Amazon’s Ring to partner with Flock • Hacker News Board

Re: Amazon’s Ring to partner with Flock

#311

Post by nick__m » Fri, Oct 17, 2025, 4:40 PM UTC

hitarpetar wrote: post #197

nick__m wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Someone tried to enter by the window next to my front porch door, it prompted me to install a video doorbell because the dude that frightened my wife only received a ticket because there was no proof he tried (and fail) to force open a window and did not enter the house. If I had a recording he would have spent the night at the station and it would have been a criminal offense instead of a civil one. Even if it only…

were you frightened also?

No, I was pissed that the only punishment, for a know offender, was a small fine.

The police knew the guy (young adults with bright orange hoodie are quite uncommon here) and they told me that he already did this a few time before moving in my neighborhood and that they never had enough evidences to do something else than fine him.

Also I think the police are bored in my city because there were 4 patrols cars in the street when I got back home.

Re: Amazon’s Ring to partner with Flock

#312

Post by FireBeyond » Fri, Oct 17, 2025, 4:41 PM UTC

macNchz wrote: post #205

PaulHoule wrote: post #162

Flock is controversial in my area https://transparency.flocksafety.com/ithaca-city-ny-pd

Not clear to me what the "External organizations with access" actually means or who decided which organizations to add to the list, but it's curious to me that the campus patrol for a college 250 miles away (SUNY Old Westbury) has access to camera data from Ithaca.

(Ex Flock Employee) It's as simple as that agency saying "Hey, can we have access to your camera data?" and the originating agency saying "Sure".

Flock (deliberately, IMHO) has no verification on whether said agencies are allowed by law or regulation or whatever to have that access, it's just a free-for-all.

Re: Amazon’s Ring to partner with Flock

#313

Post by array_key_first » Fri, Oct 17, 2025, 4:44 PM UTC

westmeal wrote: post #42

mikkupikku wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems like a fairly impractical thing to map unless you're getting volunteers to walk up to and inspect people's front doors. I know there is an app for a sort of gamified version of this where people take tasks to verify street signs or even how many stories a building has, I used that app for a while, but doorbell mapping seems a lot leas casual.

Walk up to door with stack of papers with a stock photo of a puppy on it that says lost puppy. Check if there's a camera. If the owner comes outside, ask them if they have seen this puppy.

And then remember you live in America and you get shot for walking on someone's property.

Joking, a little, but seriously: the culture in the US has rotted to such an insane degree. Not only are we not friends with our neighbors, I'm actually scared to talk to them!

Re: Amazon’s Ring to partner with Flock

#314

Post by Refreeze5224 » Fri, Oct 17, 2025, 4:45 PM UTC

reaperducer wrote: post #173

badgersnake wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it brings in ARR it makes an exit more likely and that makes them happy. They're "investors, not bosses" - https://www.ycombinator.com/principles/

They're investors, not bosses Being an investor is not an excuse. It makes you amoral, too. "I didn't build the bomb, I just funded the company that built it."

That's the beauty of capitalism, its very foundation allows you to act immorally or amorally, and pretend that it's ok because of "the market", "invisible hands", "revealed preferences", etc. If it's immoral but done in pursuit of maximizing shareholder value, it's magically allowed.

Re: Amazon’s Ring to partner with Flock

#315

Post by array_key_first » Fri, Oct 17, 2025, 4:46 PM UTC

IT4MD wrote: post #294

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.

Forget law enforcement, for years they allowed all their employees to access literally any camera whenever they want.

There were women being stalked by ring employees. It was that bad. Teslas had (has?) a similar problem.

Re: Amazon’s Ring to partner with Flock

#316

Post by nerdsniper » Fri, Oct 17, 2025, 4:47 PM UTC

JeremyHerrman wrote: post #284

Unifi G4 Doorbell Pro [0] is a great self-hosted option. I've been very happy with mine over the last year, but I was already bought into the unifi ecosystem with a UDM Pro SE and U6 mesh APs. 0: https://store.ui.com/us/en/category/cameras-doorbells/collec...

Alternatively, the Reolink Doorbell cameras for anyone who doesn't want to be on the Unifi/Ubiquiti platform. Also I believe all these cameras provide a generic RTSP feed which can be consumed by any computer running Frigate[0], an open-source NVR/AI platform.

0: https://frigate.video

(Reolink, Unifi/Ubiquiti, and Frigate are all good solutions for anyone who is not interested in supporting the proliferation of a police-state)

Re: Amazon’s Ring to partner with Flock

#317

Post by nerdsniper » Fri, Oct 17, 2025, 4:48 PM UTC

Aachen wrote: post #14

These are mappable in OpenStreetMap with the tags surveillance:type=camera + camera:mount=doorbell Data query around the Netherlands shows about a hundred are mapped so far as specifically doorbell cameras: https://overpass-turbo.eu/s/2dQw (the tag does not yet seem established in the USA). There are also many thousands of cameras mapped that are either not doorbell-mounted, or simply not tagged to such detail. This…

That doesn't seem to work for me. Can you correct my query/URL?

https://www.openstreetmap.org/search?query=surveillance%3Aty...

Re: Amazon’s Ring to partner with Flock

#318

Post by tptacek » Fri, Oct 17, 2025, 4:50 PM UTC

However, AI-powered technology used by law enforcement has been proven to exacerbate racial biases.

This is a little misleading. Flock is primarily an ALPR that can identify make/model/color/identifying-feature of vehicles. It's not facial recognition. It doesn't itself have a racial component. The modal "proactive" Flock intervention (as opposed to investigative searches after crimes) is to flag a moving vehicle as stolen.

But in practice, the outcomes of deploying Flock are racialized, because the hot lists states keep of stolen vehicles aren't accurate enough for real-time enforcement, so recovered vehicles stay on the lists and false-positive. You're disproportionately likely to have a vehicle on a hot list if you live in a low-income neighborhood.

Even then: it's not clear how any of this is apposite to a Ring/Flock partnership. You can't use a Ring camera to do realtime ALPR flagging of cars. Presumably, this supports Flock's "single pane of glass" product; they just want police going to Flock for all their video needs. Police already canvass Ring and Nest cameras during investigations.

Re: Amazon’s Ring to partner with Flock

#319

Post by array_key_first » Fri, Oct 17, 2025, 4:56 PM UTC

Aurornis wrote: post #188

Almondsetat wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The police has access to the planimetry of your home. Secondly, if they get close enough they can measure the distance between the agent and the router, and then deduce all the relative distances from the router to the people inside.

This is sci-fi fantasy mixed with paranoia. The floor plan of every home is not on file, especially older homes. Police aren’t accessing your floor plan and then accessing your router and combining these into a perfect model that maps people’s locations. Where in this supposed plan are the police deducing the location of your WiFi router in the house and constructing a model of all materials and objects in the house…

Police aren't doing anything, they're worthless.

Tech companies are doing stuff and giving police free for all access and use. Which is worse, because as stated, police are worthless. You think they consider the consequences or the rights of the people they use those tools on? Come on now.

This can be provided as a service, if it isn't already. Im sure something similar already exists.

Re: Amazon’s Ring to partner with Flock

#320

Post by nerdsniper » Fri, Oct 17, 2025, 4:58 PM UTC

jppittma wrote: post #156

kotaKat wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But you’re opted into the automatic detection , regardless. Ring is still processing your video still to see if there’s a match to any Search Party unless you turn the feature off. At what point will the police request a warrant to run their own Search Party without consent?

See, I have no problem with searches that involve warrants and probably cause. They could already violate the shit out of your privacy with a warrant. That's kind of the point of a warrant.

Yep but Ring doesn't require warrants to hand over your video if police say "it's an emergency". https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2024/01/amazon-ring-stop...