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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

#251

Post by mindslight »

tremon wrote: post #111
softwaredoug wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anything that relies on gov't can be undone by gov't. Or weaponized by gov't. We need resilience that's hard to regulate or undo.

You already had resilience that was very hard to undo: three independent branches of government, indirect elections via the electoral college, separation of church and state, strong protections for freedom of speech, independent journalism. Yet you still managed to have it undone. What does a non-government solution look like to you that can't be undone by the People?

The real problem isn't that it was undone by "the People", but rather that the surveillance industry effectively formed a fourth branch of government that grew and grew, then finally had enough sway over the People to convince them to undo it. To head off what we're currently staring down, we needed a US equivalent of the GDPR and enforcement against anti-competitive bundling 15+ years ago.

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

#252

Post by hermannj314 »

We have a branch of government called Congress, here are some things they used to do that made it a crime to read your mail or listen to your phone calls.

1. Postal Service Act of 1792

2. Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA) of 1986

Anyway, Facebook can read your DMs, Google can read your email, Ring can take photos from your camera.

We can very easily make those things a crime, but we don't seem to want to do it.

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

#253

Post by jasonjayr »

prmoustache wrote: post #239
jasonjayr wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of schools use apps like 'ParentSquare' to interact and manage the student/teacher/parent relationship, and do not offer the same level of communication through traditional channels anymore.

And these apps require a google account?

They require a phone that can log into an App store, so unless parents can work around that, then yes?

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

#254

Post by embedding-shape »

brookst wrote: post #177
embedding-shape wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Apple isn't on the evil list Yeah, Tim Apple handing over a 24-karat gold plaque to the sitting president is completely normal behavior for CEOs to engage in, and not at all about just making as much money as possible. He had to do that, otherwise Apple as a company would disappear tomorrow. They're just trying to survive.

I don’t like that we’ve gotten to a place where presumably serious people think that giving a token prize to a narcissist is the same thing as engaging in massive surveillance of the entire population.

> presumably serious people think that giving a token prize to a narcissist

Unfortunately, I think reality is much worse than you seem to be under the impression of. Voter suppression and military violence against your own population isn't "narcissism", it's the introduction of authoritarianism. The flagrant narcissism is a symptom of that, not the actual issue.

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

#255

Post by margalabargala »

karp773 wrote: post #101
embedding-shape wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure if it's sarcasm or something, but Snowden essentially lives in exile from his home as the US government would like to punish him for exposing the secrets of the US government spying on everyone. Not sure what new revelations could come from him.

[flagged]

Snowden is currently more or less trapped in Russia, and therefore unable to expose overreach of authoritarian governments without immediately fearing for his life.

The US has lots of issues but at least it doesn't toss you out a window when you cross Fearless Leader. Maybe you get ICE'd, but Russia's kill rate of people Putin doesn't like is 1000x Trump.

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

#256

Post by titanomachy »

retrac wrote: post #195
titanomachy wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I spend significant time in the US, Canada, and Europe, and nobody I talk to seems to think that what's going on is OK. Both Canada and Europe are undertaking major projects to reduce their interdependence with America, and public sentiment on America has changed rapidly since the current administration assumed power. Europeans have always distrusted American tech, and Canadians have started trying to break away as w…

Opinion poll Dec 2025 Canada-wide: "How do you think the Canadian government should approach the following countries?" https://thehub.ca/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/c9Enf-how-do-yo... Some is just shock and overreaction I think. But it is an enormous shift.

I almost forgot that Canada and India are on such poor terms. I wonder what the numbers would be if India hadn't assassinated Nijjar on Canadian soil in 2023.

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

#257

Post by NoImmatureAdHom »

gbriel wrote: post #237

Reminder: Glen Greenwald doesn’t think Jan 6 was an insurrection and now aligns with people like Tim Pool and Alex Jones.

Jan 6 wasn't an insurrection. Nobody was armed except one guy with a pistol and the dude with a spear. It was a bunch of obese methbillies trashing the place.

Insurrections do not look like that.

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

#258

Post by oefrha »

ori_b wrote: post #204
oefrha wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You do realize these are still crap compared to other countries right?

Agreed, the world overall is pretty safe these days.

If you’re being sarcastic, well, congratulate yourself for being better than shitholes I guess.

If you’re not, yes it is, unfortunately same can’t be said about the U.S., where my not very large social circle have experienced robbery at gun point at a gas station, street mugging, home break-in with everything stolen, smashed car window, all within the past decade. I was more fortunate but still got my bike stolen.

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

#259

Post by xpltr7 »

Ring camera spyware, Amazons....excuse me Department of Defence/War..whatever the name, they have contracts with Amazon, which had the Super Bowl ad reveiling a new feature called "search party"...which it uses AI face/pattern recognition under the guise "search for missing dogs" to scan all its cameras videos for the "missing dog"... .Now this scans all Ring cameras, inside houses, outside houses, wherever theres a Ring camera....but its really to find people, dissenters, "criminals" in the eyes of the satanic surveillance system. The minds involved always play on the emotions of people to bring this about, such as a child who lost their dog or an "illegal" immigrant who commited a crime...they spread the propaganda, stir up emotions, then get the results...more gullible Americans accepting more surveillance and spying on their neighbors like the psychos did with fake "covid" hysteria. Part of their propaganda the so called missing lady Nancy Guthrie...how convenient, right around the time of Amazons search party, Google Nest has the psyop. With a sherrif saying the videos were not saved, she didnt have a Google Nest subscription..lol, see where thats going?

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

#260

Post by wordsunite »

MontyCarloHall wrote: post #63
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…

>I know it seems hard, but just stop using Google, Amazon, Meta products. I noticed your own app's website [0] hosts videos on YouTube [1] and uses Stripe as a payment processor [2], which is hosted on AWS. You also mentioned that your app is vibe coded [3]; the AI labs that facilitated your vibecoding likely built and run their models using Meta's PyTorch or Google's TensorFlow. "Just stop using" makes for a catchy…

The comments are fair. My post was quick and lacked details as I was frustrated in the ever increasing enshitification of the web.

What I meant to convey, from my personal experience, is that it seemed hard to get off of platforms like X, Facebook, Instagram, Amazon Prime, Alexa, Ring, Google Photos, etc. but then I did it and didn’t miss them. These small moves by a lot of people, I believe, can still make a difference. It’s not perfect, but it’s something. Do I still use some services? Of course, I have Gmail and WhatsApp, and use a lot of Apple products. When I can, I choose intentionally what I use since there’s no perfect companies out there, but there are “better” ones (whatever that may be in one’s opinion). I chose cloudflare for hosting and Anthropic for vibe coding. Allowing people to use existing login info versus exposing them to more risk with self managed auth was a choice I made. There are tons of choices we make every day so trying to be more intentional is a good start.

Nobody is perfect, but we can try to improve each day in these choices we make.

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