Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

greenwald.substack.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 696 posts

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

#51

Post by alejohausner »

The backlash against the use of Ring cameras began with their tone-deaf superbowl ad. Amazon assumed that customers would buy their surveillance technology. The whole thing reminds me that we have returned to the Gilded Age, when the rich people who run the world strutted about arrogantly, without fear of shame or public disapproval. It’s as if Bezos is telling us “you have no choice. You will buy our product whether you like it or not.”

Will another Progressive Era bring about more equality, or are the billionaires too entrenched?

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

#52

Post by AnthonyMouse »

oefrha wrote: post #21

It’s pretty amazing when you get the worst of both worlds—total surveillance, yet still rampant crime.

That's the only way it can be in a system with thousands of crimes on the books.

People commit minor offenses, and often felonies without knowing it, on a regular basis. If surveillance was consistently used to actually enforce the laws, people would a) notice the surveillance[0] and then actually object to it and b) start objecting to all the ridiculous and poorly drafted laws they didn't even know existed.

But they don't want the majority of people objecting to things. They want a system that provides a thousand pretexts to punish anyone who does something they don't like, even something they're supposed to have a right to do, by charging them with any of the laws that everybody violates all the time and having the surveillance apparatus in place so they can do it to anyone as long as it's not done to everyone. That doesn't work if the laws are enforced consistently and the majority thereby starts insisting that they be reasonable.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G1zhe85spsw

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

#53

Post by whycome »

baobabKoodaa wrote: post #17
SVAintNoWay wrote: post #11

> But the graphic Amazon used seems to have unwittingly depicted how invasive this technology can be This is a calculated move to normalize such technology. Yes, it will cause controversy in the short term, and these companies knew this was a possibility—but as a result the image in people's minds won't be the gestapo rounding up grannies; it'll kids finding puppies. To call this "unwitting" is simply naive (not surp…

No marketing team would willingly do this and it's insane to think otherwise.

Insane is a bit hyperbolic. The history of marketing is full of grand mistakes that seem absurd in hindsight.

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

#54

Post by jb1991 »

Brian_K_White wrote: post #46
oefrha wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who’s making up the homicide and other violent crime statistics and for what purpose?

What statistics? These? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_in_the_United_States#/me... https://ncvs.bjs.ojp.gov/year-to-year-comparison/crimeType

You should look at a comparison of American violent crime to other major western nations.

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

#55

Post by jeffbee »

alejohausner wrote: post #38

Glenn Greenwald is back on substack. Yay! For the past few years, he’s mostly done videos on rumble, and he’s fun to watch, but personally I prefer his writing. In case you’ve been under a rock for 10 years, Greenwald was the guy who published Snowden’s revelations. His focus has always been on censorship, surveillance, and hypocrisy in government.

"Yay" Greenwald is (still) playing footsie down at the Nazi bar.

https://www.theguardian.com/media/2026/feb/07/revealed-how-s...

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

#56

Post by kspacewalk2 »

alejohausner wrote: post #38

Glenn Greenwald is back on substack. Yay! For the past few years, he’s mostly done videos on rumble, and he’s fun to watch, but personally I prefer his writing. In case you’ve been under a rock for 10 years, Greenwald was the guy who published Snowden’s revelations. His focus has always been on censorship, surveillance, and hypocrisy in government.

His focus has also involved generous amounts of simping for Russian fascists, excusing their colonialist wars, etc. Not an anti-imperialist, just anti-US.

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

#57

Post by adamsb6 »

salawat wrote: post #47
wordsunite wrote: post #32

I know it seems hard, but just stop using Google, Amazon, Meta products. Tell everyone you know to stop using their products. They have all been acquiring and amassing surveillance for years through their products and now they're just double dipping with AI training to sell you more of it. The more you can get people to realize and disconnect the better. I wish more people would use AI to build alternatives with a cl…

Using AI to do anything isn't going to liberate one. It's just going to shift the dependence from one company to another. Your new feudal lord will be the people running the Santa Claus machine you're running. Don't keep trying to tell people AI is the solution. The real solution is self-hosting. And that cannot be AI'd half as easily.

You can self host AI but speed and quality aren’t going to be as good as what companies can offer.

And the upfront cost will be quite high.

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

#58

Post by WarmWash »

wordsunite wrote: post #32

I know it seems hard, but just stop using Google, Amazon, Meta products. Tell everyone you know to stop using their products. They have all been acquiring and amassing surveillance for years through their products and now they're just double dipping with AI training to sell you more of it. The more you can get people to realize and disconnect the better. I wish more people would use AI to build alternatives with a cl…

Its an intractable problem because people now have a general expectation that everything is "free".

Look at Kagi's success and compare it to Google. It doesn't even register.

People need to start paying for things, because if you're not paying for it, you're not in control of it.

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

#59

Post by jb1991 »

freeopinion wrote: post #43
lenerdenator wrote: post #20

At this point, it's fair to assume that if the US government wanted to surveil you to a nefarious end, they absolutely could, easily, using things you bought to make your life more convenient. The keys then become: 1) Implementing policies discouraging them from doing so at the societal level and 2) Implementing force behind those policies at the personal and societal level DHS isn't getting paid right now because Kr…

I laugh at myself sometimes for things like this: I refuse to provide my phone number to the cashier who promises me loyalty points, then I hand over the same credit card number I use for all my purchases. Boy, I really showed them how much I value my privacy!

How are those two things the same?!

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

#60

Post by fwipsy »

salawat wrote: post #47
wordsunite wrote: post #32

I know it seems hard, but just stop using Google, Amazon, Meta products. Tell everyone you know to stop using their products. They have all been acquiring and amassing surveillance for years through their products and now they're just double dipping with AI training to sell you more of it. The more you can get people to realize and disconnect the better. I wish more people would use AI to build alternatives with a cl…

Using AI to do anything isn't going to liberate one. It's just going to shift the dependence from one company to another. Your new feudal lord will be the people running the Santa Claus machine you're running. Don't keep trying to tell people AI is the solution. The real solution is self-hosting. And that cannot be AI'd half as easily.

The suggestion is not to depend on AI for privacy, but to use it to build products like signal which guarantee privacy. Using AI to build a product doesn't mean sharing the data from that product. In addition, right now AI has little vendor lock in and there are multiple competitive alternatives, so becoming dependent on a single company is not so likely.
Post reply on HN