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Ring cancels its partnership with Flock Safety after surveillance backlash

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

#31
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.

Agreed, but this would then inconvenience millions of non-techies. Could a solution be forcing Amazon (and Google and Flock and...) to open their backend software either for self-hosting or for running on somebody else's "cloud"? So subscribing to such a device isn't that different from getting web hosting from Dreamhost or Hetzner? Maybe there's a host or IP field in the settings that users can easily change?

I know this is not constructive, but fuck 'em and their convenience!

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

#32

Now whenever the cameras detect a lost dog, all your neighbors' phones begin playing "Angel" by Sarah McLachlan

They also play this when the cameras in your house detect you using more than one square of toilet paper at a time.

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

#34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you elaborate? This is interesting

I worked across several facilities and obviously cannot talk specifics about those. It is public knowledge that one of them housed a large metro area's main ISP "meet-me room." During Snowden revelations I'd already been apprenticing for years; nothing Edward documented surprised me . I'd literally walk around our 500,000sqft elevated floors knodding my head [none of this exists, officially] . ---- Nothing is as it s…

> I no longer carry a cell phone.

I'm not quite there yet, but after Netanyahu made that comment like "if you have a phone you're carrying a little piece of Israel with you" right after the pager attack stuff.. I keep the phone in the back of my backpack away from my meat bits.

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

#35
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 attempting to leverage their users and their data for any other form of income. Companies used to do it all of the time. It just takes a C-suite/board/founder to have the moral fortitude to not sell out their users.

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

#36
post #17
post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Anthropic one? Although I'm sure they'll put ads into claude eventually

Early audience response suggested the message struggled to land. According to an iSpot survey of 500 viewers, the ad’s likeability score placed it in the bottom 3% compared with Super Bowl ads over the past five years. Its top-two-box purchase intent scored 24% below Super Bowl norms and 19% below ads in its category that aired over the last 90 days. Viewers most commonly described their reaction as “WTF,” signaling…

I think that the ideas of AI boosters and other tech maximalists will pretty much always "struggle to land" with normal people. (See also: the ring ad.)

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

#37

Meaning they’ll wait until about June and then quietly roll it out

Yep. Anyone got alternatives? I love the convenience of a video doorbell but I really really would like to not help the police or ICE or anyone else for that matter unless I decide it's a good idea.

I have a Reolink doorbell. It records to a SD card and works great with my Home Assistant setup. So much better than the Ring it replaced.

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

#38

Meaning they’ll wait until about June and then quietly roll it out

Yep. Anyone got alternatives? I love the convenience of a video doorbell but I really really would like to not help the police or ICE or anyone else for that matter unless I decide it's a good idea.

> Yep. Anyone got alternatives?

The self-hosted and home-automation and home-assistant subreddits are _full_ of discussion threads on this. The good news is that you have a TON of options to pick from. The bad news is that they're all deficient in one way or another so you really do have to spend a bit of time to figure out who executes best on the things you care most about.

If you don't mind the lock-in, Unifi is nice. Reolink (and the other DaHua re-brands) usually leave a lot to be desired in terms of software / quality but they are cheap and they reliably spit out a regular video stream that can be used with just about any software. Just don't let them onto the WAN!

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

#39
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…

> It just takes a C-suite/board/founder to have the moral fortitude ...

Just for context, could you provide some examples of such people?

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

#40

Meaning they’ll wait until about June and then quietly roll it out

Yep. Anyone got alternatives? I love the convenience of a video doorbell but I really really would like to not help the police or ICE or anyone else for that matter unless I decide it's a good idea.

None of these agencies get your video data without your consent. The feature was designed so they have an easy way to present you the request for footage.

Unfortunately a portion of the information getting circulated is the complete opposite.

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