Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Ring cancels its partnership with Flock Safety after surveillance backlash

theverge.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

131–140 of 331 posts

Re: Ring cancels its partnership with Flock Safety after surveillance backlash

#131

Post by gib444 »

nozzlegear wrote: post #104
p-e-w wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There’s actually another alternative: Just don’t install surveillance in your home. Approximately nobody had it 20 years ago. Before asking which unreliable, overpriced, invasive gadget to buy, think about whether you really need any of them.

Why? I like to keep an eye on my dogs when we're away, and it's all done securely using HomeKit video. My iCloud is e2e encrypted and the camera doesn't upload anywhere besides there. What's the invasive part? Not giving my dogs privacy when we're out of the home?

Did your CCTV increase the time you leave the dogs alone, out of interest?

We never needed CCTV in the 90s/00s for dogs. We would have someone take the dogs out for a walk/toilet, or if having to regularly leave them alone beyond what is fair to them, re-home them

And if you need to check they're not causing mischief they're likely not tired enough

So I'm wondering what use case remains really

Re: Ring cancels its partnership with Flock Safety after surveillance backlash

#132

Post by SecretDreams »

dylan604 wrote: post #35
dgxyz wrote: post #6

This is a temporary rollback while there’s a choice to speak against it. Cloud connected doorbells must die as well as dragnet surveillance.

> Cloud connected doorbells must die as well as dragnet surveillance. I'd disagree and restate that cloud services willing to make these kinds of deals must die, painfully, in a fire after being stung by a million killer bees, after receiving a million paper cuts and having lemon juice poured all over them. It is possible for a company to charge a monthly fee to provide a service and only that service without attempt…

In America, whether a deal is publicly made or not, if your personal data is stored on the cloud, it is neither private nor your data any longer. Any belief to the contrary is just to help you sleep better at night.

Re: Ring cancels its partnership with Flock Safety after surveillance backlash

#133

Post by Handy-Man »

devStorms wrote: post #123
noduerme wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you, that looks pretty good! I think the link should just be ui.com. The subdomain redirects to a login page.

UniFi device traffic is not E2EE, they technically can do the same to your video data if you enable remote access (necessary for some of their camera functionalities). https://www.reddit.com/r/Ubiquiti/comments/18j3bac/psa_if_yo...

You don't need to use their cloud. You can keep it all local, and use VPN to log in and view stuff.

Re: Ring cancels its partnership with Flock Safety after surveillance backlash

#134

Post by olyjohn »

nozzlegear wrote: post #104
p-e-w wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There’s actually another alternative: Just don’t install surveillance in your home. Approximately nobody had it 20 years ago. Before asking which unreliable, overpriced, invasive gadget to buy, think about whether you really need any of them.

Why? I like to keep an eye on my dogs when we're away, and it's all done securely using HomeKit video. My iCloud is e2e encrypted and the camera doesn't upload anywhere besides there. What's the invasive part? Not giving my dogs privacy when we're out of the home?

Like, its fine that you use it for that, you do you... but I don't understand the actual use case? What are you watching the dogs for? Like are you going to rush home if they shit on the carpet or something?

Re: Ring cancels its partnership with Flock Safety after surveillance backlash

#135

Post by toofy »

Cerium wrote: post #112
noduerme wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've had a couple Ring cams for years. I hate the network, hate having to pay for the cloud storage, I've just been too lazy to research self-hosted alternatives. Is there solution you'd recommend that's relatively polished and easy to use?

It is not really cheap, nor best "value for the dollar", but I am extremely satisfied with UniFi [0]. Nearly instant setup, decent mobile apps, web interface, basically just works as you need. [0] https://ui.com/ Edit, update link.

while i agree that unifi is worth looking at, id urge anyone reading this to be a little weery there:

i used to own extensive unifi equipment for my home network, 8 access points, 2 switches, gateway, a couple cams, etc… it was amazing, the initial setup, the interoperability, the stability and maintenance was absolutely painless. i will loudly sing them praises for those things, but i started noticing them trying to jam cloud features and subscriptions behind paywalls deeper into the integration, it’s pretty obvious that its only a matter of time before they enshitify with pay-for-features paywalled behind subscriptions, cloud first, etc…

keep that in mind before you dive headfirst. their stuff was perfect in that stability sweet spot of better than small office but not quite enterprise tier local only configurations, but i personally dipped as soon as i saw what i think is the writing in the wall.

i love their stuff, genuinely i did, but if the goal is to move further away from subscriptions and cloud-first, be very cautious of their current trajectory.

Re: Ring cancels its partnership with Flock Safety after surveillance backlash

#136

Post by jolux »

pdonis wrote: post #122
Cerium wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is not really cheap, nor best "value for the dollar", but I am extremely satisfied with UniFi [0]. Nearly instant setup, decent mobile apps, web interface, basically just works as you need. [0] https://ui.com/ Edit, update link.

So this link redirects to a page that wants me to either create an account, or log into one I already have, before it will tell me anything about this product. Sorry, no.

I think they just posted the link they log into. The site is ui.com or store.ui.com.

Re: Ring cancels its partnership with Flock Safety after surveillance backlash

#137

Post by RyanOD »

dakolli wrote: post #95

Doesn't matter, I've come to the conclusion I'll never buy into one these networks. There's a reason "security" cameras were always on "closed circuit", there's no need give these companies money.

I feel this way about many such networks. We avoid networked appliances, garage doors, door locks, external cameras, etc as often as we can.

Re: Ring cancels its partnership with Flock Safety after surveillance backlash

#138

Post by digiown »

noduerme wrote: post #108
dakolli wrote: post #95

Doesn't matter, I've come to the conclusion I'll never buy into one these networks. There's a reason "security" cameras were always on "closed circuit", there's no need give these companies money.

I've had a couple Ring cams for years. I hate the network, hate having to pay for the cloud storage, I've just been too lazy to research self-hosted alternatives. Is there solution you'd recommend that's relatively polished and easy to use?

Frigate and some cameras that can stream to an NVR. No cloud, you can use a VPN for remote access.

https://docs.frigate.video/frigate/hardware/

Re: Ring cancels its partnership with Flock Safety after surveillance backlash

#139

Post by dylan604 »

noduerme wrote: post #119
dylan604 wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Cloud connected doorbells must die as well as dragnet surveillance. I'd disagree and restate that cloud services willing to make these kinds of deals must die, painfully, in a fire after being stung by a million killer bees, after receiving a million paper cuts and having lemon juice poured all over them. It is possible for a company to charge a monthly fee to provide a service and only that service without attempt…

How hard would it be to sell a solution that makes it easy for a consumer to set up on-site recording? Ship a small box loaded with Tailscale and some software that connects to cameras over a LAN, and runs a webserver that allows user logins through a web interface. Nothing needs to go into the cloud. Yes, then you sell it once to a customer and that's it. No subscription or planned obsolescence. Fine, so factor that…

They have been selling NVR based camera systems for decades. It's clunky. It takes a network savvy person to open up their home network to allow remote access. It takes an even savvier person to not do that in a way that guarantees getting their network pwnd.

Having a cloud based solution from an ethical company would be the consumer friendly solution people are actually wanting. Lots of people are willing to spend money to make problems go away.

Re: Ring cancels its partnership with Flock Safety after surveillance backlash

#140

Post by GaryNumanVevo »

idle_zealot wrote: post #86
s0a wrote: post #83

Frigate NVR + Amcrest cameras. 100% local, private, on-device AI object recognition and classification. Can use a Google Coral USB TPU to speed that up. Runs on hardware as modest as a Raspberry Pi.

Great. Now package that as a plug-and-play product so more than 1000 nerds will use it instead of participating in the largest dragnet in history ;)

Security systems used to be 100x the cost (parts+install) before the cloud because you essentially needed a local NAS and to run a bunch of PoE enabled ethernet to each corner of your house.
Post reply on HN