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Comment by WantonQuantum | Hacker News Reader

I doubt they got consent from everybody in the house - so that's not actually consent.

This whole thing is disgusting.

Can't believe you've been downvoted. HN isn't homogonous, but too often has apologists for immoral and illegal behaviour, provided it's done by a technology company.

It's the tech version of the US phenomenon of people believing they're 'temporarily broke'.

If these issues are regulated now, what happens when it's their turn to be the millionaire startup CEO?

if only we had something called "the law" that would have something to say about embedding spyware into consumer products that puts photos of people on the toilet onto facebook.

of course these kinds of things dont work for the regular guy

Pretty sure they'd be destroyed if they did that shit in EU

You would think so but alas the law isn't actually enforced in many places. It takes a long time for anything to get done as most of the regulators are woefully underfunded. Having the law written is one thing but without the funding to enforce it the law is worthless to most people.

So argue for more laws, more enforcement, and more funding for government agencies and watch the same people complaining about this "travesty" turn against you

After a decade of collecting data, probably

The person on the toilet?

I love the old "Laws like that are why the EU is less innovative than the US" response to critiques like that, given that the past decade or so of innovation feels like it's mostly been finding ways to leverage the previous decade's technology against the user.

>"if only we had something called "the law"

I'm not trying to be flippant, but what is to stop some company from simply utilizing a Terms of Service that allows them to do whatever they want with the data? I often see people chiming in that consumers "agreed" to all of this, even though the vast majority of people never read through the ToS or privacy policy at all.

Just write the laws so that they override a contract, pretty simple.

ToS are often disregarded in courts.

ToS can't override statutory rights.

ToS are often made to be hard to understand.

I'd go one further. Consent is an intellectually lazy framework. For many things that operate under consent, it should be pretty clear whether or not it's OK to do something.

I agree. If you have to ask for consent, it probably means you've already made a bad engineering/business decision.

Engineers should ask before adding a feature, "Is this going to require user consent?"

They could have added AI to the Roomba to remove people from the video before it ever even hits the network — or drop that video completely. Or switch to a technology other than visible light, etc.

Nah.. if we ask that "is this going to require consent." the best we'll get is. "Thats a product concern that I'm sure they've addressed"

Happened to me last week actually :)

But of course, now the person who gave consent is liable ...

The only way I see around this is if they upgrade the beta-tester status and give him full control of the images and he's the only one making the labelling and uploading of the results.

But I don’t doubt the consent form told the user to get the consent of everyone in the house. But hey, mister sour grapes from the article now ‘doesn’t think he consented’ but doesn’t want to show the consent form.

If this ever goes to court I don’t doubt this will turn out to be one giant nothingburger.

This is like a ring camera, or an iphone recording, alexa, etc.

uh except that its purpose is to vacuum the floor.

Sure, I’m talking about the consent though. People are constantly recorded without explicit consent.

Recordings without audio in public spaces is generally allowed. In some states (single consent), audio is ok too.

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