We're quickly moving into cyberpunk territory where corporations simply stop being accountable to governments.
Ring cameras are privately owned, installed on private property, by the choice of the property owner. Data sharing is under the customer's control unless a judicial warrant is involved.
Flock cameras are a completely different situation. They're installed on public property, data sharing controls are an utter shitshow, and they give police the ability to do unconstitutional dragnet-style fishing for crime and even pre-crime, i.e. "suspicious patterns of behavior".
Equating the two is a complete misunderstanding of what's happening, but companies like Flock rely on that kind of ignorance to push their product.
Also pertinent imo: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-49191005
Surveillance infrastructure is surveillance infrastructure, who is supposed to "own" it is irrelevant. Unless consumers own the hardware, the service, and where the data is stored, they do not own any of it.
There are precedents with Ring being very cozy with police departments, e.g.
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2019/08/police-can-get-y...
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2024/01/amazon-ring-stop...
And many more over the years (all the way until February of this year, when they cancelled a deal with Flock). Amazon is not a company to trust.
Weren’t there regular scandals about local law enforcement regularly accessing Ring footage without the owner’s agreement or knowledge? Ring absolutely is a surveillance tool that can be used without oversight. See here for example: https://stateofsurveillance.org/articles/corporate/amazon-ri...
Flock is at one rather extreme end of that spectrum, at least in the context of a democratic country with some civil liberties. They literally seem to be breaking laws in order to achieve their goals. Ring occupies a point pretty far from that.
All of these issues can be addressed with government laws and regulations, and hopefully will be. But the laws needed to constrain what Ring is doing are nowhere near what will be needed to constrain Flock.
> Unless consumers own the hardware, the service, and where the data is stored, they do not own any of it.
This is trivially false. But if you live in the US and take its legal and regulatory environment as an unchangeable fact of life, I can see how you might think that.
You and the poster you're replying to are making related but separate points which partially overlap yet are both valid within a certain scope. It can be simultaneously true that:
* The fact a consumer has to 'make a choice' to install a Ring camera does make the situation materially different and better than Flock in a civil rights and property rights sense.
* The fact that most consumers are unaware (or don't care) that the Ring (or similar device) click-through EULA can permit all manner of invasive outcomes which are bad and companies can easily ignore whatever the EULA permits with (probably) little consequence, resulting in even worse privacy outcomes.
Bottom line: Judged by net outcomes in practice, Ring-like cloud cameras can be every bit as bad for privacy as Flock cameras. Judged through the lens of 'balance of rights and privileges between state and individual', Flock is even worse then a camera installed by a citizen on private property.
... recording the street, meaning https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/guidance-on-the-u... applies in the UK:
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If your CCTV system captures images of people outside the boundary of your private domestic property – for example, from neighbours’ homes or gardens, shared spaces, or from public areas – then the GDPR and the DPA will apply to you. You will need to ensure your use of CCTV complies with these laws. If you do not comply with your data protection obligations you may be subject to appropriate regulatory action by the ICO, as well as potential legal action by affected individuals.
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However, as with anything in the UK, it's virtually impossible to enforce it on sh*thead neighbours recording you with their Chinese cloud enabled devices 24/7.
The police routinely has access to Ring footage. The people who installed them give that access. Occasionally Amazon did it too even without user consent.
I’m equating the 2 because those people contribute to the internalizing of the surveillance status. When people walk down the street they are filmed by dozens of cameras and they are starting to expect this everywhere. Flock is “another one”. Flock would have had an uphill battle in a society where private surveillance is unacceptable.
When it becomes totally normal for others to use their own private (not so private n the cloud) surveillance footage of public spaces against you, Flock stops raising people’s internal alarm bells.
Why do you think Flock is big exactly in the society that was told private surveillance of public space is perfectly fine and even expected?
I don't think people have connected the dots between Flock and Ring yet, but it's only a matter of time.
I'm sure there's more but not enough for sure.
> They've even been caught putting them back up or re-enabling them in places where the contract has been canceled.
This doesn't reduce the responsibility of the state for misdeeds it does or attempts with Flock, but neither does the State’s role absolve Flock’s leadership and owners of the misdeeds they do and profit from, whether or not some or all are at the request of the State.