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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

#571

Post by JCattheATM »

_carbyau_ wrote: post #569
JCattheATM wrote: post #553

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There is far more nuance than this. There's just....not. It's a pretty well established concept by now. For almost 50 years or so. > What counts as a "super public busy place" ? The airport? The bus terminal? The local library? All major roads that experience rush hour traffic? Yes to all of these. > Who is the person who says where the cutoff line is? Not a person, but a sound methodology ideally. Kind of like wha…

> I'd argue your concerns have already been addressed by current systems that have worked fine for decades. The issue is that times are changing. "Worked fine for decades" doesn't apply to the Ring Doorbell or Flock. Or that authorities exactly want to have all footage in the one place, from train stations too. Modern computers allow for scaling of capabilities that are only tolerable at all when limited in number. I…

I'm not arguing for mass surveillance, I'm arguing for keeping surveillance in busy places which as you admit has worked well for decades. I'm against the Ring/Flock dystopian nightmare as well.

> But do you think your desires are being adhered to?

No, but I think an apathetic population are the problem, and I don't know how to solve it.

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

#572

Post by Brian_K_White »

jb1991 wrote: post #54
Brian_K_White wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I think I would say the same, that you should actually look at that.

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

#573

Post by _carbyau_ »

JCattheATM wrote: post #571
_carbyau_ wrote: post #569

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'd argue your concerns have already been addressed by current systems that have worked fine for decades. The issue is that times are changing. "Worked fine for decades" doesn't apply to the Ring Doorbell or Flock. Or that authorities exactly want to have all footage in the one place, from train stations too. Modern computers allow for scaling of capabilities that are only tolerable at all when limited in number. I…

I'm not arguing for mass surveillance, I'm arguing for keeping surveillance in busy places which as you admit has worked well for decades. I'm against the Ring/Flock dystopian nightmare as well. > But do you think your desires are being adhered to? No, but I think an apathetic population are the problem, and I don't know how to solve it.

I think we are largely in agreeance here.

It was the thing about "nuances" that bugged me mostly. The nuances determine whether the benefits outweigh the cost.

Appropriately managed isolated systems are fine. Dystopian nightmare is not.

.. and the apathy might doom us all. Thank you for an interesting thread of conversation.

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

#575

Post by JCattheATM »

_carbyau_ wrote: post #573
JCattheATM wrote: post #571

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not arguing for mass surveillance, I'm arguing for keeping surveillance in busy places which as you admit has worked well for decades. I'm against the Ring/Flock dystopian nightmare as well. > But do you think your desires are being adhered to? No, but I think an apathetic population are the problem, and I don't know how to solve it.

I think we are largely in agreeance here. It was the thing about "nuances" that bugged me mostly. The nuances determine whether the benefits outweigh the cost. Appropriately managed isolated systems are fine. Dystopian nightmare is not. .. and the apathy might doom us all. Thank you for an interesting thread of conversation.

> and the apathy might doom us all.

That, and the eagerness for misinformation that fits with preconceptions.

> Thank you for an interesting thread of conversation.

Likewise!

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

#576

Post by BobbyTables2 »

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…

Too bad Franklin didn’t just quote Spock:

“The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few…”

(/s)

Thanks for educating us!

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

#577

Post by godelski »

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…

For those unfamiliar it's worth learning about Blackstone's Ratio. Blackstone was extremely influential to the writers of the US constitution.

I think it should come natural to engineers because I see it as similar to failure engineering, but for the legal system. When you engineer a bridge, building, or even a program you build failure modes into them. Not to cause them to fail but to control fails. A simple version is "fail open" vs "fail closed". A bank safe that fails, fails closed. It is locked and you need to drill it open. Same with an encrypted harddrive but no drill... But a locked door in a public building will typically want to fail opened, least you trap people inside during a fire. A more complex example is the root of a conspiracy. When a tall building collapses you tend to want it to fall in on itself so it doesn't take out neighboring skyscrapers...

So Blackstone's Ratio (and Franklin's recounting) is similar. It asks "which mode of failure is better? That innocent man are condemned or that guilty men go free?" This is a question we must all ask ourselves least we back ourselves into a corner. There's no perfect solution. We don't want failure, we should reduce it as much as possible, but if/when it fails, which outcome do you prefer?

I'll link the wiki but the topic is so famous you'll find a million and I'm pretty sure it's taught in every law school in America

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackstone%27s_ratio

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

#579

Post by keernan »

otterley wrote: post #539
keernan wrote: post #534

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Nice.

The government cannot collect and put the names of peaceful anti-government protestors into a government database; or show up at their homes when they violated no law; or the government issuing a subpoena to google for personal data about a man who wrote a one sentence letter to a DOJ prosecutor asking for leniency for the defendant in a case he read about.

These are all actions taken by the government in response to citizens expressing viewpoints the government did not like. You will never find more classic First Amendment fact patterns.

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

#580

Post by drnick1 »

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…

> So instead, people are rage-returning Ring cameras and posting their receipts and exchanging them for...Chinese cameras. Which do the same thing, except this time the servers are overseas and completely uncontrolled.

No, the right thing to do is to buy an IP camera (most of which are made in China), firewall it, and send the footage to a local NVR. At no point should the camera speak to the open Internet.

It's the same principle with any Internet-of-Shit device -- it's not allowed to communicate over the Internet, period. At that point, any built-in backdoor or anti-feature becomes irrelevant.

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