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Amazon Ring's lost dog ad sparks backlash amid fears of mass surveillance

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Re: Amazon Ring's lost dog ad sparks backlash amid fears of mass surveillance

#351

Post by wat10000 »

Auracle wrote: post #303
frm88 wrote: post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The ad states that 1 million dogs are lost every year and that Ring returns 1 dog every day. Could the uselessness of the feature be any more prominent?

It’ll probably be significantly more now that people know about it. And I doubt those 365 families a year think it’s useless.

What's the threshold for it being worthwhile to build a ubiquitous surveillance system? 365 dogs saved per year is apparently enough. How about 100? 10? 1?

I'll also note that this is just a count of the dogs found by the system, not a count of dogs that otherwise would not have been found.

Re: Amazon Ring's lost dog ad sparks backlash amid fears of mass surveillance

#352

Post by loeg »

hackable_sand wrote: post #295
loeg wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the US, you don't have an expectation of privacy in public places.

I'm in the US. I have an expectation of privacy in public places.

I suppose you can expect whatever you want, but the law is not on your side.

Re: Amazon Ring's lost dog ad sparks backlash amid fears of mass surveillance

#353

Post by loeg »

CursedSilicon wrote: post #259
loeg wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Surely it's problematic that Batman doesn't have consent to hijack phones? Whereas participating in Ring is voluntary? Anyway, movies aren't, like, the arbiters of truth. Sometimes they just have simplistic themes.

Is it voluntary to be recorded by Ring cameras?

In the US, we don't have an expectation of privacy in public spaces.

Re: Amazon Ring's lost dog ad sparks backlash amid fears of mass surveillance

#354

Post by parineum »

culi wrote: post #275
pc86 wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not a single person in the world took any of them "seriously." They're blockbuster movies about a comic book .

I mean, one actor took their role so seriously they locked themselves up in hotel room for a month in isolation to prepare for their role as Joker. Many people in film took it seriously. Just because a piece is fictional or imaginative doesn't mean it can't be taken seriously

You're conflating an actor taking their role seriously to a viewer taking fiction seriously.

Re: Amazon Ring's lost dog ad sparks backlash amid fears of mass surveillance

#355

Post by alex43578 »

gorjusborg wrote: post #346
alex43578 wrote: post #328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Recording their neighbors without their consent" implies that consent was ever expected or required. You're walking down a public street and have no expectation of privacy in the US, and correspondingly 0 legal or even "ethical" recourse.

First, in the U.S., privacy laws vary by state, so the blanket statement about 'the US' is incorrect. Second, laws are made by people. The fact that many of us do not want to be recorded 24/7 is why it is worth discussing.

The 1st amendment protects your right to film in public, so my statement is correct.

The limitations only come from edge cases, like stalking, interfering with active law enforcement, or recording conversations in all-party consent states; none of which would apply to a security camera recording a public view.

Re: Amazon Ring's lost dog ad sparks backlash amid fears of mass surveillance

#356

Post by parineum »

HiPhish wrote: post #159
pibaker wrote: post #76

There would be less backlash to the Ring ad if the ad was honest about how people actually use it. Show us porch pirates, burglars and stupid neighbor who backs into your car being caught on camera. But instead, they have to come up with something "wholesome" like finding your lost doggo. The wholesomeness is so forced and cringe that it makes you think they have something to hide. It almost feels like the people who…

> porch pirates It absolutely boggles my mind that it's legal in the US for a deliverer to just leave a package out in the open for anyone to pick up and consider it "delivered". Might as well just throw it out of the window of your car, it has the same chance of getting picked up by the recipient. Where I live the package has to be handed over to the recipient. If the recipient is not available it will be handed ove…

> It absolutely boggles my mind that it's legal in the US for a deliverer to just leave a package out in the open for anyone to pick up and consider it "delivered".

The actual answer to your conundrum here is that the package isn't actually considered delivered.

When you order something, it's the seller's responsibility to get it to you. They have the choice of having their deliveries require a signature to be delivered but that costs more so they consider stolen packages as a cost of business.

If a package is stolen, it hasn't been delivered. You report to the company you bought from and they send you a new one. They can negotiate with the shipping company if they are at fault.

The reason for the practice of leaving packages at your door is that it's cheaper to replace the few stolen packages for free than it is to pay a driver to require signatures for each package.

High value or non-replaceable items can be shipped more securely.

Re: Amazon Ring's lost dog ad sparks backlash amid fears of mass surveillance

#357

Post by JoshTriplett »

i_love_retros wrote: post #343
JoshTriplett wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you for that. But please consider taking down the camera, too; it's just as much of a problem without a subscription, because you are the service being sold, not just the customer. Get one that stores and processes video entirely locally instead.

Can they still see through my camera if I have removed the location from my account?

I would expect so, yes; I certainly wouldn't bet against it. I can think of any number of ways for a network-connected camera to figure out approximately where it is, and even if it doesn't know approximately where it is, it can still provide video and that video could go through any amount of server-side analysis.

Re: Amazon Ring's lost dog ad sparks backlash amid fears of mass surveillance

#358

Post by dheera »

ajam1507 wrote: post #238
dheera wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because if you don't do what you are told at work, you may be forced to uproot your family, spouse, kids, and leave the country. You may be forced to abandon your pets and never see them again, forced to send your kids to suddenly school in a different, foreign-to-them language. You may be forced to pay tens of thousands in moving expenses. You may be forced to pay mortgages for a house you are not allowed to live in…

Grow a spine, you don't get a pass to do unethical things because your job depends on it.

Huh? Another dose of reality:

I need to pay rent, pay medical bills, eat, and survive. As long as I'm dependent on an income to do that, I do whatever the employer wants as long as it's legal.

When I'm financially free, I'll have the space to think about the ethics of my work.

You want better? Fix the system so that I'm financially free earlier in life. Tax me less, charge me less rent, give me free healthcare, and let me save up cash for the rest of my life. When the system has delivered that OKR to me, I'll be able to put ethics first going forward.

Until then, I still need to earn money to survive.

I worked for Amazon for a couple years. Not on the above project, but nevertheless, I did what I was told. One of the reasons I went there was that I needed a surgery to replace my implanted defibrillator, which my life depends on, and (a) Amazon's sponsored health insurance would pay for it (b) Amazon's cash comp would be enough to hire lawyers to fight with insurance if necessary. Insurance companies usually pay what they're supposed to if there is a big tech HR behind it; they have a habit, in my experience, of not paying out what they're supposed to if they don't have something to fear. I was in startup land before, and often couldn't pay my medical bills (because insurance would cop out and not pay, and I didn't have money for lawyers to fight them) and had to forgo critical cardiac imaging procedures during that time.

Re: Amazon Ring's lost dog ad sparks backlash amid fears of mass surveillance

#359

Post by stackghost »

lnsru wrote: post #297
stackghost wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My background is aerospace engineering. Specifically, I have managed technical risk on a variety of aircraft fleets including SAR, military tactical aviation, and special missions aircraft. In a nutshell my job was to look at complex systems, identify likely failure modes, and come up with engineering solutions. I'm very good at it. Perhaps unsurprisingly, it turns out that identifying failure modes in complex system…

My personal question to you: were you able commercialize your error finding skills? I am electrical engineer, I predict very early the week when shit hits the fan. Nobody listens and most of my job nowadays is cleaning the shit. I am sooo tired of being right. I want to find a way to use my future forecast skill instead of fixing obvious things afterwards. One manager told me it’s a normal process to hit the wall at…

I left Aerospace and am currently building a privacy-preserving digital identity system that I think has technical, commercial, and social merit.

We'll see how it goes. Hoping to do a Show HN in a month or so.

Re: Amazon Ring's lost dog ad sparks backlash amid fears of mass surveillance

#360

Post by dheera »

caditinpiscinam wrote: post #279
dheera wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because if you don't do what you are told at work, you may be forced to uproot your family, spouse, kids, and leave the country. You may be forced to abandon your pets and never see them again, forced to send your kids to suddenly school in a different, foreign-to-them language. You may be forced to pay tens of thousands in moving expenses. You may be forced to pay mortgages for a house you are not allowed to live in…

Wealth should be a source of power and agency, not an excuse for getting dogwalked. On the bright side, given that kids and houses and spouses are all becoming luxury items, there may be fewer people in the future who have to make that choice. "Learn to live on lentils, and you will not have to be subservient to the king"

> Wealth

Working at Amazon isn't wealth.

Wealth is not having to work in order to live.

> Learn to live on lentils

I'd rather not be vitamin deficient, even if it means being subservient to the king.

Guarantee me health, food, water, shelter for life, and then maybe we can talk about the ethics of the king.

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