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

greenwald.substack.com

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

#511

Post by tsunamifury »

acdha wrote: post #487
tsunamifury wrote: post #451

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Im referring to the legal and cooperation loopholes Apple has put behind those. Each one allows for access, at times warrant less, at any moment. It’s bizarre that you think this is “Ok”. Insane you are defending it. Combined it makes a hard hard take that they are security oriented. Beyond that Apple has cooperated with data turnover at the personal request of President Trump multiple times. So pull your head out of…

Okay, can you express the “legal and cooperation loopholes Apple has put behind those” clearly enough for me to understand what you mean? Are you alleging that iCloud E2EE is compromised? Are you saying that Apple promised RCS would do something more than the carriers designed it to do? It’s hard to assess vague, unsourced claims.

There obviously will be no sources. I’m telling you as someone who worked directly On iMessage and Google messages.

Apple not only gives keys they often provide access with no legal requirement at all. They also DO NOT e2ee all sources they claim to depending on what regions the messages pass through to devices they end up at. There are also massive cooperation and caching going on of messaging and push notifications which access is provided to several governments. Aka as the Wyden leaks

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

#512

Post by nkrisc »

roywiggins wrote: post #267
dhbradshaw wrote: post #218

I really like this passage: >It is always the case that there are benefits available from relinquishing core civil liberties: allowing infringements on free speech may reduce false claims and hateful ideas; allowing searches and seizures without warrants will likely help the police catch more criminals, and do so more quickly; giving up privacy may, in fact, enhance security. > But the core premise of the West genera…

I think the security/liberty tradeoff is actually often a false promise. You can end up trading away liberty for nothing at all. I don't like buying into this, even to say "liberty is better, we should do that instead" because it implicitly concedes that you would really get the security on the other side of the bargain. And if you don't get the security you were promised, it's too late to do anything about it.

When you've given up all liberty, there's nothing left to stop the security being used against you.

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

#513

Post by m3kw9 »

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…

Surveillance is not black or white. In this world you’d have to be a cave man to not get surveyed, you just have to pick your battles. Not using any other the big 5-10’s product or s like saying don’t buy from Walmart or something. It’s stupid

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

#514

Post by epolanski »

tootie wrote: post #162
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.

Is he taking a break from being a mouthpiece for Russian propaganda?

Can you make an example?

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

#515

Post by fn-mote »

Aurornis wrote: post #470
tokyobreakfast wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everyone has known Google reads your email since day one. In the early days they would spin it as a good thing: "that's why the spam filtering is great!" Why is everyone suddenly outraged Ring has access to your footage? These cloud-connected cameras...hosted on someone else's servers. It's literally how they work. "But I didn't think they would use the video in a way I didn't personally approve after giving it to th…

> Everyone has known Google reads your email since day one. These constructions feel too simplistic to capture anything useful. My credit card company can see my transactions. My medical provider can read my medical records. People who hire house cleaners let people see inside their house. It's commonly accepted that when you engage with a company for business purposes, they can see things involved in your business w…

> > It's hard to have any empathy when the warning label was already on the box for all these products.

> These snooty takes where we're supposed to look down upon others for having reasonable assumptions about usage of their data are why it's so hard to get the general public to care about privacy.

In addition: it’s not just the Ring camera installer whose rights are being violated (to be optimistic), it’s everyone who walks past on the sidewalk.

Privacy is a public good.

And it’s so long gone nobody (in the US or UK at least) can see a way to get it back.

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

#516

Post by m3kw9 »

MontyCarloHall wrote: post #63
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…

>I know it seems hard, but just stop using Google, Amazon, Meta products. I noticed your own app's website [0] hosts videos on YouTube [1] and uses Stripe as a payment processor [2], which is hosted on AWS. You also mentioned that your app is vibe coded [3]; the AI labs that facilitated your vibecoding likely built and run their models using Meta's PyTorch or Google's TensorFlow. "Just stop using" makes for a catchy…

It’s hard that’s why he is still using it

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

#517

Post by JCattheATM »

fn-mote wrote: post #505
JCattheATM wrote: post #493

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You'd prefer train stations don't have CCTV? What about when an attack happens?

That’s what this ENTIRE conversation is about… the (ostensible) trade off between surveillance and security. In the case of an attack, I’d wish for a gendarme not a recording that would let me relive the experience.

Right, and I was saying it's wrong not to want surveillance in a super public area like a train station.

A gendarme is worse in every way.

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

#518

Post by prmoustache »

warkdarrior wrote: post #462
drnick1 wrote: post #396

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> used your web browser so no other applications to install I see this as a downside. Native email clients are much faster and a far better UX than a Web inbox. It's also pretty much required if you juggle multiple accounts.

I have yet to see a native email client that offers search as fast and as capable as Gmail

Searcv in Gnome evolution is super fast

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

#519

Post by fn-mote »

robotnikman wrote: post #363
tokyobreakfast wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everyone has known Google reads your email since day one. In the early days they would spin it as a good thing: "that's why the spam filtering is great!" Why is everyone suddenly outraged Ring has access to your footage? These cloud-connected cameras...hosted on someone else's servers. It's literally how they work. "But I didn't think they would use the video in a way I didn't personally approve after giving it to th…

We have known all of this for over a decade now, ever since the Snowden leaks revealed some very damning things. The public has unfortunately decided they do no care it seems...

Now it’s not just the government. The commercial data aggregation has also reached eyebrow-raising levels.

When private data sources are being used to drive government enforcement actions (ICE), I think the reality has gone beyond Snowden.

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

#520

Post by JCattheATM »

fn-mote wrote: post #509
JCattheATM wrote: post #501

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They still need to capture incidents in the station itself.

This argument justifies CCTV surveillance of all public places. Is that what you intend to be arguing for? In any case, there needs to be more nuance in the discussion than a one-liner. I think the quantity of surveillance matters. When it’s just a few places, then it’s a minor intrusion on liberty. When it’s a lot of places, it’s a major intrusion that will facilitate the (further) rise of authoritarianism.

> This argument justifies CCTV surveillance of all public places.

Well, yeah, I think that was super obvious, no?

> In any case, there needs to be more nuance in the discussion than a one-liner.

Not really. Super public busy places like train stations ought to be surveilled. The benefits far outweigh any cons.

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