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Amazon's Ring and Google's Nest reveal the severity of U.S. surveillance state

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Re: Amazon's Ring and Google's Nest reveal the severity of U.S. surveillance state

#151

Post by JumpCrisscross »

harimau777 wrote: post #73
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's the only way it can be in a system with thousands of crimes on the books. People commit minor offenses, and often felonies without knowing it, on a regular basis. If surveillance was consistently used to actually enforce the laws, people would a) notice the surveillance[0] and then actually object to it and b) start objecting to all the ridiculous and poorly drafted laws they didn't even know existed. But they…

On the other hand, those thousands of crimes on the books exist because American society operates under a norm of "if its not explicitly illegal then its fine for people to do it". See for example, the rhetoric around maximizing shareholder value. If the only way to protect yourself from selfish people is if their actions explicitly illegal, then the logical outcome is to make more and more things explicitly illegal.…

> If the only way to protect yourself from selfish people is if their actions explicitly illegal

It's not. You're asking for contract law.

Re: Amazon's Ring and Google's Nest reveal the severity of U.S. surveillance state

#152

Post by ambicapter »

jb1991 wrote: post #59
freeopinion wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I laugh at myself sometimes for things like this: I refuse to provide my phone number to the cashier who promises me loyalty points, then I hand over the same credit card number I use for all my purchases. Boy, I really showed them how much I value my privacy!

How are those two things the same?!

They're both a single long-lived identifier that identifies a single person and their habits?

Re: Amazon's Ring and Google's Nest reveal the severity of U.S. surveillance state

#153

Post by barnacs »

wordsunite wrote: post #32

I know it seems hard, but just stop using Google, Amazon, Meta products. Tell everyone you know to stop using their products. They have all been acquiring and amassing surveillance for years through their products and now they're just double dipping with AI training to sell you more of it. The more you can get people to realize and disconnect the better. I wish more people would use AI to build alternatives with a cl…

> stop using Google, Amazon, Meta products

That's the easy part. What do you do about stuff like face recognition and cameras everywhere? Should you hide your face every time you go out? Should you not speak because there might be a mic around picking up your voice?

This is only going to get worse. We can't trust companies or governments to respect our privacy. We can't trust each other to keep the data recorded by our devices private.

It seems like the fight for privacy is a lost cause. What do we do?

Re: Amazon's Ring and Google's Nest reveal the severity of U.S. surveillance state

#154

Post by m348e912 »

SV_BubbleTime wrote: post #145
m348e912 wrote: post #72

I know Ring is getting a bad rap for enabling state level surveillance, but the Ring app offers an option to enable end-to-end encryption between the camera and your phone. The stored video is encrypted with key generated on your phone. You have to be physically close to the camera in order to share the key and complete the set-up. Once encrypted, the video can't be analyzed by AI or used in a broad surveillance effo…

>enable end-to-end encryption between the camera and your phone. So… exactly not the part I care about? Cool, it’s encrypted on transit to me… now what about at rest with them? Is it encrypted and they absolutely can not view or hand that footage to police/gov? No.

> Cool, it’s encrypted on transit to me… now what about at rest with them? Is it encrypted and they absolutely can not view or hand that footage to police/gov? No.

Technically yes, e2e encryption means video hosted on their servers is only viewable by devices with decryption keys. So if the police/gov brought a subpoena to request the video, Ring could only offer them the encrypted video. They would have to take possession of your phone and gain access in order to decrypt and view the video.

In this case the "ends" in the e2e encryption is the camera and your phone.

Re: Amazon's Ring and Google's Nest reveal the severity of U.S. surveillance state

#155

Post by JumpCrisscross »

chii wrote: post #65
softwaredoug wrote: post #44

This type of centralization breeds authoritarianism. See also the Iran protests. There’s too many single points of failure in technology. These systems become sources of oppression inevitably. How do we build a resilient system that doesn’t rely on single platforms?

> How do we build a resilient system that doesn’t rely on single platforms? by making sure that compatibility is enshrined into law, so that competition occurs, rather than walled gardens. It has to start at the top - gov't has to mandate it.

> by making sure that compatibility is enshrined into law, so that competition occurs, rather than walled gardens

Compatibility isn't the problem. CCTV is pretty much an open standard. Folks are choosing Ring and Nest over open systems.

Re: Amazon's Ring and Google's Nest reveal the severity of U.S. surveillance state

#156

Post by nvr219 »

zrail wrote: post #103
embedding-shape wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Revealed: How Substack makes money from hosting Nazi newsletters If we're gonna judge authors for what platforms they're using, does that mean we're all bad guys here on HN too, since a lot of current misery is because of startups and technology companies who used to receive a lot praise here?

Yes.

Suffering from success.

Re: Amazon's Ring and Google's Nest reveal the severity of U.S. surveillance state

#157

Post by gruez »

anonym29 wrote: post #106
Schiendelman wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple isn't on the evil list, aside from the kowtowing every powerful leader must do not to have their business attacked.

Apple was a PRISM partner. They share just as much with the NSA as Microsoft and Google.

>They share just as much with the NSA as Microsoft and Google.

For something like icloud vs gmail/gdrive, they're approximately the same, but that doesn't mean "they share just as much [...] as Microsoft and Google. If they never collected data in the first place, they don't have to share with NSA. The most obvious would be for location data, which apple keeps on-device and google did not (although they did switch to on device a few years ago).

Re: Amazon's Ring and Google's Nest reveal the severity of U.S. surveillance state

#158

Post by Levitz »

WarmWash wrote: post #113
bloak wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Alternatively, basic stuff like e-mail and payment processing should be provided by the state. After all, the state provides a road network, which is similarly essential and rather more expensive.

Giving the state control of things to prevent the state from easily spying on people...

The neat thing about the state is that it can act directly off the incentives of the people. The state can supply such service in a private manner, given enough support from the populace.

Re: Amazon's Ring and Google's Nest reveal the severity of U.S. surveillance state

#159

Post by WarmWash »

intended wrote: post #124
WarmWash wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Giving the state control of things to prevent the state from easily spying on people...

This is the likely direction things are going. The US government can decide that EU officials are out of favor, and then those officials are locked out of Office/Gsuite. Getting away from American tech has become an actual national security issue. Ideally you would still have private enterprise create alternatives, but it’s easy to imagine that email, social media will simply be built for citizens by their government…

I'm curious the caliber of engineer that will turn down a $175k/yr Microsoft job to take a $45k/yr Government Office of Software job...

Re: Amazon's Ring and Google's Nest reveal the severity of U.S. surveillance state

#160

Post by JumpCrisscross »

devsda wrote: post #102
oceansky wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Someone commented on a HN threads on just de-googling and he couldn't even pick up his kids without a gmail or apple account. Just not using it is really unrealistic for the average person at this moment

I know it is probably not the American way but the only way to address this problem is to make laws that prevent a duopoly, penalize anti-competitive behavior and push open-source standards for software/hardware. Unfortunately, the status quo also means the US (and its tech giants) has real power and control over other countries' technology sector. So, no party in America will make or enforce laws that will change th…

> it is probably not the American way but the only way to address this problem is to make laws

Regulation and liberty mongering are very American. We do it constantly at multiple levels of government.

What kills privacy regulation is this weird strain of political nihilism that seems to strongly intersect with those who care about the issue. I've personally worked on a few bills in my time. The worst, by far, were anything to do with privacy. If you assume you're defeated by forces that be, you're never going to probe that hypothesis.

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