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

Ring owners are returning their cameras

msn.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 314 posts

Re: Ring owners are returning their cameras

#91

Post by kelnos »

wooger wrote: post #69
UltraSane wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ring ran a Superbowl ad showing their cameras being used to find a lost dog. This made people realize they can be used to track people just as easily.

[flagged]

It is far, far, far, far more likely that this sort of mass surveillance capability will be used for bad purposes (even by law enforcement) than it will be used to find an escaped child murderer. (Hell, I am convinced that this sort of thing is already more frequently used for bad purposes than good.)

Also like, how many escaped child murderers are there per year in the US? Like... one? I don't think that's worth pervasive mass surveillance, though I would understand how a parent whose kid had been abducted might believe it would be.

Re: Ring owners are returning their cameras

#92

Post by close04 »

tehlike wrote: post #16
asdff wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a local one (reolink). Prompted by neighbors getting robbed unfortunately. Will this prevent crime? Maybe some but probably not all. But it would let me know if I have to file a stolen package claim or should wait on the package for a few more days. Plus it has been doubling as a trail camera for the local fauna I had no idea came by so frequently. It faces private property only as it is set up.

The local law enforcement will likely not have the time to chase individual small cases either...

Even if they do, “crime scene” camera footage is less useful than the victims expect. Cameras discourage thieves of opportunity but not someone who has their mind set on taking your stuff. A simple cap or mask, some sunglasses, a few strips of reflective tape, a WiFi deauther, cheap and accessible stuff like this make the practical usefulness of most home camera systems limited at best to the owner understanding what and how it happened.

That’s why police looks to piece together from a larger surveillance network. Maybe you can’t see the face on the home camera but in another camera down the road, or a license plate on the getaway car down the street, or an accomplice without disguise. They want everyone to have cameras and then they can abuse the system.

Friends showed me high quality close up footage of someone stealing their bike. Absolutely useless, all you saw was an average guy that you wouldn’t recognize if you walked past on the street.

Re: Ring owners are returning their cameras

#93

Post by kelnos »

eknkc wrote: post #42

I predict 100 returns in total and then everybody forgets about this in a week. I'm not cheering for this outcome but it's the sad reality.

I really want to disagree with this, and have more faith in humanity, but I suspect you are more or less right. Even if it's 1,000 or even 10,000 or 100,000 cameras returned, it'll likely amount to a nothingburger for Amazon.

To make a real statement here, we'd probably need several million returns in the US alone. (A quick search suggests more than 20M installs in the US.)

Re: Ring owners are returning their cameras

#95

Post by [deleted] »

asdff wrote: post #12
ulrikrasmussen wrote: post #9

Good. But people should not have pointed cameras into public spaces and live streamed everything to the cloud to begin with. Walking past a house with a camera doorbell makes me really uncomfortable, like I'm being watched.

I have a local one (reolink). Prompted by neighbors getting robbed unfortunately. Will this prevent crime? Maybe some but probably not all. But it would let me know if I have to file a stolen package claim or should wait on the package for a few more days. Plus it has been doubling as a trail camera for the local fauna I had no idea came by so frequently. It faces private property only as it is set up.

[deleted]

Re: Ring owners are returning their cameras

#96

Post by [deleted] »

twic wrote: post #55
gambiting wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>It’s against the law to post cctv onto things like Facebook in the U.K. I live in the UK and first time I'm hearing about this - it's definitely illegal to record your neighbours or members of the public without permission, but AFAIK if you are recording videos of your own driveway you can post those anywhere you like since there is no privacy issue there. Have you got any more info about this? Edit: let me clarify…

It's not illegal to record members of the public without permission in the UK. The test is mostly about whether someone has a reasonable expectation of privacy, but there are all sorts of other considerations: https://sprintlaw.co.uk/articles/can-you-film-people-in-publ...

[deleted]

Re: Ring owners are returning their cameras

#97

Post by jsumrall »

CodeCompost wrote: post #77

Any good alternatives? Preferably one that stores images on a local docker instance running within my network.

Unifi makes a doorbell and consumer (and commerical) security cameras which run and store data on a local device, but still reachable online with their app connecting directly to your device. I used their dream machine pro with a big HDD, but they're released a few other devices in the last few years which might be cheaper and use SSDs. And I think you could run the stack in docker. But if you want to hack it yourself, there's probably easier projects. If you want to spend a bit more but have everything more or less just work with nice hardware and apps, Ubiquity's Unifi system is really great for home security. Not to mention the wifi and other networking solutions they have.

Re: Ring owners are returning their cameras

#98

Post by kelnos »

psoundy wrote: post #64
tokyobreakfast wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's easy to be right when you live outside the boundaries of reality. E.g. he won't (didn't?) own a mobile phone, but is okay with borrowing someone else's. He won't use Wi-Fi where he has to log in but would happily borrow someone else's. It's not being right; it's shifting responsibility in exchange for his own personal convenience.

It's called 'setting an example'. One might disagree with value of the example being set, but I'm not sure I would characterize his choices as in any way convenient for him.

It's not setting an example if you shift responsibility to someone else.

Setting an example would be just doing without the things he doesn't agree with. Need to make a call but only other people's cell phones are available? Well, you don't make the call. Need wifi but no open networks are available? Well, you don't get wifi. Is this even more inconvenient than the already-inconvenient use of other people's cell phones or wifi logins? Absolutely. But it's actually sticking to your principles.

Re: Ring owners are returning their cameras

#99

Post by cybrox »

omnifischer wrote: post #15
lifestyleguru wrote: post #14

American surveillance is one thing. All over Europe people install Chinese IP cameras mostly from paranoic and imaginary reasons. Camera literally facing neighbour's windows and doors and their neighbour's own camera. Nobody understands that it's economically impossible to sell IP camera with a mobile app and cloud storage of video for 150 EUR. Their business model is not simply selling cameras. EDIT. I'm really conf…

All over Europe is generalisation. At least in France, Germany, Switzerland it is too much pain and paperwork to get any camera installed. If you are worried about chinese then seriously you cannot live.

You are technically correct but also very wrong. Yes, it is a lot of pain to get the paperwork done and you have a high chance of being rejected without a good reason. I know dozens of people who run cheap, chinese IP cams recording public spaces directly to dubious cloud services here in Switzerland. You just don't ask.

Work related: We sell solutions including CCTV and video-intercom and we have only recently started providing customers with stickers they can use to make those installations comply with regulations. Technically, it has been the responsibility of the customer installing the device, so us doing this is just nudging people towards compliance because nobody cares. I can guarantee you that there are tens of thousands of cameras here filming public ground and it is not prosecuted. In fact, someone at the office put one up a long time ago for a PTZ demo (not recording) that was not compliant and it took almost 10 years until we got ordered to take it down.

Most of these are not recording, only recording situationally or only locally. Still not legal technically. However, ever since cheap cloud-connected doorbells have become available, they have definitely been installed here. They do not comply with regulations whatsoever and next to nothing is done about it.

Re: Ring owners are returning their cameras

#100

Post by kelnos »

tamimio wrote: post #84
tokyobreakfast wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's easy to be right when you live outside the boundaries of reality. E.g. he won't (didn't?) own a mobile phone, but is okay with borrowing someone else's. He won't use Wi-Fi where he has to log in but would happily borrow someone else's. It's not being right; it's shifting responsibility in exchange for his own personal convenience.

> it's shifting responsibility in exchange for his own personal convenience. And? That’s actually one of the strategies to counter any risk, if you can’t avoid it or mitigate it, you transfer it.

For someone who claims to take a principled stance on these sorts of things, it feels very unprincipled to leverage the risk that others take in e.g. carrying a cell phone.

Consider that there are two components here: one is that Stallman is uncomfortable with the risk of carrying a tracking device (aka cell phone) around with him. The other is that he wants to make it known that people shouldn't carry cell phones because of that tracking; part of his platform is advocating for and against things like this.

If he was merely worried about the risk, and was just out to protect himself, then using someone else's cell phone (which would be at hand regardless of whether or not he used it) would be a perfectly reasonable, pragmatic thing to do. Transferring the risk, as you say.

But using someone else's cell phone is a violation of the principle. How can I take his advocacy seriously if he freely admits that we need cell phones out in the world, otherwise it's even too inconvenient for him to go about his business?

Post reply on HN