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Amazon's Ring and Google's Nest reveal the severity of U.S. surveillance state

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Re: Amazon's Ring and Google's Nest reveal the severity of U.S. surveillance state

#461

Post by keernan »

As a trial attorney for more than 40 years, I'd say these are examples of egregious illegal surveillance of American citizens by the current government:

1. A retired US citizen emailed a DHS attorney urging mercy for an asylum seeker he had read about. Five hours later he received an email from Google advising him the federal government had served Google with a subpoena demanding information about him. Then they followed up by knocking on his door. The federal government's concerted effort to intimidate citizens should concern every American.

https://archive.ph/b9ON8

2. NYT: https://archive.ph/W5FwO ICE’s New Surveillance State Isn’t Tracking Only Immigrants

A memo from a Department of Homeland Security official reviewed by CNN and sent to agents dispatched to Minneapolis last month asked them to “capture all images, license plates, identifications and general information” on “agitators, protesters, etc. so we can capture it all in one consolidated form.” And the official reportedly provided such a form, called “intel collection.”

3. Moreover, ICE officers have traveled to the homes of protesters. Not to arrest them, because they have done nothing illegal. Rather, ICE was trying to intimidate them by letting them know ICE knows who they are and where they live. https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/13/us/minneapolis-ice-agents

Re: Amazon's Ring and Google's Nest reveal the severity of U.S. surveillance state

#462

Post by warkdarrior »

drnick1 wrote: post #396
SoftTalker wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but they didn't develop it. ISP email required you to configure IMAP or more likely POP in an email application and did nothing to combat spam. Google came along and offered gmail, easy sign up, no configuration, used your web browser so no other applications to install, spam largely filtered out, just worked.

> used your web browser so no other applications to install I see this as a downside. Native email clients are much faster and a far better UX than a Web inbox. It's also pretty much required if you juggle multiple accounts.

I have yet to see a native email client that offers search as fast and as capable as Gmail

Re: Amazon's Ring and Google's Nest reveal the severity of U.S. surveillance state

#463

Post by bdangubic »

oceansky wrote: post #457
iugtmkbdfil834 wrote: post #399

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh well, I guess there is nothing to be done. Pack it up everyone. It is over. You can't do anything. No one can learn anything. No. You heard the guy above. It is over. Go home. Do nothing.

I don't mean to say that nothing can be done, I was just agreeing that it's often more complicated than it looks.

it is not complicated at all if you have resolve and understand what the ramifications of not doing anything are. I quit all social media 6 years ago, thought it would be hard, took about a week total to not even think about it. had same “trouble” in school with whatsapp groups and whatnot, threatened to sue, everything got moved to the SMS within a week………

Re: Amazon's Ring and Google's Nest reveal the severity of U.S. surveillance state

#464

Post by saulpw »

zestyping wrote: post #408
MrDrMcCoy wrote: post #367

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And we can get there with ranked-choice voting. We really need to press hard until we get it.

Approval, not ranked-choice. Ranked-choice reduces transparency and understanding of the vote-counting process, disenfranchises an alarming percentage of lower-income voters, obstructs risk-limiting audits (which are essential for security), and is non-monotonic (increasing voter support for a candidate can make them lose). Further, ranked-choice doesn't actually fix the spoiler problem and won't eliminate two-party…

I've heard the arguments for approval voting, and I'm sure it's all the things you mention and more, but people don't get it. I don't get it. I don't want to vote for both Hillary and Bernie. I want to vote for Bernie, and then only if Bernie can't win, would I let my vote go to Hillary. You can explain to me until you're blue in the face why approval is strictly better even in this situation, but I am emotionally attached to my vote counting for Bernie more than any other candidate, so reason isn't going to work on my lizard brain.

I know, it sucks. Politics is terrible. But we have some momentum behind RC/IRV so we should use it and stop the single-vote FPTP system that's plagued us for centuries. Anything is better than that. So let's join forces and get behind whatever has momentum even if it's not technically the best.

Re: Amazon's Ring and Google's Nest reveal the severity of U.S. surveillance state

#465

Post by keernan »

otterley wrote: post #122
calibas wrote: post #96

It's a clear violation of the 4th Amendment, but the government acts like they've found a "loophole" because it's private businesses doing the spying.

As an attorney I’d like to understand why you think there is a “clear” Constitutional violation going on here. What activity, specifically, are you referring to, and what precedent supports your claim?

As a trial attorney for more than 40 years, I'd say these are examples of egregious illegal surveillance of American citizens by the current government:

1. A retired US citizen emailed a DHS attorney urging mercy for an asylum seeker he had read about. Five hours later he received an email from Google advising him the federal government had served Google with a subpoena demanding information about him. Then they followed up by knocking on his door. The federal government's concerted effort to intimidate citizens should concern every American.

https://archive.ph/b9ON8

2. NYT: https://archive.ph/W5FwO ICE’s New Surveillance State Isn’t Tracking Only Immigrants

A memo from a Department of Homeland Security official reviewed by CNN and sent to agents dispatched to Minneapolis last month asked them to “capture all images, license plates, identifications and general information” on “agitators, protesters, etc. so we can capture it all in one consolidated form.” And the official reportedly provided such a form, called “intel collection.”

3. Moreover, ICE officers have traveled to the homes of protesters. Not to arrest them, because they have done nothing illegal. Rather, ICE was trying to intimidate them by letting them know ICE knows who they are and where they live. https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/13/us/minneapolis-ice-agents

Re: Amazon's Ring and Google's Nest reveal the severity of U.S. surveillance state

#466

Post by catlikesshrimp »

velocity3230 wrote: post #455
catlikesshrimp wrote: post #173

Regular where I live: I don't use google maps, I use Waze I don't use messenger, I use whatsapp I don't upload my pictures, contacts (sync is enabled by default) Anyways. What are the options? It will be another free cloud hosted service.

Isn't Waze owned, operated and share infrastructure with Google Maps?

It has hard sarcasm my part: Waze is google, whatsapp is meta, and phones are uploading all your data by default

Re: Amazon's Ring and Google's Nest reveal the severity of U.S. surveillance state

#468

Post by Intermernet »

Forgeties79 wrote: post #169
Intermernet wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>they tend to air on the side of caution Completely off topic, and for future reference, it's "err" not "air". Completely fine mistake, stupid homophones and all. Just thought you'd like to know. Also, these things happen to me all the time if I use voice dictation. I don't trust it because of edge cases like this.

Voice to text, should’ve proofread better

Probably, but I didn't dictate that comment.

Re: Amazon's Ring and Google's Nest reveal the severity of U.S. surveillance state

#469

Post by wredcoll »

kortilla wrote: post #437
wredcoll wrote: post #404

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, nobody knows why "the west" (whatever that is) leapfrogged anyone, and this is a fairly small period in terms of total human history.

The industrial revolution is quite well documented

Things people did, sure, but not why they did them here and not there is a bit trickier. There's a variety of theories, easy access to coal is my favorite, but some people like to blame the magna carta or something.

Re: Amazon's Ring and Google's Nest reveal the severity of U.S. surveillance state

#470

Post by Aurornis »

tokyobreakfast wrote: post #271
hermannj314 wrote: post #252

We have a branch of government called Congress, here are some things they used to do that made it a crime to read your mail or listen to your phone calls. 1. Postal Service Act of 1792 2. Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA) of 1986 Anyway, Facebook can read your DMs, Google can read your email, Ring can take photos from your camera. We can very easily make those things a crime, but we don't seem to want to d…

Everyone has known Google reads your email since day one. In the early days they would spin it as a good thing: "that's why the spam filtering is great!" Why is everyone suddenly outraged Ring has access to your footage? These cloud-connected cameras...hosted on someone else's servers. It's literally how they work. "But I didn't think they would use the video in a way I didn't personally approve after giving it to th…

> Everyone has known Google reads your email since day one.

These constructions feel too simplistic to capture anything useful.

My credit card company can see my transactions. My medical provider can read my medical records. People who hire house cleaners let people see inside their house.

It's commonly accepted that when you engage with a company for business purposes, they can see things involved in your business with them.

The problem with the Ring situation isn't that Ring can "see" your video cameras. It's that they were using the information for things outside of the scope of business that was implied when you bought the camera.

People don't care if a Google bot "reads" their e-mail for spam filtering. They don't care if a contractor sees the inside of their house during construction. What they do care about is if the other party tries to use that access for something outside of the scope that was agreed upon.

> It's hard to have any empathy when the warning label was already on the box for all these products.

These snooty takes where we're supposed to look down upon others for having reasonable assumptions about usage of their data are why it's so hard to get the general public to care about privacy. It's unnecessarily condescending for what? To look down upon people or play "told you so" games? If privacy advocates want to get anywhere they need to distance themselves from people who run with this kind of attitude.

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