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Amazon’s Ring to partner with Flock

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Re: Amazon’s Ring to partner with Flock

#511
post #338

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The search directly on osm.org is optimzied for address things. For a "complete" search in the OpenStreetMap-data I suggest [Overpass Turbo]( https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Overpass_turbo ). In this specific case I'd take a little detour over taginfo ( https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Taginfo ), e.g. search for `surveillance` ( https://taginfo.openstreetmap.org/search?q=surveillance ) there. A little bit of c…

Fantastic! Thank you :) However, even ALPR doesn't show any devices for me: I'm glad citizens in the EU are more on top of this. I really wish we as USA citizens had access to the same database of GPS coordinates for each Blink, Ring, and Amazon Key device that police do. Does anyone know how/if something like that could be FOIA'd? This seems it would be particularly fruitful if FBI/DHS has a comprehensive dataset fo…

> However, even ALPR doesn't show any devices for me

I've panned the map over several parts of the US, and see many ALPRs mapped in OpenStreetMap. You can also use the 'Wizard' of Overpass turbo, and enter ""surveillance:type"=ALPR around Miami" (or any other city (e.g. your home town), with quotation marks around surveillance:type) and increase the `radius` in the query until you'll find some. As an example, here are the ALPRs 25km around Miami: https://overpass-turbo.eu/s/2dVP

Re: Amazon’s Ring to partner with Flock

#512

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>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.

I don't think it's necessarily an illusion, but rather its repeatedly demonstrated that it requires measure that some might not like. In "Asia" (quotes as it feels odd to characterize an entire continent of dozens of different countries, yet there is often a widely shared ethos on many topics) criminals tend to be largely ostracized from society. And it's not just the criminals, but also their family and relations. This is probably somewhat more akin to what Western society was in the past with things like pillories where the punishment wasn't just the humiliation, but everyone knowing that you were a criminal.

Even the justice systems tend to be different. For instance in the US you're expected to plead not guilty, even if you're guilty - and then work from there. In "Asia" 'falsely' pleading not guilty is often seen as a lack of remorse and generally results in far harsher penalties than pleading guilty. And when one pleads guilty, they're often even required to do things like reenact their crime and generally cooperate with the government in every single way. It's just a very different approach towards criminality.

Re: Amazon’s Ring to partner with Flock

#513
post #286
post #105

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My entire neighborhood came with ring doorbells pre installed and eero routers. I swapped out to the Logitech doorbell which I like better anyway

Here in the Netherlands, the government gave them away for free They're also illegal because you're not allowed to film public spaces without a good reason (it's up to the judge and case law to decide, e.g. if there has been arson in the area recently then it's reasonable to monitor your car that's parked at the kerb, for example). Nobody has yet gotten in trouble to my knowledge Gotta love hypocrisy

That the government gave them out has me wondering, do they make any kind of distinction between “government does it” versus “you doing it,” i.e. is the government claiming to be monitoring and not you?

In America we have this concept that a police must have a real reason to pull over your car. Except they can just setup an arbitrary checkpoint and pull every driver over and this is magically different and acceptable to do, no violations of rights at all.

Re: Amazon’s Ring to partner with Flock

#514

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have you seen this? https://www.flocksafety.com/products/flock-dfr much much more dystopian...

What's your point? Obviously we wouldn't allow something like this to be deployed in our community. But what does that have to do with Flock providing an interface to police departments for collecting Ring camera footage? I don't think that's a good thing --- I think PDs should continue to manually canvass for footage and specifically ask residents for footage when they need it, I think that's actually the right publ…

The point is Flock intends to expand their product offerings far beyond license plate reading. It has to do with Flock's AI because all the features in all the products will converge on selling surveillence of civilians. All their products will feed data to all their other products because centralized data makes their features more attractive to LEOs. The further embeded they are in an investigation the more they maximize profits for shareholders. The math is pretty simple.

Re: Amazon’s Ring to partner with Flock

#515
post #488

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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.

I think that the statistical risk of having the cops unlawfully break in to your house is extremely low, and that incidents of it happening on video/social media/the news greatly over-reports that risk.

I’d certainly like to have surveillance if that were to happen to me but I think the likelihood is extremely low, to the point where I’m pretty sure tossing money at the problem will be a waste.

Re: Amazon’s Ring to partner with Flock

#516

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I’m ok with that as long as I, the camera owner, am choosing to hand over the footage. At best I can see some sort of watermarking to ensure that it’s legitimate.

There are legitimate reasons to want a camera either at your front door or surveilling your property. These can range from an increased sense of security to having documentation to support insurance claims, or even for watching wildlife. We installed our Ring camera after an ongoing string of nighttime car break-ins hit us and we had no direct proof of what happened for insurance. It was meant to be both a deterrent…

Not one disagreement with what you're saying. I have cameras outside my house. I'd like them to be end-to-end encrypted and am perfectly fine with a voluntary self-report feature. But what Ring seems to be pushing for is opt-out mass surveillance, and once connected to AI this means we're going to the bad place.

Re: Amazon’s Ring to partner with Flock

#517
post #487
post #486

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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.

They’re about the same

Re: Amazon’s Ring to partner with Flock

#518
post #376

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I mean the feed has to be written to a storage and this storage I immediately backup off-site in the case someone is clever enough to immediately go for such (e.g. burglary).

I think one of the traps we fall into is imagining that an attacker is somehow intelligent (someone who can immediately attack video storage) but simultaneously uncreative (doesn’t think of some way to make the surveillance footage irrelevant). I’ve decided that I’m not a high-profile target for covert operatives, but I am a target of opportunity for people who have access to my data once that data is outside of my c…

Stupid burglars get caught. It is only a matter of time till burglars learn to combat this. For example, a MITM on the camera. Thing is, neighbors also got one. If I get threatened to remove the video, I will oblige. If everything gets destroyed in a fire due to cobra's, there's a backup. That's my threat model. And silent data corrupt on the camera feed storage could also occur.

Re: Amazon’s Ring to partner with Flock

#519
post #508

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But you’re opted into the automatic detection , regardless. Ring is still processing your video still to see if there’s a match to any Search Party unless you turn the feature off. At what point will the police request a warrant to run their own Search Party without consent?

So what? It already processes my video to detect people walking toward my house. Thats why I bought a smart camera not a dumb camera A dog isn’t even on par to identifying humans. But let’s suppose if there’s a shooter on the run and my camera detects it, would I share that. Yes of course. Why wouldn’t I?

These kinds of systems tends to also be used by abusive policemen monitoring their exes, and police tracking members of undesirable (but legal) activist groups, etc.

Re: Amazon’s Ring to partner with Flock

#520

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>government surveillance policies are more popular then some folks in HN circles would suspect. 2 things. 1. Few people understand most surveillance legislation, including journalists. 2. Most governments use thought terminating cliches involving child safety to force compliance on the middle set of people who dont like surveillance and understand a minimum amount of what the legislation does. These points leave anti…

I think this is correct, but buying something like a Ring camera is 100% voluntary. And buying a smartphone _used_ to be 100% voluntary, and people couldn't get enough of them. People aren't ignorant about privacy, they don't even care about it. Try telling your friends you turn bluetooth off on your phone and don't have a data plan for it. They'll think you're very, very weird. They do not care about privacy whatsoe…

People are willing to trade privacy for utility.

When that trade is voluntary, its not really that controversial.

People give facebook tons of data, they dont care because it keeps them in touch with friends. People get upset when the utility of facebook decreases due to enshittification, or if they provide that data to somewhere spooky that they werent aware they were consenting to.

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