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

Re: Amazon’s Ring to partner with Flock

#451

Post by WarOnPrivacy » Sat, Oct 18, 2025, 5:19 AM UTC

anigbrowl wrote: post #416

dmix wrote: post #407

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only real solution is strong privacy laws around gov usage and strong courts willing to enforce it. Expecting consumer choice or regulations to prevent that data from ever existing is mostly a fools errand IMO, there's just too much of it and it's everywhere.

Based on what? There's no constitutional right to privacy, while courts have consistently expanded the scope of government powers and immunities and consistently hollowed out the Bill of Rights. It's gonna require a new legal paradigm.

> There's no constitutional right to privacy,

Being secure in my person, house, papers, and effects is my privacy in action.

Re: Amazon’s Ring to partner with Flock

#452

Post by WarOnPrivacy » Sat, Oct 18, 2025, 5:23 AM UTC

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.

> This is why I never bought anything Amazon owned

I buy their mice. They've been good mice and I'm increasingly unhappy with Logitech.

Occasionally I buy some cables. I think that's it.

Re: Amazon’s Ring to partner with Flock

#453

Post by davkan » Sat, Oct 18, 2025, 5:23 AM UTC

jdyer9 wrote: post #439

nerdsniper wrote: post #316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 pol…

If it matters to you, Reolink is a Chinese owned company. Not passing judgement one way or another, but if avoiding Unifi over the remote incident matters, I could see this factoring in as well.

Separate vlans for iot devices with strict firewall rules is generally enough to mitigate the threat of most iot devices phoning home i think. We’re already in the territory of hobbyists who should be able to manage that with these suggestions like ubiquity and frigate.

Re: Amazon’s Ring to partner with Flock

#454

Post by WarOnPrivacy » Sat, Oct 18, 2025, 5:29 AM UTC

cholantesh wrote: post #207

nerdponx wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Consider not sending your doorbell footage to accompany that has no respect for user privacy, and is now actively partnering with a police surveillance company.

Yeah there are plenty of self-hosted solutions that work just as well.

Blue Iris is a fairly amazing camera hosting solution. I am continually impressed with the quality of the code and feature set. (disclaimer: $80/yr but we actually pay a bit less).

Re: Amazon’s Ring to partner with Flock

#455

Post by philips » Sat, Oct 18, 2025, 5:30 AM UTC

jen20 wrote: post #408

zrail wrote: post #367

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a really interesting setup, thanks for the links! I'm pretty deep into Home Assistant but that plugin looks amazing.

I had the same setup for a while, but eventually moved to scrypted instead which had better startup time for streams in Home.app.

I second this. I have Unifi + Scrypted and it has worked great. Remote access turned off on UniFi.

Re: Amazon’s Ring to partner with Flock

#456

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Oct 18, 2025, 5:49 AM UTC

charcircuit wrote: post #422

Jupe wrote: post #158

So, rather than Big Brother being government-imposed monitoring paid for by all taxpayers, the concerned citizenry is flipping the bill for the devices, network connectivity and electricity. Fascinating.

Tax payers and citizenry are largely the same. It's not really flipping the bill.

[deleted]

Re: Amazon’s Ring to partner with Flock

#457

Post by DanOpcode » Sat, Oct 18, 2025, 5:55 AM UTC

I wonder how many existing Ring owners would have bought the camera had they known they would eventually give third parties access to the camera footage.

Re: Amazon’s Ring to partner with Flock

#458

Post by galaxy_gas » Sat, Oct 18, 2025, 6:02 AM UTC

saxenaabhi wrote: post #441

Spooky23 wrote: post #431

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I participate in Nextdoor.com because of a community group I work with. The fear in people’s hearts is insane. One memorable one was a Little boy who decided to sell candy bars. I knew the kid from my son’s school. Some psycho followed him for a few hours, tracked down to his home and called the sales tax authorities and the city clerk as he didn’t have a peddler permit. She documented her “investigation”, complete w…

Can you share more? Why was this person upset with kids selling candies?

They dont have any better to do. When I was living in south bay (nice suburb area) during short contract role the " nextdoor nanny state stay at home drunk soccer moms " would record out the front window, call the police in anyone POC, keep notes of what time you car leave and join

its like HOA mental illness. Different people had chased my amazon driver with a phone accusing them of being illegal, calling police for while I was cooking indian food... Ide rather have the crime in the city in contrast to this nonsense

I genuinely believe if I had dog at the time they would had poisoned it for barking once

Re: Amazon’s Ring to partner with Flock

#459

Post by jauntywundrkind » Sat, Oct 18, 2025, 6:10 AM UTC

So so late. But just so vile, so reprehensible to see such a corrupt fallen disagreeable state of the world march over us.

I am stricken with fear over the control and manipulation by the Chinese state. A dominance over people without respect or regard, a self certainty and pomp that denies life & possibility.

But what the West is letting happen here, the limitless post-state open-for-anyone surveillance Flock & others are offering has seemingly even less bounds, less respect, less purpose, less direction. These people, this enterprise is clearly the worst possible thing we could do, the most awful accrual & misuse of the world against its people's. To spy on everyone & to without regard sell that days to everyone is a crime against all.

Flock is truly the #HostisHumaniGeneris. Woe & (all too expectable) disappointment to see Amazon giving up all their data to fascist pro ICE losers who, were we a descent society, we would run out of the world.

Re: Amazon’s Ring to partner with Flock

#460

Post by anigbrowl » Sat, Oct 18, 2025, 6:14 AM UTC

WarOnPrivacy wrote: post #451

anigbrowl wrote: post #416

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Based on what? There's no constitutional right to privacy, while courts have consistently expanded the scope of government powers and immunities and consistently hollowed out the Bill of Rights. It's gonna require a new legal paradigm.

> There's no constitutional right to privacy, Being secure in my person, house, papers, and effects is my privacy in action.

How is that working out for you? It can't stop your data being sold or grant you any kind of privacy when you appear in public (eg being filmed continuously when you leave your home).