Amazon is helping police build a surveillance network with Ring doorbells | Hacker News Reader

Amazon is helping police build a surveillance network with Ring doorbells

cnet.com

28 pointsjbegley14 comments

"While Ring owners are supposed to have a choice on providing police footage, in some giveaways, police require recipients to turn over footage when requested."

AND

"Ring does not support programs that require recipients to subscribe to a recording plan or that footage from Ring devices be shared as a condition for receiving a donated device. We are actively working with partners to ensure this is reflected in their programs."

The story should have ended there. But I'll bite on the more IoT fear-mongering.

This type of offer is normal. Your power company will ask for API access to your smart thermostat OR put a switch on your house in exchange for turning off your A/C when it's hot.

If you're worried about the privacy angle, pay full price for it. Also ring said they're not going to allow it like that.

But think about it like this, if you're a restaurant in a mall, and your cameras catch something the cops request that footage all the time. In some cases it's part of a warrant or subpoena when you aren't even part of the investigation.

Unless a municipality or police force mandates you install these AND share access to the footage, I don't see the issue.

I wonder if placing the doorbell facing the door, rather than street, is a workaround for this.

Most people have porches, with a column, and while running wires could be tedious, it means you'll never have valuable footage for law enforcement, except in your own cases.

App idea: log known Ring locations’ gps coordinates and direction and produce a simple Watcraft 2 style fog of war map.

Bonus: Stimulates PR.

That sounds like a map for a place to not commit crime—which is probably okay by the owners.

Does anyone in the Seattle area have any evidence that they police are responding to any of these property crimes?

I guess it's probably a business play in that their packages keep getting stolen so if they did this they could stop their packages from getting stolen. But it's a stupid thing to do, where Apple is going for privacy as a competitive advantage and Google keeps getting flack for it -- why not side with privacy as a business advantage rather than surveillance to solve your rather small business problem.

I have bought into the Alexa ecosystem. It would be nice if that Eco-system respected privacy. I would be more committed to it if that were the case, rather than looking to switch to Apple the first chance I get.

while walking my dog in my neighborhood i've noticed that every house has multiple cameras monitoring entryways, and almost always pointing at the street.

everyone wants to be safe that's for sure but if you really think about the fact that someone is always watching you when you're walking through your neighborhood it's creepy.

Also security lights which pollute the night. Or worse in my old neighborhood motion sensitive lights.

Well, yes and no. Presumably the low-tech version of this scenario was walking through your neighborhood and having your neighbors eyeball you themselves (say, after their dog barked at you). Now they've just handed the barking and eyeballing off to robots, who will record a 10-second clip of you, which the homeowners will never bother to view.

I don’t usually worry about my neighbors eyeballs being compromised and data extricated.

I'm curious. Is it less creepy if someone's looking out a window at the street, maybe drinking coffee?

As one who has four cameras pointing toward the street, I for one have better things to do than sit in my cave watching my multi-view camera setup for untoward things. Never give me a reason to rewind the recording, and you'll never be watched. I assume my neighbors are doing the same thing. Shit, I don't have time to edit my vacation videos, you think I got time to watch video of you walking your dog?

If it makes you feel any better, the video never leaves my local network. :-)

But a lot of the cameras that people install are Cloud-only (not possible to record locally)... And who knows what kind of software Amazon/Google/etc run on those videos. And what is in the cloud, I don't think that the Government needs a warrant to see it.

Your neighbors don't have a monopoly on violence.

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