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

Amazon’s Ring to partner with Flock

techcrunch.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 531 posts

Re: Amazon’s Ring to partner with Flock

#71

Post by captainkrtek »

kotaKat wrote: post #23
bryancoxwell wrote: post #8

Might be a good time to enable E2EE on your Ring cams if you haven’t already: https://ring.com/support/articles/7e3lk/using-video-end-to-e...

Bad news: Ring just enabled opt-in-by-default "search parties" for people to leverage your outdoor cameras to find their "lost animals". https://ring.com/search-party

The feature in the app is also worded cleverly:

“Search party lets you use your outdoor Ring cameras to help neighbors in your area”

Note: doesn’t mention pets yet. Then:

“Starting with lost pets, Search party will…”

What comes after lost pets? Very open ended

Re: Amazon’s Ring to partner with Flock

#72

Post by CaptainOfCoit »

shrubble wrote: post #43

When you take this info and combine it with the ability of Wifi7 routers to "see" where people are in their house, you realize that the recent demo of Anduril's helmet that gives an information display that the soldier/cop wearing it can use to "see who is in the house" or "see around corners" etc. is not sci-fi but instead, something they can do today.

I hate that all our favorite sci-fi books were used as manuals for what to build next, instead of trying to avoid creating those futures in our real lives.

Re: Amazon’s Ring to partner with Flock

#73

Post by nick__m »

jappgar wrote: post #36
mihaaly wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh, Jesus!! This f shameless pretention of doing something noble - barely helpful above normal practices btw. - while manipulating clueless users into turning on mass-surveillance is revolting and disgusting. And ordinary employees figured this out, phrased, created content, implemmented, pubished, and are maintaining this dirty practice. Many times with (very misplaced) pride. Shame on all of them actively participa…

Shame on the idiots who place a webcam on their front doorstep too.

Someone tried to enter by the window next to my front porch door, it prompted me to install a video doorbell because the dude that frightened my wife only received a ticket because there was no proof he tried (and fail) to force open a window and did not enter the house. If I had a recording he would have spent the night at the station and it would have been a criminal offense instead of a civil one.

Even if it only provides deterrence, and a slight chance of after the fact punishment, I don't feel idiotic for buying a "doorstep Webcam", the door is visible from the street so there is no expectation of privacy and I really don't care that someone else could access those recordings.

If I had indoors cameras they would be in a private network. But for a front porch camera the easiest to install IOT junk is perfectly serviceable.

Re: Amazon’s Ring to partner with Flock

#74

Post by mschuster91 »

potato3732842 wrote: post #40
toofy wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> they love the jackboot yes, some people genuinely do, and some people don’t. some people have absolutely no understanding of what surveillance tech is doing and where it is going. in terms of the “ist” problem you refer to, at the end of the day, the real answer is to deny anyone that amount of power. whether it’s corporations, religions, governments, or billionaires. none of these should have enough power to sway…

>somehow we need to achieve separation of money and state with as much vigor as we used to separate church and state. This used to be called "equality under the law" and laws that could not be written equally or enforced equally were not written or overturned by the courts.

> This used to be called "equality under the law" and laws that could not be written equally or enforced equally were not written or overturned by the courts.

The US in particular had discrimination encoded in law for a long time. It took Rosa Parks in 1955 to end "white only" areas in public transport, and it took until 1965 until racial discrimination by law was finally outlawed.

"Equality under the law" always depends on who is considered to be part of the group that enjoys said equality. Even today, many countries still have laws on the books that discriminate between ethnicity and/or country of origin and/or citizenship. Just look at us in Europe - you usually have to be a citizen of an EU country to hold public office for example, residency is not enough. Or you got border patrol clearly profiling whom to control at a border checkpoint - whites get left alone and unbothered, non-whites get the full experience of what border control is allowed to do. That's not just discrimination, it's showing citizens that happen to have non-white skin that despite them being equal citizens by law, in practice there is no equality.

Re: Amazon’s Ring to partner with Flock

#75

Post by somenameforme »

nrjames wrote: post #54
jappgar wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You opted-in by buying the product in the first place. People are buying these things out of fear anyways. I thought they'd be happy big brother is watching.

When a man murdered a woman in front of my house last year, our Ring camera's photos of his car led to his arrest within 24 hours, so not entirely useless?

I think a good thought experiment to consider, in terms of defining what your own views are, is to consider that if every single person had a mandatory 24/7 uplinked camera on them with redundancies, then the number of unsolved crimes would rapidly approach zero. It would be essentially impossible to get away with crime, so the only crimes that would happen would be those of passion, ignorance, or the political elite who would certainly excuse themselves from such social obligations, as usual.

But I definitely would not want to live in that world. And I think that's true for most people. It's kind of interesting too because there's some really nasty arguments one can make about this like, 'What, you'd rather see children kidnapped and even killed than consenting to surveillance that won't even be looked at unless you're under suspicion?'

But it's quite disingenuous, because with any freedom there is always a cost, and that cost is often extreme. 40,000+ people die per year because of our freedom to drive, yet few would ever use that as an argument to prohibit driving.

Re: Amazon’s Ring to partner with Flock

#76

Post by _factor »

plingbang wrote: post #56
RHSeeger wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> or turn it off entirely That part you can't do. Unless the battery is removed, phone can be turned back on remotely.

citation needed

https://www.idownloadblog.com/2021/12/16/ios-15-2-power-rese...

They can do it right up until the battery truly discharges. You can’t turn off WiFi/BT for real either. Icons will go dark and your WiFi and devices won’t work, but underneath the radios are still plenty active and powered on.

Re: Amazon’s Ring to partner with Flock

#77

Post by nerdponx »

shrubble wrote: post #43

When you take this info and combine it with the ability of Wifi7 routers to "see" where people are in their house, you realize that the recent demo of Anduril's helmet that gives an information display that the soldier/cop wearing it can use to "see who is in the house" or "see around corners" etc. is not sci-fi but instead, something they can do today.

Pros: potentially greater safety for police and EMS when dealing with touchy people, obvious benefits for fire rescue (assuming it works in a fire).

Cons: use your imagination.

Re: Amazon’s Ring to partner with Flock

#78

Post by squigz »

potato3732842 wrote: post #15
mothballed wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Big tech have always been dogs willing to play fetch for any master. The free market didn't offer big tech these quantity of rewards for brutalizing people 'guilty' of administrative infractions, our 'democratically' elected government did.

>elected government Elected in part by the useful idiots on HN and many other places. They were so ignorant of how government actually works they were happy to give it this power. They foresaw the jackboot being used to stomp petty criminals and fellow middle class types who don't "pay their fair share". But they had never cracked open a history book because if they had they would know that sort of stuff is never a t…

Maybe people are just responding to things like labelling them all as "useful idiots" and "Nazis" and "fascists"

Re: Amazon’s Ring to partner with Flock

#79

Post by nerdponx »

bryancoxwell wrote: post #8

Might be a good time to enable E2EE on your Ring cams if you haven’t already: https://ring.com/support/articles/7e3lk/using-video-end-to-e...

Consider not sending your doorbell footage to accompany that has no respect for user privacy, and is now actively partnering with a police surveillance company.

Re: Amazon’s Ring to partner with Flock

#80

Post by ta1243 »

bryancoxwell wrote: post #8

Might be a good time to enable E2EE on your Ring cams if you haven’t already: https://ring.com/support/articles/7e3lk/using-video-end-to-e...

The best time to not buy into all this non-free surveilence-as-a-service crap was a decade ago.

The second best time is today.

Unfortunately the public love this stuff, and are quite happy to have CCTV pointing at your house. Privacy never existed 300 years ago, it doesn't today. Accept your feudal masters and make peace with it, because they won years ago.

Post reply on HN