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

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

#531

Post by otterley »

keernan wrote: post #521
otterley wrote: post #498

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Egregious, yes. Concerning, yes. Illegal, I’m not so sure. As a fellow attorney, why do you think they are illegal?[1] Maybe they should be, but our jurisprudence since the 1960s (the “put down the dirty hippies” age) seems to treat the the 4th Amendment not as an expansive right to be left alone but as a narrow one that treats only one’s home as a privacy zone. I found crim pro to be a very distressing and depressin…

Just off the top of my head all three examples I provided violate the First Amendment. It is Constitutionally prohibited for the government to track and gather information on citizens because they exercised their First Amendment rights.

Wait, we just jumped from the Fourth to the First Amendment. Not only did we change subjects, but it's difficult for me to understand how your examples implicate the First Amendment.

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

#532

Post by keernan »

otterley wrote: post #498
keernan wrote: post #465

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a trial attorney for more than 40 years, I'd say these are examples of egregious illegal surveillance of American citizens by the current government: 1. A retired US citizen emailed a DHS attorney urging mercy for an asylum seeker he had read about. Five hours later he received an email from Google advising him the federal government had served Google with a subpoena demanding information about him. Then they foll…

Egregious, yes. Concerning, yes. Illegal, I’m not so sure. As a fellow attorney, why do you think they are illegal?[1] Maybe they should be, but our jurisprudence since the 1960s (the “put down the dirty hippies” age) seems to treat the the 4th Amendment not as an expansive right to be left alone but as a narrow one that treats only one’s home as a privacy zone. I found crim pro to be a very distressing and depressin…

>>To suggest that the Government doesn’t know what’s legal and what isn’t stretches credulity.

I neither make nor imply any such suggestion.

>>they’re going to ride as close to that line as possible

This administration has already overtly failed to comply with valid Federal Court Orders.

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

#533

Post by [deleted] »

js2 wrote: post #331
zugi wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> " Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety " -- Benjamin Franklin The key phrase is "a little temporary safety". 250 years ago people understood that the "security" gains were small and fleeting, but the loss of liberty was massive and permanent.

FWIW, the context of the Franklin quote is him defending the ability of the legislature to tax a family that was trying to bribe/lobby the governor to do otherwise. The quote is in defense of the government: WITTES: It is a quotation that defends the authority of a legislature to govern in the interests of collective security. It means, in context, not quite the opposite of what it's almost always quoted as saying bu…

[deleted]

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

#534

Post by keernan »

otterley wrote: post #531
keernan wrote: post #521

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just off the top of my head all three examples I provided violate the First Amendment. It is Constitutionally prohibited for the government to track and gather information on citizens because they exercised their First Amendment rights.

Wait, we just jumped from the Fourth to the First Amendment. Not only did we change subjects, but it's difficult for me to understand how your examples implicate the First Amendment.

My post neither stated or implied the constitutional provisions. The easiest and clearest provision that has been violated is the Government gathering direct data to classify citizens based upon their expression of their First Amendment rights. That is very apparent in every single example in my post.

I'm not going to engaged with someone on HN debating legal principles regarding something so straight forward. And, as I said, this is off the top of my head. It's basic constitutional law which I haven't found necessary to research. After that sentence I googled McCarthyism and found that SCOTUS ruled in multiple cases that Senator McCarthy and his supporters violated the First Amendment rights of the citizens they accused of communism. I haven't read the opinions, but I am confident they ( and many others ) support the very basic principles I speak of.

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

#535

Post by cucumber3732842 »

tokyobreakfast wrote: post #271
hermannj314 wrote: post #252

We have a branch of government called Congress, here are some things they used to do that made it a crime to read your mail or listen to your phone calls. 1. Postal Service Act of 1792 2. Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA) of 1986 Anyway, Facebook can read your DMs, Google can read your email, Ring can take photos from your camera. We can very easily make those things a crime, but we don't seem to want to d…

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…

>, except this time the servers are overseas and completely uncontrolled.

The Chinese or Russian or whatever government is not sending thugs with guns to my doorstep over petty matters and if they did I would likely, depending on the exact details be within my rights to resist them with violence.

You can't say that about the federal/state/local government.

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

#536

Post by vkou »

JCattheATM wrote: post #493
ndr42 wrote: post #430

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Even getting your neighbors to re-position their Ring cameras (which they have every right to install) can become very difficult. In Germany it's prohibited by law to point your private surveillance camera to public spaces like the boardwalk, no recording of these areas is allowed. I think thats the way it should be. Unfortunately in some areas (e.g. train stations) it is allowed.

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

The CCTV won't do shit to stop me from being attacked, it's a camera, not a cop. It's only useful for figuring out who to blame after the fact.

But there are other ways that we could figure out who to blame after the fact that don't require everything you will ever do to be recorded, forever.

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

#537

Post by cucumber3732842 »

Gormo wrote: post #476
manithree wrote: post #386

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Get money out of politics If you also mean make it so Congress doesn't have a $4T slush fund to buy favors and influence every year, then I'm on board. If you think reducing the paltry sums spent on campaign contributions is going to take the money out of politics, you're bad at math.

The best way to get money out of politics is to get politics out of money. The government playing an outsized role in the economy is precisely what draws money into the political process in the first place.

This. If you're the trade group for a billion dollar industry you'd be not doing your job if you didn't buy both sides of the isle. With how powerful the government is you can't afford not to.

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

#538

Post by __MatrixMan__ »

notepad0x90 wrote: post #234

I don't think people grasp the gravity of the situation. I see everyone talking about how to stop using products. I even thought about legislation that could help. But that's just it, none of that is possible. You can't even employ a "torches and pitchforks" approach. For any of this to be possible, people would have to coordinate. The means by which people communicate and coordinate are under the influence and contr…

Once upon a time, a bunch of people in Boston threw the East India Company's tea into the ocean. We might try something like that again.

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

#539

Post by otterley »

keernan wrote: post #534
otterley wrote: post #531

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wait, we just jumped from the Fourth to the First Amendment. Not only did we change subjects, but it's difficult for me to understand how your examples implicate the First Amendment.

My post neither stated or implied the constitutional provisions. The easiest and clearest provision that has been violated is the Government gathering direct data to classify citizens based upon their expression of their First Amendment rights. That is very apparent in every single example in my post. I'm not going to engaged with someone on HN debating legal principles regarding something so straight forward. And, a…

Respectfully, this is all making me very strongly doubt your bona fides. There are many clues in the above comment that suggest you aren't who you claim to be.

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

#540

Post by petterroea »

> while Flock is unrelated to Search Party, public backlash made it impossible, at least for now, for Amazon to send Ring’s user data to a police surveillance firm

Not the same, but ring is a common target for police warrants already

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