This is one of those stories that reads like a Black Mirror episode but is just... real life now. What’s especially concerning is the normalization of this kind of surveillance creep...
Amazon’s Ring to partner with Flock
471–480 of 531 posts
Re: Amazon’s Ring to partner with Flock
#472These cameras are a big part of why I recently moved. They're a canary for something deeper. The area I was in was like the Korean DMZ with regard to flock cameras. I had one at the only entrance to my neighborhood. A trip to the grocery store would put me in their database 12 times at last count. I still have to worry about the standardized fleet of cameras at Home Depot and a few other retailers, but it's not nearl…
Even a short distance can feel like crossing from panopticon to peace and quiet
Re: Amazon’s Ring to partner with Flock
#473Earlier quoted context omitted.
I have a Unifi Protect system and am generally pretty happy with it. The biggest problem I have is similar in spirit to the Ring problem: remote access is required to get push alerts from the mobile app. Unifi had an issue at the end of 2023 where users could access consoles they didn't own through remote access: https://www.theregister.com/2023/12/15/ubiquiti_camera_priva... If I (or more specifically my spouse) cou…
I have the same UI protect system w 7 cameras. After that incident, I made it local only. I like Unifi gear, but I became super paranoid after that incident. After some digging around, I found homebridge [0] (with the homebridge-unifi-protect plugin by hjdhjd [1]) which fixed that for me by tying the UI Protect system into Apple's HomeKit ecosystem (which also leverages the homekit secure video that keeps alerts/moti…
Sooo you've basically built a modern home surveillance system that doesn't phone home to a dozen third parties
Re: Amazon’s Ring to partner with Flock
#474So, 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.
Yep, it's like we speedran 1984 but made it a startup
Re: Amazon’s Ring to partner with Flock
#475By this point, we should assume that all companies with sensitive data that could theoretically help solve crime will be accessed by the government as a rule. That's just being a realistic technology user in 2025.
At this point, it's not if the data gets accessed, it's when and how quietly it happens
Re: Amazon’s Ring to partner with Flock
#476Earlier 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.
One more vote here for Scrypted. I have a bunch of cameras from various vendors, some with open FW, some with their original FW, all cut off from the internet. They used to be connected to Frigate but due to performance issues I offloaded the work to Scrypted on a RPi and an AppleTV and the setup works great. Bonus, it’s easier to set up and use compared to Frigate, especially for the less technical people in the family.
Re: Amazon’s Ring to partner with Flock
#477These 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…
In most of EU doorbell cameras that point to public places are not covered by GDPR's household exception so if you use them you would be classified as data controller which come with it's own set of duties, responsibilities & limits. Is that not the case in Netherlands?
It is not legal to film the public street. But there is no enforcement, and the police is all too happy with each new camera that is out there. People think more camera's means higher safety. Privacy aware tech-savvy people see more camera's and get less warm vibes.
Re: Amazon’s Ring to partner with Flock
#478Earlier 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.
Maybe less common in America, but in Europe it's not uncommon to have multiple people going around town delivering various things to your mailbox: a postman for letters, some poor student delivering grocery store brochures once a week, somebody delivering the local newspaper at the break of dawn, somebody else delivering the local church newspaper once a month, etc. And all of them are going door to door. If just one…
To expand on this - Evri, DPD, and my Postie all come regularly to the door and are the same person nearly every time for me - and have been for years. Amazon, UPS, FedEx, DHL, etc. are irregular and often different people.
Then the leaflet drop guys are maybe three different people.
Then there is food delivery, which is rare (because we rarely order) bit still another group of people.
Oh and then there are the Jehovah's witnesses.
Re: Amazon’s Ring to partner with Flock
#479Earlier quoted context omitted.
So use one that you know to now be dead.
We live in the age of generative AI.. can't you just use one of those instead?
See https://thisxdoesnotexist.com/ for some ideas!
Re: Amazon’s Ring to partner with Flock
#480One of the many reasons to host your own stuff. It costs about 0.75CAD per day to run my server and PoE switch. For my 20 bucks a month I get cameras, a media server, password manager, push notifications, file sharing, and a dozen other services, all without handing my data over to business or governments. Is it as secure as a cloud service? Depends on what you consider secure. I closely monitor access logs and use s…
>they also have thousands of employees that can access your data at any time for any reason. They have 0 employees who can do that.
> In 2023, the FTC ordered the company to pay $5.8 million over claims that employees and contractors had unrestricted access to customers’ videos for years.
It’s right in the article