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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

#381

Post by dyauspitr »

toephu2 wrote: post #366
antonvs wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also, banning guns would do even more good. Strange that the people in favor of Flock cameras to reduce crime tend not to be in favor of banning guns to reduce crime.

Banning guns does nothing without removal of guns or enforcement of laws. Assault weapons are "banned" in California, has it stopped anyone from getting their hands on them? Extended magazines are "banned" in California, has it stopped any criminals from getting them? Almost every other day a criminal is caught w/ extended magazines found on them. A concealed carry permit is notoriously hard to get in California, and…

You have to ban them everywhere in the US. You can’t have them available one state over and expect a ban to do anything. It works really well, even criminals in the UK use knives for their crimes. Same with most of the rest of the world. You’re right there needs to be a removal too because we already own dozens of guns per American.

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

#382

Post by pardon_me »

maxehmookau wrote: post #318
matt-attack wrote: post #289

Did anyone catch the recent development in the Nancy Guthrie kidnapping story? For days it was explained that, while she had a Nest doorbell camera (which was stolen by the kidnapper) it was sadly useless because Nancy wasn’t paying for cloud storage. Just live video and notifications. Well what do know happened today? The video of the kidnapper was magically produced by Google. I guess, even when you don’t pay for s…

Turns out you're not buying the storage and compute required to store your video. Google can afford that regardless of whether you pay. They're licensing your own video back to you.

Do they just store everything? How long is that sustainable?

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

#383

Post by int_19h »

jauntywundrkind wrote: post #309
chatmasta wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That system is nothing compared to the geolocation databases curated by Apple and Google, with GPS sensors combined with Wi-Fi wardriving, IMEI tracking, cell tower handoffs, and the rest of the insane amount of telemetry they collect collect in real time. And that’s before even considering BLE and the Find My network. Imagine the “God mode” dashboards they could have in Cupertino (or more likely, in Mountain View).

I'm sorry but I just don't think that's the threat at all. I think these companies actually realize the existential risk and harm this data has, and do a lot to anonymize it quickly & effectively. If the government was actively backdooring Apple or Google to get realtime data like this, it would be found, and it would be a shitstorm that would greatly impact these companies. We really need to get a little more discer…

Google literally has a partnership with Palantir, whose software is underpinning ICE activities right now.

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/alphabet-palantir-team-superc...

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

#384

Post by int_19h »

slg wrote: post #176
mrob wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Starship Troopers (the movie) is a terrible example of satire because it fails to show anything substantially bad. When you present a society that's more ethical than real life, nobody's going to care if some people wear uniforms that look a bit like Nazi uniforms. There is a genuine existential risk, and it's addressed in the best way possible. Military slavery ("conscription") is more evil than disenfranchisement,…

This is all intentional. The film is emulating the type of film that would be produced by this fascist regime, of course it isn't going to include proof of the fascists being wrong. But we also don't see any evidence in support of their claims of an "existential threat" beyond the fascists claiming there is one. And since it's from the fascist perspective, the lack of evidence justifying their actions ends up support…

The threat is undeniably real in the movie.

The point is that it doesn't justify the fascist society also depicted therein.

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

#385

Post by int_19h »

dheera wrote: post #358
ajam1507 wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 l…

Does it have to be that particular employer though?

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

#386

Post by jauntywundrkind »

int_19h wrote: post #383
jauntywundrkind wrote: post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sorry but I just don't think that's the threat at all. I think these companies actually realize the existential risk and harm this data has, and do a lot to anonymize it quickly & effectively. If the government was actively backdooring Apple or Google to get realtime data like this, it would be found, and it would be a shitstorm that would greatly impact these companies. We really need to get a little more discer…

Google literally has a partnership with Palantir, whose software is underpinning ICE activities right now. https://finance.yahoo.com/news/alphabet-palantir-team-superc...

I hate it!

But that seems far different to me than directly making their own products whose express purpose is to send data to the feds / local law enforcement.

Google is not a huge data broker selling your data to the world. They keep that inside, & sell ads based in data they have. But if they started trying to be a data seller or data provider, like Amazon has been, I think they realize that would almost surely be a huge crisis.

There's many good reasons for all the big tech hate. But I do think that Google and Apple have extremely strong incentives to not become a go-to everyday source for law enforcement, I think the person I was responding to has a level of suspicion that is wildly over critical & hyper rampant, and I think we would know if stuff was that bad, and I think we would all be a lot more pissed & many people would have found the door out by now.

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

#387

Post by bruckie »

matt-attack wrote: post #289

Did anyone catch the recent development in the Nancy Guthrie kidnapping story? For days it was explained that, while she had a Nest doorbell camera (which was stolen by the kidnapper) it was sadly useless because Nancy wasn’t paying for cloud storage. Just live video and notifications. Well what do know happened today? The video of the kidnapper was magically produced by Google. I guess, even when you don’t pay for s…

Google doorbell cameras send clips to the cloud. They're accessible to users for 3 hours for free, and a month or two if you pay. While they become unavailable to users after 3 hours, it's unlikely that they're deleted immediately—partly for operational reasons (easier to clear out many clips periodically in a batch process, rather than individual clips one by one exactly when they expire), and partly because Google keeps a lot of data around for a short period (a week or two) to be able to debug systems. Even when data is requested to be deleted, it's often possible to recover it from off-site backups or soft-deleted data stores for a while. Google ensures that all user data is actually, irrecoverably deleted within 2 months after a deletion request (see https://policies.google.com/technologies/retention).

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

#388

Post by cyanydeez »

culi wrote: post #196
rightbyte wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean it is technobabble but in some way it is also poetic.

It's funnier than typical technobabble because they're literally saying its not encrypted. The writers knew what they were doing, I'm sure

Or its encrypted with no key meaning theres no way to open it

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

#389

Post by squibonpig »

ragazzina wrote: post #312
b00ty4breakfast wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a bit orthogonal to the article, but Christopher Nolan gives me the willies. Almost all his films have this kind authoritarian apologia in them.

Every single Hollywood movie has authoritarian apologia, you don't have to go to Christopher Nolan or Forrest Gump. The most recent example is One battle after another. "Wait, There’s Torture in Zootopia?" DOI:10.1017/S1537592719005012

Where was it in one battle after another?

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

#390

Post by squibonpig »

izacus wrote: post #119
awkward wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair that's more than a little bit present in most superhero media.

The whole idea about any superhero media is a special dude going on a violent spree because the authorities (in their eyes) can't do their job properly. The whole concept is anti-government and society as a whole.

Not at all. They have their roots in the projection of a defined moral trajectory that the superhero is charged to lift society along and the disagreement they have with the state is that it can't do that enough, not that it's going in the wrong direction. Modern superhero stories have completely inverted and fucked with and abandoned this narrative but the original stories were absolutely supportive of the state, fundamentally modernist.
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