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Amazon’s Ring to partner with Flock

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Re: Amazon’s Ring to partner with Flock

#481

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the biggest 'culture shocks' I had when first moving to Asia, that eventually I'd see in numerous places, is visiting a food court during business hours. There's people shoulder to shoulder, so everybody goes to claim a table before getting their food. They do this by leaving various things, including their purses, on tables while they went to go queue up to get some food. There wasn't a camera anywhere. That…

>What you're describing here is the opposite of a high trust society In such a society, people don't steal because thieves have been removed from society. You can trust others because they have proven through their life that they are trustworthy. By trust I was talking between the people in society and not about the government trusting that people would not break laws. Humans are not perfect, so it's a bad assumption…

The article was specifically and explicitly speaking of potential benefits, not present. The problem with systems made up of people is that you can't just have turtles all the way down. Let's say that retaining sexually explicit media of surveilled individuals is indeed grounds for instant dismissal. Who enforces this? Okay, the person above the people doing surveillance, who's somehow going through the entirety of said surveillance. And what happens when he is the one saving such media? Is it then overviewed by another person above him? And so on.

You can't really have endless redundancies and, at scale, this becomes even more true where the vast amount of data and processing becomes ever less viable to filter. And when you had 24/7 footage of everybody at every moment, that takes scale and ups it to an inconceivably vast level. More generally I think removing thieves from society, with extreme prejudice, is a far more pleasant path forward for everybody than treating everybody like a potential thief.

Re: Amazon’s Ring to partner with Flock

#482

These 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…

>The general fear level of the local population seems to be the biggest factor in all of this. I went from a place where people would do the quadruple check car lock routine when walking into the grocery store, to a place where many leave their unlocked vehicles idling in the parking lot. I don't even think about locking my doors at home now. It almost feels silly to do it around here. It's amazing the difference that ~65 miles can make.

It's not even that. The real shitholes full o' crime have scant cameras because you don't need them for "real" investigations of "real" crime. You only need a traffic cameras to establish what you need for a murder investigation or whatever, pair the images with cell time stamps and presto.

Cameras are for making it cheap to enforce the long tail of petty deviance that doesn't actually matter. Karen calls up bitching that some guy did something, normally that would be discarded because it's not worth it. But with a camera system they can query it and maybe fine the guy from their desks. They're not using the system to go after someone for stealing from parked cars except perhaps to walk back in time and add charges to someone they already got (same reason they ask for serial numbers of electronics and the like when doing theft investigations they won't follow up on).

Re: Amazon’s Ring to partner with Flock

#483
post #384

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The police chumminess is super dystopian. I definitely went with E2E encrypted cameras because I also think it's so crazy people just hand all that data over without realizing how powerful it is and how much personal privacy they are throwing out the window.

E2E encryption but what are the ends? If one is your camera and the other is a cloud service then you aren't really protecting anything.

Apple at least claims to not have keys for their E2EE, such as when you turn on Advanced Protection (or whatever it’s called) it has this whole spiel about how screwed you are if you lose your recovery ability

Re: Amazon’s Ring to partner with Flock

#484

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And then remember you live in America and you get shot for walking on someone's property. Joking, a little, but seriously: the culture in the US has rotted to such an insane degree. Not only are we not friends with our neighbors, I'm actually scared to talk to them!

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…

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Re: Amazon’s Ring to partner with Flock

#485

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?

> Why was this person upset with kids selling candies?

Because they didn't "follow the rules" or whatever. You see this personality type all up and down HN but usually not so extreme as to call the city about a lemonade stand or whatever.

The city clerk is also the same type of evil. They should have told that person there weren't resources available to enforce or some other lie.

Re: Amazon’s Ring to partner with Flock

#486
post #391
post #379

I commented on a similar post earlier, but my entire neighborhood, hundreds of houses, came with them preinstalled. Can’t even leave my house without being surveilled. Some people have the setting on where it starts announcing stuff any time it sees a person, which it does all the way to the sidewalk. So you go on a walk and get yelled at through a super shitty speaker several times. And it’s about as dystopian as yo…

Honestly, these cameras don’t solve anything or provide any real utility and essentially represent a waste of money and resources.

One time the city wanted my neighbor to pay for a new trash can, but I had a video of the trash truck swallowing it lol.

It’s mostly just convenience though. Neighbor kid rings my doorbell and it tells me who is there. Tells me when I have a package. Helped me recover my cat that escaped. One time a huge buck came on my porch to eat some flowers that was pretty cool, bro had no business being that far from the woods lol. My kids can talk to their friends through it if they ring the bell when we’re not home.

Re: Amazon’s Ring to partner with Flock

#487
post #486
post #391

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly, these cameras don’t solve anything or provide any real utility and essentially represent a waste of money and resources.

One time the city wanted my neighbor to pay for a new trash can, but I had a video of the trash truck swallowing it lol. It’s mostly just convenience though. Neighbor kid rings my doorbell and it tells me who is there. Tells me when I have a package. Helped me recover my cat that escaped. One time a huge buck came on my porch to eat some flowers that was pretty cool, bro had no business being that far from the woods…

I bet the trash can cost less than the camera.

Re: Amazon’s Ring to partner with Flock

#488
post #391

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly, these cameras don’t solve anything or provide any real utility and essentially represent a waste of money and resources.

There are quite a few videos online where it has helped prove self defense and fraudulent statements by cops. Who knows how long that utility lasts with cheap video editing on the horizon.

Smartphone?

There are quite a few videos online of a lot of things that I’ll never encounter. Buying a doorbell camera for three figures of dollars plus potential cloud storage/service fees doesn’t seem like financially appropriate response to me.

Re: Amazon’s Ring to partner with Flock

#489
post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. Ring has a proven track record of giving up whatever video law enforcement wants, regardless of your choice or privacy laws. If it was free, I could almost understand. Nothing is free, and if it cost the customer nothing, then the customer is the product. However, people paid for Ring gear and as a thanks have their privacy violated with no notice, no info and no choice.

Forget law enforcement, for years they allowed all their employees to access literally any camera whenever they want. There were women being stalked by ring employees. It was that bad. Teslas had (has?) a similar problem.

Would it surprise you to learn that they also sell data to anyone with a handful of nickels?

Re: Amazon’s Ring to partner with Flock

#490

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the biggest 'culture shocks' I had when first moving to Asia, that eventually I'd see in numerous places, is visiting a food court during business hours. There's people shoulder to shoulder, so everybody goes to claim a table before getting their food. They do this by leaving various things, including their purses, on tables while they went to go queue up to get some food. There wasn't a camera anywhere. That…

>What you're describing here is the opposite of a high trust society In such a society, people don't steal because thieves have been removed from society. You can trust others because they have proven through their life that they are trustworthy. By trust I was talking between the people in society and not about the government trusting that people would not break laws. Humans are not perfect, so it's a bad assumption…

> In such a society, people don't steal because thieves have been removed from society. You can trust others because they have proven through their life that they are trustworthy.

This is a very "Star Trek" view of the future and even Star Trek repeatedly demonstrates that the perfect society is an illusion.

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