surveillance might help catching the criminal to face justice afterwards, but it…

There is no expectation of privacy in the public setting though. Anyone can record you in public without your permission.

> No amount of surveillance will 100% prevent any individual from being a victim of a crime.

No, but if it reduces crime by 99% would you be in favor of it? (See South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore.. examples of democratic countries with CCTVs all over the public space.. and before you say well those are racially homogenous countries.. I say look at Singapore. Singapore is very diverse racially, and yet they have very low rates of crime. This is because they have strict laws against crime and these laws are actually enforced)

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

#127

Post by toephu2 »

whatthe12899 wrote: post #97
toephu2 wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[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).

People tend to behave if they know they are being watched. Yeah it's not going to stop crime 100%, but I bet you it will (and it has) help reduce crime by double digit percentages.

Look at places where there are CCTV cameras all over, there is very little crime there compared to the United States. I won't use China as an example because then you are going to attack me for saying it's an authoritarian state. In that case I will use democratic examples: Taiwan, South Korea, Singapore.

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

#128

Post by AlexandrB »

idle_zealot wrote: post #33
blibble wrote: post #17

that advert is just so horribly manipulative it's borderline evil how can normal people go to work and produce this output? (I suppose everyone that is prepared to work at Amazon corporate is... a certain type of person)

It's not really about the individual people. They're probably all pretty normal interpersonally. Our systems reward this behavior, so people do it. Surveillance is desired by the politically and economically powerful, and the contravening forces are weak and largely unorganized. Do we punish politicians or businesses for bad behavior? No? Then they'll engage in whatever behavior advances their interests. You could pu…

> Surveillance is desired by the politically and economically powerful

It's also desired by consumers. Parents love tracking their children, spouses track each other. Everyone wants to get a camera to catch porch pirates. Let's not pretend this is something being forced on us by some external evil. The evil is coming from inside the house.

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

#129

Post by nilamo »

toephu2 wrote: post #89
Animats wrote: post #82

They don't have a lost-kid feature? In China, kids are accustomed to face recognition early.[1] The kids are checking into school via fare gates with face recognition. Here's an ad for Hikvision surveillance systems showing the whole system.[2] Hikvision has a whole series of videos presenting their concept of a kindly, gentler Big Brother. This is probably the most amusing.[3] Amazon's concept is in some ways more p…

[flagged]

That's beside the point? Gaining security by losing freedom was always on the table. What's interesting is the cultural shift toward not caring about losing freedom.

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

#130

Post by CobrastanJorji »

seg_lol wrote: post #93
culi wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

There are performance concerns with base64. Hardware-assisted null-key encryption offers security that's a non-strict superset of base64 encryption and with superior performance.
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