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

Amazon’s Ring to partner with Flock

techcrunch.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

291–300 of 531 posts

Re: Amazon’s Ring to partner with Flock

#291

Post by Aachen »

danparsonson wrote: post #174
bryancoxwell wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think encouraging people to enable E2EE is more realistic than asking everyone to throw out the Ring cams they’ve potentially spent hundreds on, yeah.

But... what makes you think that Amazon et al can't MITM the connection?

From the linked document (in German for some reason, so I skimmed it as best I could), it sounds like the device will generate a password and you need to enter it on your phone. So symmetric encryption, not trusting the server to distribute keys that would be susceptible to MITM, and also not leaving users the options to choose bad passwords

Sounds good from a security point of view, although it also says they disable functions like having more than one person able to view the camera (having a partner be able to answer the door seems pretty fundamental; they probably just can't be arsed to make such functionality work with safety turned on...)

Of course, just like with Signal or anything else that gets regular updates, they can push an update to your device specifically that sends the decryption key out. You'll always have to trust them to not do something like that, but that's a whole different level from subpoenaing data they have on a hard drive

Re: Amazon’s Ring to partner with Flock

#292

Post by femiagbabiaka »

IncreasePosts wrote: post #282
femiagbabiaka wrote: post #138

This is the logical conclusion to the state of irrational fear that Americans perpetually live in, that causes them to feel they need 24/7 surveillance of their homes, no matter the consequences.

I think most people with video door bells just like being able to answer the door when they aren't at home and to see who is there without getting up from the couch

This program would literally not be possible if that was the case, as it's completely opt-in. Citizen, Flock, Ring, they're all symptoms of the same disease.

But let's say you're right: that means that laziness is enough to bring on the surveillance state.

Re: Amazon’s Ring to partner with Flock

#293

Post by CaptainOfCoit »

rkomorn wrote: post #126
CaptainOfCoit wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hate that all our favorite sci-fi books were used as manuals for what to build next, instead of trying to avoid creating those futures in our real lives.

Personally, I think it's the other way around. Sci-fi writers understood both what technology could create in the future (and what would be desirable), and also understood how people abuse power and the tools available to them to stay in power (or gain more). In other words: they predicted the future, more than they inspired it. IMO, that also makes their writing that much more interesting.

Surprisingly, I never considered that, and agree that it makes the writing more interesting, I'm gonna keep this in mind for future stories. Thanks a lot for sharing that :)

Re: Amazon’s Ring to partner with Flock

#294

Post by IT4MD »

agigao wrote: post #85

This is why I never bought anything Amazon owned, other than Kindles; and I have dropped the latter, too. I was always suspicious of Ring and never understood the people using it.

Agreed. Ring has a proven track record of giving up whatever video law enforcement wants, regardless of your choice or privacy laws.

If it was free, I could almost understand. Nothing is free, and if it cost the customer nothing, then the customer is the product. However, people paid for Ring gear and as a thanks have their privacy violated with no notice, no info and no choice.

Re: Amazon’s Ring to partner with Flock

#295

Post by beala »

olex wrote: post #38

And this is why my setup will be using Reolink cameras integrated locally via HomeAssistant and Frigate. Detection runs locally on cameras and/or in Frigate, HA manages events and UI, and the only way to access any of it remotely is via VPN, no "cloud" anything. If the authorities come knocking with a warrant, or frankly, even a nicely-worded sensible request, sure, have at it. But ain't nobody accessing the footage…

Oops I initially posted this comment at the top level before I saw this thread:

I assume some of the concern around this is that folks don't want to live in a panopticon. If that's your objection, I can't really help with that. On the other hand, if your objection is that you don't want a backdoor built into your video doorbell (even one that you must opt into), I'm happy to report that there are good non-Ring options.

I switched to a Reolink video doorbell, and it has decent support for local-only operation. It has the ability to save footage to a local micro SD card, and if you're worried about someone stealing the entire doorbell and losing your footage, it also supports RTSP (a common IP camera protocol). You can even have it upload footage to a FTP server on a schedule. It also supports PoE if you're lucky enough to have ethernet at your doorbell, or don't mind doing the drop yourself.

Set up does require an app, but you don't need to use the app after that. Push notifs also require egress, but, iiuc, this is mostly because of how push notifications work. Push does NOT require a paid subscription.

I personally just use the app, but it's nice knowing that if Reolink tried to pull a fast one, I could just block egress on my VLAN and use it locally.

If you'd rather just go completely app-less, I imagine a dumb doorbell paired with an IP camera and a local ZoneMinder [1] install would provide most of the benefits of something like Ring. Of course, the tradeoff is you now have a second job being sys admin of your homelab. Pick your poison, I guess.

[1] https://zoneminder.com/

Re: Amazon’s Ring to partner with Flock

#296

Post by IT4MD »

taneq wrote: post #28
kotaKat wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bad news: Ring just enabled opt-in-by-default "search parties" for people to leverage your outdoor cameras to find their "lost animals". https://ring.com/search-party

“Opt-in-by-default” is a lot of words to say “opt-out”.

However, it's a very abbreviated way of stating, "soon you will not even be given this choice, because we make entirely too much money selling your data/info and we kinda bribe law enforcement by granting them any and all video, with a simple request"

Re: Amazon’s Ring to partner with Flock

#297

Post by absoflutely »

somehnguy wrote: post #226
kotaKat wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bad news: Ring just enabled opt-in-by-default "search parties" for people to leverage your outdoor cameras to find their "lost animals". https://ring.com/search-party

Thanks for the heads up, just went in and disabled it on my 2 cameras. Next step will be to throw these privacy invading pieces of junk in the trash. Just need to find a comparable product. Are there any wireless (running power to these locations is not an option) doorbell cams that record to local storage instead of the cloud? I refuse to pay a subscription for these things. Ideally they would record to my server in…

Reolink has some good options in this area. Both wired and wireless security and doorbell cameras with microSD storage by default, but FTP and SFTP can also be used. I've been happy with my (wired) doorbell camera with just a microSD card.

Re: Amazon’s Ring to partner with Flock

#298

Post by IncreasePosts »

femiagbabiaka wrote: post #292
IncreasePosts wrote: post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think most people with video door bells just like being able to answer the door when they aren't at home and to see who is there without getting up from the couch

This program would literally not be possible if that was the case, as it's completely opt-in. Citizen, Flock, Ring, they're all symptoms of the same disease. But let's say you're right: that means that laziness is enough to bring on the surveillance state.

It's "opt in by default" - aka opt-out.

Re: Amazon’s Ring to partner with Flock

#299

Post by CaptainOfCoit »

759282361082 wrote: post #133
CaptainOfCoit wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If history has thought us anything, it has to be that capitalists have absolutely no spine and only think about profits, no matter what.

We should all learn from stalinists like you. Murdering 145 million people is quite the feat.

If anything, I'm a anti-ist, belonging to no-one.

Re: Amazon’s Ring to partner with Flock

#300

Post by hitarpetar »

bpt3 wrote: post #268
pyth0 wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You didn't refute anything in the comment, other than saying one part of it was correct. This comment would be more useful if you actually made an argument.

A cursory internet search would back up my statement. Feel free to do that if you're interested. I note that you aren't asking the parent poster for any citations for their claim, which I would say is quite extraordinary. And to be clear, my "argument" is that the parent poster is objectively incorrect, which is accurate. I decided not to posit on why the parent poster made an objectively incorrect statement, though…

[flagged]
Post reply on HN