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Amazon’s Ring to partner with Flock

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Re: Amazon’s Ring to partner with Flock

#491

Post by lotsofpulp »

dangus wrote: post #488
lotsofpulp wrote: post #404

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

What about smartphones? They have also exposed a ton of fraud by cops.

They’re not pointed at the front door all the time, so not very useful for cops breaking in. And in any case, cops will have access to their bodycam videos for their side, which you may or may not get access to. Best to have as much data that you have access to for your defense.

Re: Amazon’s Ring to partner with Flock

#492

Post by anaisbetts »

anigbrowl wrote: post #430

It's not that long ago that people used to talk about East Germany as a dystopian hellhole of state surveillance, and yet the US is now far more surveilled than the DDR ever was. It's amazing to me how easily this country was propagandized and its inhabitants persuaded to establish an authoritarian state of their own.

Ironically, because of East Germany, cameras like this are now extremely illegal here. Any camera that can see public or even semi-public property (i.e. a camera that can see out into your building's courtyard or hallway) are disallowed. Even ones that strictly are inside your own home are subject to rules around audio recording and a sign must be posted at all entrances.

Re: Amazon’s Ring to partner with Flock

#493

Post by buzer »

rapnie wrote: post #477
buzer wrote: post #382

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I don't think GDPR violations are normally handled by police. It might be if there is separate a crime (in Finland illicit observation can probably be both GDPR violation and crime though that probably doesn't apply here).

GDPR violations would normally be handled by the national DPA. They can investigate things by their own decision but normally you need to try to exercise your rights (in this case probably ask copies of your data, information regarding processing & recipients of your personal data), get denial from data controller or find issues on their reply and then make complaint to DPA. They will then investigate & give decision. You or data controller can then appeal it to court if either disagrees.

Re: Amazon’s Ring to partner with Flock

#494

Post by xethos »

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.

That's just capitalism vs socialism. In communist countries, the state provides the surveillance. In capitalist America, the consumers pay for state surveillance.

Re: Amazon’s Ring to partner with Flock

#495

Post by nik282000 »

e40 wrote: post #470
nik282000 wrote: post #389

One 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…

> For my 20 bucks a month I get cameras, a media server, password manager Ok, I’m stumped, what service is this?

Im running Zoneminder for cameras, Jellyfin, Audiobookshelf and lightmusicserver for media, keepass + webdav for a pw manager, file browser for fast file sharing. Takes a week to setup from scratch but from there on it's like 10min of maintenance a week.

Re: Amazon’s Ring to partner with Flock

#496

Post by nik282000 »

ta1243 wrote: post #466
nik282000 wrote: post #412

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tailscale solves the access/NAT issue and keeps your services off of your WAN, but it relies on a 3rd party to let you use your own equipment. I understand why it is useful and a necessary service but I'll never touch it.

What worries me is how the HN groupthink mentions it at every possibility. If people on HN aren't capable/willing to run their own kit there's no hope. In the slashdot days you'd never get such worship of tailscale and cloudflare. Even in the early days of HN you'd have people suggesting a bit of rsync rather than using dropbox. It feels like the modern tech zeitgest is either dripping in far-right memes, or it's "te…

It's everywhere, reddit and the fediverse also seem to have drank the cloudflare coolaid. Someone's been pushing the idea that it's impossible to host on 80/443 safely, only big brother can keep you safe.

Re: Amazon’s Ring to partner with Flock

#497

Post by nik282000 »

squigz wrote: post #467
spyder wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't need to walk up: 1. You can do wardriving and identify them by MAC address. 2. You can use object recognition on google street view photos or your own photos while you're wardriving.

Wouldn't identifying them via MAC address be very inaccurate, as you can't pinpoint them to a specific house very easily? Would cameras like these emit any sort of IR light or anything that might be detected from a distance? Object recognition would depend on them being very obvious from the outside - which Rings do appear to be (I've never seen one in person) but I imagine there will be less-obvious options soon eno…

War driving will give you multiple sightings + signal strength, you can triangulate. https://wigle.net/

Re: Amazon’s Ring to partner with Flock

#498

Post by Ancapistani »

jappgar wrote: post #39
taneq wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“Opt-in-by-default” is a lot of words to say “opt-out”.

You opted-in by buying the product in the first place. People are buying these things out of fear anyways. I thought they'd be happy big brother is watching.

I bought a Ring doorbell several years ago, because I wanted an app-connected doorbell camera. That's it.

Once Amazon started rolling out other stuff and it was clear they were setting up a private panopticon, I trashed it and went with Blink, adding five wireless cameras as well. Blink isn't much better, but they're not as broadly compatible and don't have as many bells and whistles yet - but they're getting there.

The next step is to roll my own stuff. I expect I'll have that done by the end of the year.

I'll also note that none of my Blink cameras are pointing outward from my home. The closest to that is that I have one mounted on the front corner eave, but I made sure to point it so that it's looking at where I park my vehicles, and turned off motion detection for the small area of the street that it can see.

What I don't understand is that most of the ones I've seen others install are mounted under the eaves of the house, pointing outward. What's the purpose of that? They're not going to capture anyone actually trying to mess with your property. Most of mine are mounted in trees (front yard) or on posts that I installed for that purpose (back yard).

Re: Amazon’s Ring to partner with Flock

#499

Post by Ancapistani »

nik282000 wrote: post #495
e40 wrote: post #470

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> For my 20 bucks a month I get cameras, a media server, password manager Ok, I’m stumped, what service is this?

Im running Zoneminder for cameras, Jellyfin, Audiobookshelf and lightmusicserver for media, keepass + webdav for a pw manager, file browser for fast file sharing. Takes a week to setup from scratch but from there on it's like 10min of maintenance a week.

How is the motion detection and identification these days?

Ring and Blink are both very poor in that regard, and I've not had a chance to play with custom/open source stuff yet.

Re: Amazon’s Ring to partner with Flock

#500

Post by Squeeeez »

dylan604 wrote: post #385
Squeeeez wrote: post #378

Slight tangent: on top of that, I just read an article yesterday (which of course I can't find again right now) about how false automatic alarms from such cameras will incur a fee from the owners when the Police comes to check it out. It was from somewhere in Texas.

That's pretty common with any alarm system not just Ring. I know you get the first false alarm with a response for free. After that, fines/tickets are issued. It might have been 2 free can't remember as it's been a long time since the alarm was installed and info was provided. This was in Dallas specifically before I go painting with too broad of a brush. Even further back, I had an alarm system installed, but never…

Nothing against that per se, false alarms should be kept in check.

If you have a system where, as I understand it, the main point is to check who is standing in front of your door, and that system now is one automatic update away from dipping into your bank account... How long until the police departments figure out that donations to a specific company could be very profitable?

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