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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

#151

Post by throwaway0a5e »

Pakdef wrote: post #114
troyvit wrote: post #111

Often when a story like this comes up I go off on a search for clothing and accessories that help disrupt the AIs these cameras use. The attempts at this fall into 3 categories: works of art, college projects, and organizations that are no longer selling. One exception might be https://adversarialfashion.com/ , though it seems focused on license plate readers.

I think that they might be more likely to look at the pictures with a bunch of license plates on them

Or you'd get miscategorized as a car which is probably the best case scenario.

Re: Amazon admits giving police Ring camera footage without consent

#152

Post by gpt5 »

gleenn wrote: post #147
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…

Depending on the state you live in, e.g. California has two party consent to record audio, meaning if you don't consent then what they're doing is illegal.

These only apply to private conversation, and not ones occurred in public (i.e. it's fair game to record the driveway, but not the backyard).

Re: Amazon admits giving police Ring camera footage without consent

#153

Post by thegrimmest »

heywot wrote: post #52
MichaelZuo wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If your houses are close together I don't think it's reasonable to have an expectation of privacy on the driveway or front porch. After all sound at normal speaking volume can easily travel 100 feet on a quiet day, if there's nothing in-between.

There's a huge difference between casually overhearing a conversation because you also are outside versus having actions/words recorded for eternity, and potentially analyzed by a third party (Amazon, Google, etc).

I'm not sure I agree - if you have the right to observe, listen and record using your meat implements (eyes, ears, brain), then you should have the right to do so using a digital augmentation of the same (cameras, microphones, storage).

Re: Amazon admits giving police Ring camera footage without consent

#154

Post by mulmen »

rdtwo wrote: post #33
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess if you don’t have prowler or package theft problems, they aren’t really necessary. I personally have found my Nest cameras indispensable. Ironically, if police would just do their job on property crime, they wouldn’t be so needed.

What’s the point? Even if you have a great video of a dude stealing your packages nobody will arrest or do anything about it.

The point is it helps prosecutors build a case when serial package thieves are eventually caught. This happened in my neighborhood a few years ago.

Re: Amazon admits giving police Ring camera footage without consent

#155

Post by throwaway0a5e »

annoyingnoob wrote: post #139
salawat wrote: post #3

If the data is not on your hardware, it is not your data.

When you pay for a service that includes storage, then its your storage.

I wouldn't mind if the "traditionalist" SCOTUS that errybody seems to hate took a good look at the phrase "papers and effects"

Re: Amazon admits giving police Ring camera footage without consent

#156

Post by helen___keller »

fotta wrote: post #14
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…

In your situation, the police should be asking YOU not Amazon for the footage. I don’t have a problem with turning over footage, but not without my consent. I want to be able to decide when to give it to police.

I’m saying that if the “emergency” standard was well described and followed consistently (and I agree with it), then I would OK granting amazon the power to manage this permission on my behalf.

Similarly, as a citizen of the country, I’m OK that judges can sign a warrant and manage permission on my behalf as well.

Re: Amazon admits giving police Ring camera footage without consent

#157

Post by woodruffw »

jazzyjackson wrote: post #67

IMO the primary utility of Ring is for Amazon to surveil their delivery contractors, without a doorbell cam it’s trivial for a delivery person to set the package on the porch, photograph it as “proof of delivery”, and then walk away with said package. So the deterrent effect is good for the consumer in that it prevents theft, and good for Amazon because they can contract out to just about anyone to deliver packages,…

This will maybe be too snide, but I want to say it: what an utterly ridiculous system we've contrived for ourselves.

People want to live in suburbs, where their residences are separated from commercial areas. This starves city and town centers, leaving only big businesses that are capable of thriving on high volume sales.

But we still want the convenience of walking down to their neighborhood store, so we've constructed an entire economic system built on shipping things in disposable boxes around the globe and getting them to people's doorsteps within two business days.

But, it turns out, this makes it really easy for someone to walk up to your door and steal your package. So we pay the same companies that starve our neighborhood businesses for the privilege of being surveilled, in turn externalizing the cost of their haphazard practices onto law enforcement and the victimized parties.

More middlemen, more theft, more surveillance, more waste. What a farce.

Re: Amazon admits giving police Ring camera footage without consent

#158

Post by thatfunkymunki »

gleenn wrote: post #147
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…

Depending on the state you live in, e.g. California has two party consent to record audio, meaning if you don't consent then what they're doing is illegal.

are you certain this applies to things occuring in public? IANAL but it strains reason to believe it's illegal for cameras in public to have audio recording enabled.

Re: Amazon admits giving police Ring camera footage without consent

#159

Post by ls15 »

pc86 wrote: post #132
ls15 wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I never would give a neighbor a hard time about a camera pointing at a publicly visible spot on my property In Germany people have successfully sued their neighbours for that and I fully agree with the courts. Filming others without consent is invasive.

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.

I find it really unfortunate that the US is so blatantly disregarding data privacy. In a world of eroding freedom, lack of data privacy can become a severe safety risk. The return of the Taliban in Afghanistan, the reversal of Roe v. Wade and Russia's recent moves give me an idea of dynamics that can turn dark quickly.

Re: Amazon admits giving police Ring camera footage without consent

#160

Post by mhaymo »

karaterobot wrote: post #8

> “If there is the infrastructure, if there is the channel by which police can request footage without a warrant or consent of the user, under what circumstances they get it is out of our control. I worry that because it’s decided by the police and by somebody at Ring, there will be temptation to use that for increasingly less urgent situations.” Many people (I would argue anybody with common sense) predicted Ring wo…

According to the article, users can opt-in to end-to-end encryption, so it's not true that this is "out of our control".
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