Slightly offtopic, but it's getting harder and harder to get a surveillance equipment that's not connected to "the cloud" all I want is to be in full control of my own data.
I would install Ring if it was closed loop system. Same thing with other technologies to make a smart home. Why so many people (especially the ones that understand technology) seem to be ok with this? This attitude causes that there are less and less options for privacy conscious people.
A popular DIY setup: Hikvision cameras & Blue Iris software
Hikvision cameras have the benefit of not being wireless and using Power over Ethernet for people who don't mind running some cable. I think that has a lot of value over a bunch of cameras killing your wifi. Off the shelf cheap routers do poor with a ton of wifi cameras it seems.
Blue Iris can send you mobile alerts without a subscription. All videos are stored locally & it's very configurable.
You could upload alert photos/videos to a cloud provider for cheap off-site hosting if you choose. That way if the bad people destroy your PC you still have video unless they take out your internet. One could setup limited backup internet with a mobile company for this case &/or for when your internet goes out in general. This of course applies equally to Nest/Ring etc.
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Honestly I'm surprised Ring/Nest/etc still charge for storing video footage. At this point I would have figured they would have found one of countless ways to monopolize off the video footage. Most average people seem to be fine with their data being sold if it provides them some value.
I' also wondering when the first services will start to pop up that provide a marketplace for video footage.
It depends heavily on what your threats are and what you are trying to control/prevent. For myself and for most Americans (making a big assumption here I know), the Chinese State is not a serious threat to be concerned about. This due to the fact that they are across an ocean and have close to zero effective physical force projection capability in the US. A greater concern should be domestic criminals (I.E. burglars) or the domestic government because both of those potential threat actors have the capability of using information from a home security system to cause one harm in some way.
They are fundamentally tied into the US economy and are known to effectively share data and behaviour across industries. If you were plausibly competing with a Chinese company and working from home, the question on where the HikVision information goes is a curiousity.
How much does it matter where the hardware was made if it is using local storage? If you are worried about this sort of thing, there is no reason you need to provide routing for the devices outside of your local network (e.g. VLAN). Unlike any hardware relying on cloud services.
Yeah I have to agree with this. If you're savvy enough to setup your own close-looped surveillance system then you're savvy enough to check if the camera is pinging home to a China-based server. And if it is then just block all WAN connections from that IP.
"Hikvision is fighting for its survival after the U.S. banned the company in October, accusing it of helping Beijing crack down on Muslim minorities in the far-western region of Xinjiang. "
Agreed that most electronics have China influence. But there’s a pretty big difference between influence and actual state control.
I have no insider info but from reading the news it appears that what China is doing is several levels sketchier than Amazon/Ring when it comes to infringing on civil liberties.
Protecting your self is one thing; supporting that kind of regime with your money is another.
What are your options for local-network-only cameras built in, say EU or North America? I suppose you can go with commercial surveillance cameras but I'm not sure how practical that is for the average home user...
Unless you monitor the network it is very likely that it is pinging a Chinese server.
Many years ago we bought a treadmill with LCD screen and Android running on it with a browser and other stuff. Connected it to WiFi and were happy.
A couple of years later I got a Ubiquiti edgerouter, configured it and decided to check its deep packet filtering. It started showing me an odd Chinese domain being pinged periodically, like every 5 min. Don't remember the domain but it was some Chinese search engine/portal I had never heard of (not Baidu). It took me a while to figure out that it was the treadmill that was doing this. At which point I had to just disconnect it. I have no idea why it was doing what it was doing and what data it was sending and if I was running a backdoor in my home all this time.
Point I'm trying to make is, don't assume. Mistrust and Verify should be the modern day mantra for Internet connected, especially Chinese, devices.
I have a Hikvision NVR and 4k camera setup. I keep them on a separate subnet and have blocked all access to other subnets and the internet via a Mikrotik router.
In the year or so I have had this setup there hasn't been a single packet from the NVR or cameras in an attempt to access the internet.
I don't have the above mentioned cameras, but I do have cameras that are completely blocked from the internet.
The way I do it is: When I leave my home my home assistant will enable the FTP upload on motion detection feature of the camera. If there's motion then the camera will upload the recording to a ftp server running locally (synology), this then gets synced to google drive.
Home assistant can also do push notifications if there's movement detected.
yes and no.
its a little work but you could whitelist a domain the NVR can connect to or maybe an IP. Block anything else.
for example:
if you want the NVR to upload to Dropbox, you would whitelist the list of domains that are needed for Dropbox to work.
if the NVR tries to connect to 'heartbeat.hikvsn.cn' it would fail.
I was in China recently, and the number of surveillance cameras there is bewildering. I suppose when you buy this brand you benefit from cutting edge technology funded by the investment the state has made...
Fascinatingly, China has a mix of public - private infrastructure. E.g. wireless payments are provided by WeChat and AliPay (although in the West it's not much different, it's Visa/MasterCard), and I guess in the US, Amazon is the private side, and the cops are the public side.
Pretty sure that's the brand I noted in my local McDonalds too. I wondered why there was so much lag to the display, so I checked the brand to look into it later. Dumb of them to write it on the side if they are profiling.
Put the cameras on their own VLAN with no internet access. My Hikvisions are scraped by Zoneminder. Home Assistant completes the setup, behind HA Proxy for a bit more protection.
My setup is perhaps a bit gilt edged but then I am a sysadmin and networks bod and PHB all in one odd package! Home IT needs to step up its game. If you get done over then the cost can be very high. I don't think it is sufficient to simply use your ISP provided router, plug in a few IoT thingies and download a few phone apps and stick your fingers in your ears and chant la-la-la.
I would hope that most of the inhabitants of this parish are capable of putting together a reasonably safe setup and also look after their less technical friends and family (it can be a thankless task but a I think it is a duty.)
Don't forget that your attic, garage or cellar may make good places to keep IT gear in but do consider heat, cold, dust and fire risks.
> Why so many people (especially the ones that understand technology) seem to be ok with this?
Because there are no viable alternative devices. It's now impossible to buy a non-smart TV because smart TVs were cheaper (due to surveillance-funded subsidies).
The next best thing would probably be open-source firmware installed on these consumer device, paired with a self-hosted home-assistant.io
At least with a smart TV it's often quite practical to just not connect it to the internet. If your camera won't function at all without a network, it's not that useful.
I recently looked into getting a simple camera for the balcony: mostly for creating a time lapse of the plants that are growing there.
The majority of the options out there were connected to some kind of "cloud" service. I was even more surprised when I saw that a lot of popular options mandated a cloud subscription with no local storage. There is no need whatsoever to have any of this on the cloud at all. Especially with multiple hundreds of gigabytes of SD storage being so cheap these days.
In the end I went with a cheap Chinese camera which has unofficial open source firmware available (Dafang). Works like a charm.
If you look into power over ethernet surveillance cameras there are lots of options that are standalone devices not associated with any specific cloud service. You then have to get some software that can receive the stream from the camera and do something with it (records, motion detection, etc.). It's not nearly as plug and play as going with something like Ring, but I also think that's expected when you are wanting something that gives the user more control.
Raspberry Pis + cheap USB webcams or the camera module would work. (The official Pi Zero case has an optional faceplate with a cutout for the camera, so it can all go in one box.) There are existing software packages that can start taking pictures and run scripts when motion is detected.
Use the ubuntu "motion" package and record pic/video when motion is detected.
Use some python script to auto upload new files to google drive. I can use any google drive sw in ios/android to view pictures in some folder. The folder can be shared with family members can be view remotely. Kinda fun project.
Works ok - But it used a lot space. Have to actively manage share folder.
I am looking for similar setup for quite a few of old android phones laying around. Plan to write one myself when I have time....
If anyone know a good solution with old android phone HW + G Drive, please share.
While it is still kinda connected to the cloud, I finally installed a security camera thanks to Apple HomeKit Secure Video.
All of the processing is done on my HomePod or Apple TV and stored in my iCloud encrypted.
If marketing is to be believed, Apple themselves cannot un-encrypt it.
Its not perfect, but I feel mostly safe having this camera now.
Do you need it to contact your phone and show the video in real time? I think that's the big value prospect here for many users and why they need the cloud - it intermediates between the phone app and the home system.
If not, there are some guides on YouTube (unfortunately I can't search right now on this corporate network) that involve buying old laptop cameras on ebay and stringing them up with putty to an old laptop in a closet. I'm pretty sure the man in the video I'm thinking of was from the UK since the prices were in pounds, but there would be others. It all looked fairly simple but I can't recall how sophisticated the software was re: motion detection, offsite contact, etc.
There really isn't any other option but to persuade enough people to be privacy conscious that we end up with public policy that enforces it.
Otherwise, it's gonna be like GMail -- sure, you can run your own mail server, but 80+% of humanity will decide that they can't or have better things to do, and Google will end up with all the email between you and them anyway.
You can make your own smart home camera, but 80+% of the world will install Ring or something similar, and that means you will be on their camera footage and therefore your comings and goings will be part of Amazon/SurveillanceCo (absent consistent deployment of effective countermeasures).
Yeah, I've used the same with no issues - I don't think it has very good options for offsite backups [0] though if that link is any indication. "use rsync" is a great suggestion for this site, but not quite as great for the average users.
I'm weird. I like the data staying local, but the UI being something continually updated and improved on. You navigate to a website to enjoy a real-time updated UI, that pulls data from the local network. The local hardware just primitively collects footage and that small responsibility is something I can trust in a form of 'separation of concerns'. It would be neat to extend this further where the company behind the product distributes the codebase for this webapp that you can run locally if you choose.
IMHO the market is too small and is very price-conscious, so they'll just do it themselves if you try any margin. And you'll need the margin because the consumer who wants this is willing to put up with some error rate on things they build but not on things they buy. So they might say "Oh yeah, when the full power goes out, I have to reset it, but that almost never happens" or "Yeah, I have to type in my Google API key every two weeks but that's okay since it's only $k".
Essentially, the same people who care about this are also likely to say "you can already build such a system yourself quite trivially by getting an FTP account, mounting it locally with curlftpfs, and then using SVN or CVS on the mounted filesystem" to Dropbox.
If you do succeed building and selling this I'll be very impressed.
Lots of people are trying the local storage thing, though: (not customizable store-to-my-S3 stuff, but I think that's a vanishingly small market)
I also encountered this rather big hole in the market. I was looking for a home security system that worked on a local private network with no outside comms, but that apparently doesn't exist. I ended up going with Abode without cameras or their monitoring service (self-monitored), but I'm still not 100% happy with that, since they still store all of your data in the cloud and have permission to disarm your home and so are then an attack vector I'd like to avoid.
I've thought about this a lot and have quite a notebook full of ideas/notes on this: I think there's room in the market for a privacy-focused open-source home security system utilizing micro-controllers (Raspberry Pi, Arduino, Adafruit, etc.) and secure cryptographic protocols. You could make revenue assembling pre-built security sensors built from the micro-controller ecosystem, perhaps with good modern aesthetics, but the more security conscious of us could buy and build everything ourselves based on the spec for each sensor.
How would you keep the footage secure? There is zero point in cameras if the HD's can just be carried off, a decent safe will cost > $1000 and be ugly as all hell.
Just because the data flows to somewhere you control doesn’t mean it has to be local.
I mean we’re firmly in hobbiest/semi-pro territory here but shipping the data encrypted to your own cloud instance or box colo’d in a local data center would be fine.
What are you looking for in a security system? We run both system-in-a-box sets of closed circuit cameras as well as fully controlled webcams. Are you looking for some UI or auto-alarming aspect? (e.g. face detection? threat detection?)
I use an older Sharx camera (I hope the newer ones still have the same features).
It supports all the usual cloud and remote access junk, but fortunately none of it is necessary for operation.
It does motion detection internally and only records when something happens in the frame. Most importantly, it support ftp uploading these event recordings to a configurable server.
I put it on a physically separate network which has nearly nothing else and certainly no internet connectivity in any direction (I see the camera attempting to contact google DNS every now and then). I would never trust any of these cameras, regardless of manufacturer, with internet access no matter how limited.
The only other thing on that network is a box which exposes only ftp, so the camera uploads activity to it.
Optionally, from a physically separate network you can then pull the videos to some other host which has internet access and upload them elsewhere for remote safekeeping.
But yes, it is sad that one needs to know how to set this up just to preserve basic privacy.
> Why so many people (especially the ones that understand technology) seem to be ok with this?
Ignorance and convenience. Most people I know who own one and are aware of the privacy issues choose to ignore them because they're easy to install and just work. Then there are people who don't know or don't care (ignorant).
It baffles me there's no (popular?) end-to-end cloud based encrypted camera system yet. If you want images/video clips in push notifications I suppose that couldn't be encrypted, but otherwise it seems like the best of both worlds.
The indiegogo funded camect is pitched as a private 'cloud optional' recorder. The beta unit I have is cloud connected but the final release has the option to be fully local. It has a lot of neat features like identifying people/ups trucks/cars/etc.
It only has a webbased client, but I kind of like it and the beta version has been way better than any of the cheap dvr trash that big box stores sell.
It was always hard to have a fully on premise surveillance system. It’s expensive and complicated to install. That hasn’t changed. What changed is that now it’s easy and cheap to have cloud surveillance systems
I've been thinking it would be great to start a company that would create devices that customers owned, you know: make and sell things.
I think the problem is if someone makes open hardware and software that people like and doesn't "lock them into your ecosystem / cloud", then another company can clone and sell the same thing with no R&D overhead to recoup. It's even easier and cheaper for a company completely based in china to do it. So it is risky for companies to do that.
I would love to hear of counter-arguments and counter-examples.
I have some RLC-420 cameras that work pretty good and I block their access to the internet ... and they copy the files using ftp to my local server ... on the other hand, I just got a Chromecast and I'm looking for a way to block them from accessing any Google servers.
UniFi gear remains optionally self-hosted. It does have the option of cloud login, but you can opt to not use that, using a self-hosted NVR and SDN controller.
Almost all high-end gear (Axis, etc.) is also easily self-hostable but obviously expensive since it's high-end.
It's interesting how the article accuses Ring and Amazon of selling via fear, but that's also exactly what the article itself is selling.
I live in Albuquerque. We have Ring cameras, and I feel so much safer when I leave town. We caught someone rifling through our pickup truck a few weeks ago and were able to correlate it with other reports in the area so that if/when these thieves are caught, they'll go away for longer.
Why did I decide to buy these cameras? We were subject to a massive burglary a couple of years ago in which we lost $30k worth of valuables.
There are always downsides to every security-related thing, but I highly appreciate the ability to better police my own property, and I bet a bunch of other people feel the same.
I think the point a lot of other people make, is that you can simply use another camera network that doesn't sell your data, centralize it, and share with 3rd parties without your knowledge or [knowledgable] consent.
I have a camera system that is similar, I set it up myself, and I could do exactly what you suggested. All without also telling amazon my neighbor goes to-and-from their house 6 times a day (because my door camera faces them). Or that my daughter comes home from school at 3pm.
Exactly this: People who respond with the benefits of having a security camera are arguing a false dichotomy.
IP security cameras are inexpensive and readily available, and support things like remote access fine. (And I say this from first hand experience)
When you narrow the counterargument to the actual differential features of ring-like solutions-- that they automatically store video offsite mitigating by default the fringe risk that a thief takes the recorder--, the argument in favor of handing this video feed to state and corporate surveillance apparatus alike is much less interesting.
It would be trivial for ring to encrypt the video with a password only known to the device and your remote client never to the server... and would avoid a lot of trouble dealing with requests for video and potential civil ligation for leaks. The primary reason these products don't is because surveilling the user is the business proposition.
Aside: I have lots of security cameras, I like security cameras. Yet at the same time people radically overestimate their usefulness in stopping crime: The positioning and lighting have to be nearly perfect to get a shot that you can identify a stranger with and it's easy for people to conceal their faces against an unmonitored camera. Even if you do get a clear face shot the police often can do nothing useful with it. With the low prices today I think cameras can well worth their price, ... but where they create mass surveillance risks, the case is far less clear.
> Yet at the same time people radically overestimate their usefulness in stopping crime: The positioning and lighting have to be nearly perfect to get a shot that you can identify a stranger with and it's easy for people to conceal their faces against an unmonitored camera. Even if you do get a clear face shot the police often can do nothing useful with it. With the low prices today I think cameras can well worth their price, ... but where they create mass surveillance risks, the case is far less clear.
If you already know who you're looking for they can be quite useful. They can be quite effective when they're used to help document violations of an order of protection or restraining order, where even a profile shot at an odd angle is sufficient.
Indeed. I've found cameras super useful in debugging issues with wild animals and contractors, figuring out where something outside went or how it got broken, etc.
One of the reoccurring points there though is actual experience with the low utility of cameras-- especially if they're not very carefully positioned and prolific-- at identifying strangers.
> It would be trivial for ring to encrypt the video with a password only known to the device and your remote client never to the server... and would avoid a lot of trouble dealing with requests for video and potential civil ligation for leaks.
That is not trivial for most people. I doubt it was even trivial for you unless it’s a built-in feature for an off the shelf system. Setting up an open source surveillance system isn’t exactly what I would call easy
I have a friend who works for the public defenders office for something like a 30 year timespan. He shared with me once during a conversation on the topic of surveillance videos how much they've transformed criminal cases. So many people are damned by evidence where the criminal is caught red handed after the fact. He even told me a comedic technique of the DA showing a zoomed in region and asking the defendant if they recognize the person in the photo. They reply no, zoom out some more, and eventually the criminal admits "that's me".
You set your camera system up yourself. A lot of people aren't going to be willing or able to do that if we are being real. Do you see the average person wiring up a bunch of cameras or troubleshooting networking, configuring a DVR, standing up a web server to view things, setting up off site backups, ensuring their cameras don't go down if power is lost, configuring mobile alerts, etc?
People want a plug and play solution. At least systems from Google and Amazon will probably be reasonably secure so they won't get roped into the next botnet when their owners forget to change default creds.
That's the central problem, isn't it? Technology only gets more complicated, and we have never bothered much about giving general population effective tools and skills to make informed decisions for themselves.
A well-known company vouches for something, and that's all I'd know if I was buying a ring device.
There's no reason the setup has to be any more complicated - it could work exactly as it does currently, only with the option of pointing it at your own server, instead of Amazon's, or even keep using Amazon's server, but end-to-end encrypt the data, with only you possessing the key.
Amazon and others know this. They don't offer it on purpose, because they want to retain control and a new revenue stream.
Sure, I agree we should have a local storage option: however, if we are concerned about population level problems then a local storage option isn't going to help because the vast majority of people wouldn't use it.
it’s not just revenue. It’s also support. There’s a lot more support involved and it also increases the upfront cost making it even less accessible to people.
Ideally, I would have an appliance that recorded from my 6 Ring cameras without going over the internet. But the cost of that in terms of setting up and maintaining a server/software is actually higher than just paying Ring $10/month.
I work making computers do stuff all day, I don't want to futz around with them on my free time. This is also why Apple TV/Tivo has beaten out MythTV in my home.
Indeed. People fear monger about the police's ability to request footage from a neighborhood (key point being request, the owner of the Ring still gets to look at the footage and decide to release it or not). Yet no one speaks about all the previously unsolvable burglaries and crimes that can now be prevented or solved thanks to this.
A lot of these articles make it sound like Ring gives unilateral full access to the police, which is just plain and simple FUD.
> A lot of these articles make it sound like Ring gives unilateral full access to the police, which is just plain and simple FUD.
Actually, we know that a large portion of data obtained by the NSA can be shared with law enforcement[1]. We also know the NSA isn't exactly upfront about how much they collect and that they can basically collect what they wish without reprocusions[2]. We also know that Ring has given access to police and partnered with 630+ departments[3] directly.
Not even close to "plain and simple FUD", as most things it's a bit more nuanced.
The first two have much more to do with NSA just having too much unilateral access (re: Snowden leaks) than anything Ring specific. I guess it can be argued that any company that collects any data whatsoever is making NSA more data rich, but what's the alternative, but again the root issue there lies with the US government itself.
As for the third one, I'm not sure what your point is. The specific article only speaks of a heatmap of doorbells. The article also states the the precise location of the doorbell isn't even given, let alone footage.
I don't think anyone considers that data to be anywhere equal to giving access to video feed. You can simply drive down the road and see which houses have a Ring doorbell, or probably even detect them sniffing packets.
> I guess it can be argued that any company that collects any data whatsoever is making NSA more data rich, but what's the alternative, but again the root issue there lies with the US government itself.
Buying less "on the cloud by default" devices and using encryption.
Your first point is fair, though, again, you can't completely ignore the utility these services bring. And while it is possible to have Cloud-less alternatives, not everyone is a Hackernews type person that can setup local opensource alternative on a linux box in their spare time.
Your latter point doesn't really make sense. I'm fairly sure all of these devices use encryption to the cloud, it's just that the NSA has access to the unencrypted data on the cloud itself, theoretically. Unless you mean storing your own encrypted data on the cloud, which again goes back to the point above.
> Indeed. People fear monger about the police's ability to request footage from a neighborhood (key point being request, the owner of the Ring still gets to look at the footage and decide to release it or not).
If you refuse to give police the video they can just request from amazon directly. You don't get to control what happens to that video once it touches amazon's servers. Once the police have it they can keep it forever, share it with others (like ICE or the FBI), and once again you have no control. Amazon tracks people who refuse to hand over video to the police directly and they share stats about them with police.
Sounds a little misleading. I'm not sure that most people would feel violated due to being included in a "2% of users pressed Do Not Share button" statistics. It's not like Ring is giving actual user data or any way for the police to pin point said users.
Police get actual user data when users agree to submit video to them, they know that requests are sent to every user within a certain range of the location they choose, and they often know exactly who has the cameras installed in that area (because the cameras were sold/installed by them or purchased using taxpayer-funded discount programs or just by driving past and looking at the doors). If you refuse to share the data but most of your neighbors do it would not be hard for them to narrow down which houses didn't.
So you're saying that the cops are spending all their time driving down every street in the neighborhood, memorizing the position of Ring cameras, then correlating those with videos they received and eliminating until they pin point the one house that refused to share the video, all for what? I can understand general paranoia about the police but that's some next level tin-foil hat stuff.
They don't have to drive down the street to memorize the locations of ring cams. They already know who has them. Hell, amazon gave them a map (https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/2019-12-03-amazon-ring-v...). I don't think every police officer is going to take the time to track down every camera over a package thief, but I do agree with the EFF that it'd be very very easy for police to take note of individuals and neighborhoods who habitually refuse to give them video and that any interactions with them could be influenced by a perception that they are "uncooperative" or "unsupportive of the police"
The article you link isn't a primary source, it links back to your previous CNET article, which explicitly says it's a heat map and specific location is not given. Welcome to shitty "tech" journalism playing the telephone game. You start with a pretty tame report, and 2-3 articles down the line, Ring is suddenly giving your new born baby to the government.
Nowhere in the original there's talk of giving user location, yet Yahoo someone starts talking of "detailed map of doorbell installation", for whatever definition of "detailed".
"the heat map showed police where Ring cameras are concentrated: the darker the shade, the more the cameras. But when zoomed in, it would show light circles around individual locations,"
It also links to other cases where maps of cameras were sent to police by amazon such as the one shown here:
> It's incredibly dumb to host 24x7 video surveillance of your home and your comings and goings outside of your home.
"Incredibly dumb" is way out of line. Many people (including me) find having such video available to be extremely useful. Yes, there is a tradeoff involved if you are buying the video capability from a third party instead of rolling your own, but many people find it a tradeoff worth making.
Self hosting isn't dumb. It is literally what was done for decades. The fact is that most crimes are smash and grab, and they literally do no have the time to wander around your house looking for a DVR. It's fine.
> People fear monger about the police's ability to request footage from a neighborhood (key point being request, the owner of the Ring still gets to look at the footage and decide to release it or not).
The police can ask nicely for it by requesting it, or demand the video with a warrant or subpoena.
Getting a warrant or subpoena for your video data is infinitely easier than it would be without Ring as an intermediary, because Ring already told the police the data does, indeed, exist and that you have it. It's also infinitely easier because a judge is more likely to sign off on a warrant for video from a specific person and camera, than they are for a warrant that casts a wider net.
If they go to Ring with a warrant for video the company says you have, you don't even have to be notified when its taken.
Good for you, and if Ring cameras are positioned so that they can't see past your property line, then I have no problem with them.
However, I have a really serious problem with people who install cloudy surveillance cameras -- especially those from Amazon -- in such a way that they capture innocent people walking by your house.
I don't think anyone should have the right to subject such people to surveillance networks like that, and strongly condemn those that do.
It's not so much a worry about being caught on camera while in public. Please forgive me for assuming, but I don't think JohnFen is particularly concerned about cameras owned and exclusively operated by private citizens disconnected from any network with limited retention.
Amazon Ring is a different beast entirely. With your help, Amazon has even more data--in addition to every other user's raw video feed--and the computing resources to be able to pinpoint a frighteningly large number of people at any given moment.
That's a scary amount of power, and a direct threat to liberty. Aiding and abetting such an enterprise deserves strong condemnation at the least.
How do you feel about so many people having Gmail accounts? Do you refuse to communicate with them? Imagine the data Google has access to when you send them a message or messages sent about you.
You imply Amazon is willing to use the data it collects for liberty threatening purposes, do you think Google wouldn’t?
To be explicit: at what point do you draw the line and why now with this product and company?
> How do you feel about so many people having Gmail accounts? Do you refuse to communicate with them?
My perspective on this is easy -- this isn't a problem I have to deal with much, because almost nobody that I exchange email with uses Gmail.
But yes, I avoid sending email to gmail accounts when feasible. When not feasible, I keep the emails as brief as I can, and I don't engage in lengthy exchanges.
I’ve never understood how a passive camera is supposed to actually stop such a $30k heist. I get that it records it but it doesn’t stop anything. Unless you include deterrence but an unplugged fake camera does the same.
It stops this shit over time. So, in other words, the people that would be heisting are now in jail, had ring been popular 10 years ago. If, indeed that doesn't change anything, then the blame would at least be on the police or our laws or something.
Allowing suspects to refuse to answer questions--a/k/a "remaining silent"--means that some people who commit crimes won't self-incriminate, and won't wind up being "punished."
Interrogating suspects without a lawyer present is a related tool for solving more burglaries.
Allowing suspects to have a lawyer present during interrogation definitely means that some people who commit burglaries won't be "punished."
So advocating for the right of suspects to remain silent, and to have a lawyer present during interrogation are both indirect ways of advocating for people committing burglaries to not be punished.
Same for advocating that police evidence which is "fruit of the poisoned tree" not be admissible in court. Or really, for any limitation on enforcement.
It's all implicitly choosing that allowing some people who commit crimes to go free, serves a greater good.
TL;DR The phrase "Advocating that people committing burglaries not be punished" has a lot of nuänce to it. Best not to try to spin it as a simple boolean.
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There's another thing, which is the word "punished." Punishment is not, and should not, be a goal in any civilized society. That's a whole 'nother discussion, but for the purpose of discussing surveillance, let's agree that we are talking about convicting people who commit crimes, and leave the discussion fo what to do after obtaining a conviction for another day.
You're mentioning things where not getting a verdict is an unfortunate side effect in pursuit of more important goals. That's not what the question was supposed to be about; it's a complete tangent that doesn't help the discussion.
If that’s not what the question was supposed to be about, rephrasing the question, is the best way to get the conversation back on track.
As written, the question positions a discussion about the uses of surveillance technology and the social side-effects as an accusation that people with concerns are against “punishing burglars.”
The problem here is with that kind of, “So, you’re in favour of more crime” rhetoric. In the past, that has been used in extremely dangerous ways.
Giving your argument the benefit of the doubt, I think you're saying:
1. Currently no legally recognized right is being violated by police when they are given Ring surveillance footage from a homeowner to prosecute a potential criminal.
2. But perhaps we should codify some right that prevents the police from obtaining Ring surveillance footage from a homeowner to prosecute a potential criminal.
I agree with 1, but I disagree with 2, and further I suspect you're going to have quite the uphill battle convincing the majority of people some right should exist that prevents homeowners from providing surveillance footage to the police.
I'm not saying either of those things in that comment, what I was saying is that when arguing those things, whether you win or lose that argument with the judicial courts or with the courts of public opinion, it's not correct to summarize the argument as "Arguing that criminals go unpunished."
Win or lose, such arguments are about the appropriate amount of surveillance and the rights of people who may not be criminals but who are caught on "film," who has access to that film, and what can be done with the evidence in that film.
I'm totally up for an argument that what Ring does is appropriate. I'm just not up for arguing that questioning Ring is "Arguing that criminals go unpunished."
It seems pretty obvious that punishment doesn’t work and it is a path to worse disasters for the whole society.
Specifically the comment author was insinuating that just by eradicating a group of individuals out of the society (as punishment) would stop other people to do the same. It seems a very dangerous way of thinking.
The comment author was not insinuating that, you just assumed that. What I was insinuating was that you can't allow unlawful behavior to go unchallenged or else you will have a breakdown of society. Even rehabilitation programs are a form of punishment. If you catch a criminal and they say "I don't want to go to your rehabilitation program", are you just going to say "oh ok" and let them go? Of course not, you force them to go. That is corrective action aka punishment. I just happened to use a term which is loaded on this forum in this context.
The Code of Hammurabi is almost 4000 years old and we still have crime. Punishment is not a deterrent because nobody commits a crime believing they will get caught.
Short answer: Cameras produce the evidence needed to build prosecutable cases that can put burglars in jail (thereby preventing them from victimizing/terrorizing people while they're in jail).
Longer answer: People who commit one burglary often commit multiple burglaries. State's Attorneys won't prosecute cases if they don't have strong evidence. The number of burglary victims in a month is basically given by (number of burglars active in a month)(average frequency of burglary in a month). To reduce the number of victims, you could reduce the number of active burglars in an area, and/or you could work to reduce the frequency of burglary by hardening the world, which would be prohibitively expensive. The former strategy is much less expensive, as video evidence is strong evidence, and video cameras have become very affordable and convenient to operate. This helps build stronger cases, which can remove predators from communities, which averts all of the offenses that the predator would have committed had they not been jailed. It is possible to burgle a home with cameras, just as it's possible to get the flu despite a flu shot, but both the cameras and the flu shots help defend more of society against harm.
It's part of my overall security solution. I also have an alarm system among other things. After being the victim of a $30k heist, I learned not to rely on just 1 method of detection/prevention.
A. It's a detective and corrective control so you can more easily claim losses with insurance and the police, see what has been taken, and know that someone was there.
B. It's a preventive control. People doing recon on your place will see that visible security is in place and that you have done some level of risk management. Perhaps you have other security measures there as well such as an alarm, or maybe you secure your valuables with a safe or they are stored off site which they can't know until they get in. It makes you a less appealing, higher risk target. Additionally, in most neighborhoods you can't walk around in a ski mask without attracting attention, so many burglaries will be done with faces exposed. If someone bursts in and sees they are on camera, maybe they leave without taking anything.
I'm a crime researcher in Chicago and I work mainly on aggravated battery (shooting) and homicide cases. There have been many homicide and shooting investigations that have been substantially aided by Ring footage (always received with the (often enthusiastic) consent of the homeowner). But it typically takes at least 3 years before homicide cases are tried in court, and no responsible law enforcement agency would release information that could impede cases, so it will be a while before any agency does this kind of analysis and decides to publish it (very unlikely without being incentivized by a consent decree or something). A lot of people (read: relatively well-off (white) people who live in safe neighborhoods) are pretty irrational about cameras and law enforcement in general, but the people who live in the neighborhoods where homicides and shootings happen generally hate living with the constant possibility of their loved ones being accidentally shot in a spontaneous shooting, they want these threats removed from their community, and it's much easier and safer to provide footage rather than testify as a witness over many court dates 4+ years later.
TLDR: Yeah, there are many investigations that are only cleared because of CCTV footage, including Ring footage. No, that data isn't public.
I was in an RV park in Albuquerque during the big snow a week ago. The parks over there sit on the west side of town.
30 Minutes into the blizzard a loud SUV rolls up right next to us. My wife and I turned off the lights and opened the windows to watch. They didn't go near our truck. But within 3 minutes they were rifling in someone else's truck bed. They then opened the SUV's back hatch, threw a large box in and drove off, all at a super-fast speed indicating they've done this before.
The RV Park replied to the reviews about theft and kinda blamed various people for leaving their stuff outside, unlucked.
The larger park next door thought ahead and installed security cameras and security gates. The park next door is about $5-$10 more per night. Well worth it.
> It's interesting how the article accuses Ring and Amazon of selling via fear, but that's also exactly what the article itself is selling.
Just because something is published by vice doesn't automatically make it untrue (though it broadly is very suspect). However, you've made the great case yourself that these product purchases are motivated by fear, not by material return on investment.
Funny, my opinions/biases are such that on first reading, I read your comment as "We have Ring cameras" (i.e. most people in Albuquerque), and "I feel so much safer when I leave town" (i.e. away from all that surveillance). Minds are funny.
I ask this question in good faith and it's in no way an attack on you. It's really just food for thought and an invitation for discussion:
You say that a person searching through your pickup/ other peoples stuff is going to go away for longer when they are caught because of the ring surveillance network.
Do you as a person who uses HN, has the money to buy a Ring and can weather the loss of $30k in valuables (which is a terrible thing and I can only imagine how traumatic it would be, I would probably buy a ring after that as well) really need to make sure that the pickup truck sniffer gets the maximum jail time?
Our prisons are supposed to be some of the most crowded in the world.[1]
There are networks just for exfelons to try and get jobs because so much of the gen pop turns them away at this instant red flag.[2] Among Americans who aren't in prison >50% can't pay a $500 emergency expense.
I'm willing to accept that a lot of these people could work hard and reach a higher level of financial security in life but they choose not to. I have no issues with you having worked hard and wanting to protect what you've earned and making sure others don't pillage your things.
Does an extra 5 years in prison for the truck snooper really make you feel safer? Do we really need to make sure that more people are subjected to our prison system that does little to rehabilitate people?
Will fear and mistrust bring us a safer nation? What is really gained by you personally by ensuring that the perp get's twice the sentence? Does it bring you twice your lost assets? Do you fundamentally gain in anyway by putting a nonviolent offender into a cage for extra time?
Maybe the hope is that we can lock up all the criminals and the streets will be safe of porch pirates. I've heard somewhere that you can't have the top without the bottom. If we get rid of the least violent criminals committing the crimes that have a low and local impact who do we expect to be left to represent that necessary bottom but the mass thieves of fake financial firms and slaughter happy killers?
To put it in a very abstract metaphorical way:
If you stumble on a hike and twist your ankle and have to break a branch off of a tree to use as a support to get you home... how much should you suffer for breaking that branch? should they also compound all the twigs you stepped on into your sentence?
I'm definitely for prison reform, and for mitigating wealth inequality. However, the fact that our prisons are overcrowded and we have a lot of poor people in our country does not excuse crime like this. Burglary is not comparable to a non-violent drug offense, for instance. It is an invasion of someone's property, privacy and well-being. It is more comparable to rape than just a simple drug offense. I have no sympathy for thieves and I'm fine with wanting them to be locked up away from society.
On the other hand I guess maximum prison sentences makes sense under the idiom "from those who have everything more will be given, from those who have nothing more will be taken"
CCTV cameras have been around for decades and have none of the privacy issues associated with ring. Of course there's a little more overhead in setting them up which I'm sure turns the average person off, but they also won't brick if the manufacturer stops supporting them and don't need internet to work.
If your CCTV camera setup has no live off site backups, someone burglaring the property could just take or destroy the recorder on-site and delete the record of them breaking into the property.
Yes, and if we're talking hypothetical risk vectors: a ring camera does nothing against someone who covers their face.
The reliance on remote storage limits the resolution and number of cameras, making it much less likely that you'll manage to capture a clear face shot esp from someone intentionally concealing their face.
Thieves stealing the recorder is something I think I've never heard reported in a residential setting, however. It's certainly a much less common problem for cameras than people covering their faces.
Non-cloud camera systems can still upload remotely (and there is the potential of encrypting those realtime backups, at least w/ some systems). My camera system takes periodic and event driven still snapshots, encrypts them, and uploads them remotely. (Though, I admit, I implemented the encryption step myself). Bonus: sending only snapshots means that it can reasonably be done over cellular, which keeps it going even if all the lines are cut.
> Non-cloud camera systems can still upload remotely
I have only talked about cloud based backups, not running the entire system via the cloud. Of course it's best if you have an on-site storage of video material, as well as a (live) off-site backup.
I'm not a proponent of Ring. In fact, I'd never put their hardware into my house. However, there are advantages of putting video footage into the cloud (encrypted or in the clear). Compare this to internet based locks where there are no advantages that can't be done locally as well.
I'm not convinced off-site backups are enough to protect against burglars destroying the footage. There are many options available to them to prevent the camera from functioning.
1) In the case of WiFi cameras, sending of deauth packets or signal jamming the 2.4/5ghz spectrum.
2) Damaging of fibre/copper cables which might be out of view of the camera.
3) Turning off power to the property although this might draw attention.
Given the sheer popularity of WiFi cameras, I can't see it being too long before a device capable of spamming deauth packets becomes a common part of the burglars toolset. esp8266's with the appropriate firmware can already be found on ebay for less than £10.
Of course in physical security, for every protection there's always a way for attackers to counter it. But it gets more and more costly each time. What I wanted to say with my comment is that off site backups do have value (compared to say cloud based door locks which don't have any advantage over internet free approaches).
For 1 and 2, ideally you'd avoid WiFi cameras for the reason you stated and use cable based ones and put everything into view.
To 3, actually this happened recently in my country Germany where they stole crown jewels of one of the german states. The alarm system died and allowed for silent entry but the CCTV still worked (no idea why it worked tho, maybe backup power for CCTV only but not for the alarm?). Ideally both your CCTV and alarm system run from some way of backup power.
> I can't see it being too long before a device capable of spamming deauth packets becomes a common part of the burglars toolset.
How many break ins are professional thieves with any kind of toolkit vs drug addicts and kids who just smash a window with whatever they find or take advantage of opportunities like an unlocked car or a package left outside? I'm guessing that the vast majority aren't bringing tech, lockpicks or even masks.
I'm surprised it's even that high, lock picks are pretty time consuming and it's hard to be inconspicuous while you're doing it.
Ahh, I looked at the linked article, and it's not just lockpicking, it's "picked lock or window", which presumably also includes things like using a knife blade to slide a window latch open.
Further in the article it mentions this:
If you were to separate lock picking from shimming latches, the percentage of lock picking incidents would very likely evaporate.
...
However, because we have no data to separate these two methods of bypassing — that is lock picking and shimming –, we will stick with the higher survey number of 4.1% for good measure.
But wait, that’s 4.1% of ONLY non-forced burglaries. What about ALL burglaries— forced and non-forced?
...
That’s only 1.36% of TOTAL burglaries that utilize either picking a lock or shimming.
As a hobbyist lockpicker, I still keep running into the assumption that they're most often used for breaking into places. Good to have a source to show they aren't "mainly used for crime"
1 million crimes, 1% use lock picks. 10,000 lock pick usages in crime.
18,180 total lock pick usages, of which 55%, or 10,000 are used in crimes.
In this scenario crime mostly doesn't use lock picks (99% of crimes didn't) but lock picks are still mainly used for crime (55% of lock pick usage is).
Of course I just made up these numbers as an example. It's just a logical point about what the article shows. I'm sure most lock pick usage is to get people into things they've been locked out of or hobbyists playing around.
Sure. Criminals could also hack into Ring's servers and delete footage there too...
Of course, neither of these are likely to happen, as criminals that are doing burglaries are in a hurry and not looking for security camera DVRs and data stores, but valuables they can fence quickly like TVs, stereos and jewelry.
If "Stealing your CCTV's recorder" is actually in your threat model, maybe then you should consider a cloud-based solution (or, you know, a real security system and not just a CCTV system). But this just isn't the general case - not even close. The vast majority of these systems are essentially nanny/evil-maid cams.
This is a risk. The risk is minimal as most criminals do not destroy the recorder. To minimize the risk the owner could configure the Video Management System to store video offsite. Or the owner could configure the VMS to send an email with video on motion or a digital input paired with a burglar system.
If your system can write 60 second video chunks, then you can sftp the data to a write-only (append only) off site location and only when there is motion. If your system is properly physically secured, then the most you can lose is 60 seconds of them tampering with the cabinet.
All IoT devices are corporate botnets, I still don't understand why people install them in their homes. Alexa/Google assistants provide very little value for the user and give companies a microphone into your private life.
I get that these devices do some useful things, but I can't really think of anything they do that can't also be done with a cell phone and a laptop and without letting contractors listen to you having sex.
Only if you think your cell phone is always listening, and in some cases it might be. My phone doesn't use any kind of smart assistant and unlike a smart speaker preventing your phone from listening 24/7 doesn't make the device useless
If you trust Google/Amazon/Apple etc, smart speakers only record when they hear the hot word. What's the difference between that and Google/Apple saying they don't record at all if you turn the assistant off? Either way they could just be lying about how the device works.
If the companies are lying and bugging us no matter what 24/7 we're screwed either way, but even if google/amazon are being 100% honest their contractors are still listening to people with smart speakers having sex. If you turn off your phone's smart assistants and they are telling the truth nothing happens.
disable smart assistants on your phone and the phone won't start recording you "accidentally". You don't have that option with a smart speaker.
> disable smart assistants on your phone and the phone won't start recording you "accidentally". You don't have that option with a smart speaker.
In fact, you do. Amazon Echos have a physical button that disables the microphone. Apple HomePod has a setting to disable the "Hey Siri" feature. I haven't tested this, but I presume that both continue functioning perfectly fine as Bluetooth/AirPlay speakers.
I didn't know that they had an option to disable the mic at all. I'm glad that they do, but I'd question anyone who bought one just to use as a speaker. If you aren't going to use the mic, you're better off buying a regular speaker with better quality. Disabling the smart assistant on the phone still leaves you with a highly functional device.
I've heard it's okay, but not as good as google home max which is again impressive for a smart speaker but still can't compare to other wireless speakers. At a certain level though speaker reviews get to be a bit too much for me to take seriously. The farther they get into audiophile territory the more skeptical I tend to become. Probably because I've been pretty happy with shitty speakers at much lower price points, but I figure if you're going to drop that kind of money on a wireless speaker it'd better sound incredible.
And they are still surveillance machines. People getting accustomed to smartphones doesn't change their nature. In fact, nowadays as owning a smartphone is unavoidable in many contexts it's much worse than it used to be when they were introduced and an option.
And they are. Look at what NYT articles showed and also how the information collected by the Telcos ended up in the hands of bounty hunters and private investigators.
Information which couldn't have existed without a) wide spread usage b) incentives to turn them all in to surveillance-lite devices
I have a private ZigBee network, a Z-wave net, another home brew 868 MHZ net and Philips Hue (also ZigBee). All connected to OpenHAB. Which of these IoT networks is a botnet?
‘How do you spell’, ‘play tchaikovsky‘, ‘tell me bedtime story’, ‘what is %X + %Y’, ‘what is the weather’
Recently the 3 and 5 year old have had fun trying to turn on Alexa without saying Alexa (because we told them to stop using it to randomly play baby shark without asking...).
For me, the cost/benefit ratio of cell phones far exceeds that of Alexa/Google Assistant/etc.
Also, there's a well-established framework of laws governing under what conditions and by whom your telephone conversations can be monitored. For Alexa/GA, you're at the mercy of the TOS.
I have outdoor camera's because my house was broken into a few years ago. Call it a corporate botnet if you want, but if it help deter people from breaking into my home again then it's worth it to me.
It's staggering how little the average person on the street cares about these issues. My friend is a software dev and when I asked him why he got a Ring knowing full well how intrusive the system could be, he shrugged and said "Well, can't be worse than my Alexa"
Many people actually think that connecting a Ring to the local police is a good thing. Someone even announced this as a great feature at our department wide standup the other day.
Was kinda shocked, but how can I be the guy to go against having more safety? All everyone wants is more safety.
No, it's convenience for privacy. There are plenty of ways to surveil your own home without networking the footage into police databases. It's just that you have to put a little effort in or pay someone else to set it up.
I think this is indeed a key point often missed in the conversations here. Just because there's a better (privacy) alternative, it still requires a time investment to find one. The alternative will likely require another time/skill investment over the marketed product to actually install it.
When you're in a situation where time is scarce, like dual income, kid, etc, you clearly are optimising for other things than privacy or even money spent.
The average person doesn't care about these issues because for the average person no issue exists.
If you initially pitched Ring as a device that was directly connected to the local police department MORE people would buy it, not less. In the 90s, monitored home security was a booming business. The average person wanted it but couldn't afford it. People would pay thousands for an installation and thousands more per year to have someone monitor cameras and call the police if there was an issue.
For someone based outside the US it feels so odd that the delivery services just leave the packages outside the house. Why not address that particular issue head-on instead of deploying a surveillance network to handle the consequences?
Locked boxes at the house or going to the postal service to receive your package would get rid of most of the issues regarding package stealing, right?
I'm guessing they just haven't thought about how much a camera on their door tells others about them. How often they come and go, what they wear, who they are with, how often they order food, the age/race/sex of every person living there, etc. It's a massive look at their lives just as much as a camera in their living room would be.
> How often they come and go, what they wear, who they are with, how often they order food, the age/race/sex of every person living there, etc. It's a massive look at their lives just as much as a camera in their living room would be.
What's the downside of that? Is it worse than using a phone with lots of Google software on it?
What's the downside to having a amazon camera in your bathroom or bedroom recording what you do? If you don't care at all about your privacy it doesn't matter. If you are concerned with the massive surveillance and data collection amazon and google does it would make sense to try and limit the amount of data you hand over to them.
The idea that simply owning a cell phone invalidates any effort or incentive to try to keep the personal details of your life from any company ever is deeply flawed.
We all make trade-offs and must decide for ourselves what amount of data we're comfortable handing over to companies who profit from surveillance capitalism. Personally, I can install a camera without giving amazon data about me. I can't get a cell phone that doesn't leak information to google or apple (although I can try to limit what I use my cell phone for and what data those devices leak)
I get that it means a loss of privacy but I'm asking what the downside of that is. Amazon and Google know lots about me and it doesn't feel like it's obviously bad. If I had a magic wand and could erase my data from those companies today how would my life be better tomorrow?
It's true that it is hard to see the harm constant surveillance causes. The impacts it has on your life are so indirect that it's often impossible to trace, or to even know that it's happened.
The data companies collect from you is sold to others who collect it and sell it in turn. Dossiers are constructed about you as an individual listing your specific traits, activities, political leanings, etc. You can't see what these companies have decided about you, how accurate it is, who has access to your data, how they are using it, how (or if) they are securing it.
Sometimes when it comes back to bite you in the ass you'll know. your data will be leaked to the public internet, or you'll be a victim of identify theft.
Other times, your life will be impacted but you won't know why. Maybe you don't get called back for an interview at a job you wanted, but you don't know it was because they didn't like something saw in a report from a data broker (you bought too much alcohol for example). Maybe your insurance rates go up next year, but you won't know it's because of how often you eat out. Maybe you can't get a table at the restaurant you wanted to eat at, or maybe you're paying $10 more for a product you buy online than your neighbor, maybe you just wait on a hold a little longer than others when you call customer service, but you won't know it's because you weren't rated highly enough on your secret "consumer score".
The way the data companies collect can be used against you are myriad and subtle, but it's being done all the time, it's probably already impacted you. You just aren't allowed to know it.
It's an -ism a little like sexism, racism, ageism and disability discrimination. There will be countless instances that will be hard to prove the loss - as you don't have transparency of what the other side is thinking/saying.
Whether it's some dubious data from suspect source, or it's your gender, you might find some opportunities more difficult, premiums more expensive, interviews not bringing job offer. When it's just one isolated, it proves little, but in aggregate... We already know many of these data models are very wrong. When Amazon recommend products for me, they do so terribly. When Google and Facebook famously opened up their respective "what we know about you" pages a few years back, they were - for most in our office - dramatically and hilariously wrong. Often getting every key point wrong like gender, age group, and 9 of 10 interests. AI models are often reported to have gained or inbuilt bias and racism.
It doesn't feel obviously bad, but in the cargo cult of targeted advertising, they've demonstrated they're unfit for purpose. Yet the vast data stores influence all our lives daily -- we really need an audit to identify all those micro impacts and data derived discrimination, as it's undermining any belief in a rational basis and a fair chance in society.
It seems when I read arguments like this it's always about what I lose. For every job that I lose somebody else wins perhaps also because of data gleaned from surveillance. It isn't necessarily negative.
The insurance argument is pretty persuasive though. Effective insurance requires a big pool. For the same reason that ultra-precise categorization for insurance ruins insurance, ultra-precise targeting of individuals ruins advertising if we want ad-supported platforms.
Thing is, I want a level playing field whether applying for jobs, insurance, health, you name it. A hidden bias is still a bias, and particularly hidden as so much machine processing and AI is a black box unknown even to the creators -- it just spits out (hopefully) helpful results.
I don't want a chilling effect on the next generation such that every party or moment of drunkenness can be held against them in job search. Every teen has moments of idiocy -- mine thankfully were not in the age of constant surveillance, and there wasn't a smart phone or CCTV in sight. Not much freedom to grow in a world where every worst moment goes viral, or gets you on one of the "next door" neighbourhood snooping apps. Where hanging around with friends on a street corner has old folks flagging suspicious behaviour. Give us all room to breathe. Interfere via authorities when you have genuine reason to suspect. No, I don't much like where we're headed and preferred the proposition before.
Totally agree on regulation, but it seems to be coming far too slowly -- globally.
McCarthyism 2.0 is going to be a bloodbath. Forget about "six lines written by an honest man" they'll have gigabytes of data in which to find something to hang you for.
I have a Ring and live on the edge of a seriously bad urban district. Many people in the bad 'hoods have Rings also, so I get notifications as part of the surveillance network.
The network is both a fascinating source of local news and -- more to the point -- a surprisingly-valuable tool for people who live in places that the police ignore (or don't have the resources to protect).
Once the 'guy who steals Amazon packages' has his face on camera in the act of stealing a package, and someone on every block in a 2 mile radius knows it, it makes his life on the street that much less fun. The community can police itself with tools like this.
I see a lot of comments here saying that users are buying Rings because they like them, so clearly there must be a need for them. However, in the US, crime rates have nationally been on a downward trend for decades now. Meanwhile, around 60% of people think crime rates are increasing [0].
This is why I'm uneasy with the idea that we should allow revealed preferences to make decisions about the level of ambient privacy we have in US society. There's clearly something pushing people to buy these things, and it isn't a higher crime rate.
Maybe crime is decreasing but the streets still barely feel safe to walk at night depending on where you are. The homeless problem seems to be getting worse though I'm not sure the statistics back it. The difference between walking around at night in Japan, China, and even Europe compared to the US is night and day honestly.
I'm a pretty paranoid guy about Big Brother and the surveillance state and what-not. That being said, I got a Ring to try it out. I got it at a huge discount and figured, if I don't like it, I'll sell it. I actually love this thing now - by far the best feature to me is how I keep on top of neighborhood happenings. I live in a nice part of down but, like many "nice parts", it's right around the corner from a not-so-nice part of town.
Package stealing, particularly this time of year, is rampant, and the first time I installed the app I was able to see all of these local reports near me and watch footage of people stealing packages. This is a HUGE deterrent as soon as word gets out that certain houses are "bugged".
I think about it from this perspective and immediately think of the "giving up liberty for safety" quote, but I refuse to have any speakers _inside_ of my home. The camera is pointing out towards the street, in broad daylight, in public. I like knowing when my dog walker shows up, when packages arrive, and of course when someone down the block sees a random guy trying to break into cars parked on the street.
Overall, I'm conflicted over it, but I'm reminded several times a day (when the thing goes off) that it's a _huge_ convenience to me, particularly as we have expensive packages delivered multiple times per week. As long as I own the data and police don't have default access to it, I'm cool.
Do you own the data? Do the police have access to it? What about Amazon or their partners?
Starting a post with a sentence about how you're a paranoid guy and dislike Big Brother and what-not, and then pivoting to spend multiple paragraphs on how you live in a nice neighborhood and don't mind providing data and surveillance on those around you feels more than a little disingenuous.
Despite (because of?) being an Amazon employee, though one who works nowhere near the Ring, I'd never buy a Ring - and I don't exactly think I'm the most "paranoid guy" about "the surveillance state and whatnot".
Isn't the whole point of the article that the corporate-cop partnerships which are budding here seem distinctly dystopian? Why post all of these positive aspects which -- ostensibly -- exist in competitors (Arlo, maybe?) without the shady downside?
Currently, the police do not have access to it. There is a centralized system they can use that simplifies the process for the police to request footage from a homeowners, but that's all it is, a request.
That said, since it is data in the hands of a third party, if the police really wanted that footage, they could issue a search warrant on Ring, and compel them to turn it over, just like they could compel you to turn over your footage with a subpoena or search warrant.
> Ring will only provide video content in response to a valid search warrant or with the verified consent of the account owner.
I know this is their stated, current stance, but given their sort of bizarre ball of incentives to integrate with the cop process as much as possible in order to drive revenue, I imagine that barrier - to the extent that it actually exists today - will degrade over time, if allowed to. You can't take your data back; in this case, you can't take your family's or neighbors' data back, either.
Yes, they do. Ring lets the police know that video evidence exists, and with that information, police can get a warrant for it.
It's hard to get a warrant for data when the police don't know it even exists, and it's even harder to get data that might not exist when it's you who decides the retention policy, and not Amazon.
It's weird how now Ring requires having to add a valid address/location for the doorbell, I remember first configuring it 2 years ago when I didn't have to add an address. Anyway, so I went and typed the name of a nearby large boulevard and selected the first suggested address. Then I started getting all those stupid neighborhood notifications because people are paranoid and report "someone walking on the sidewalk" as suspicious, so I went and editing the neighborhood range around the address to be as small as possible (I was able to zoom in to house level size), now it blissfully stopped sending any notifications.
I wish more people gave it crappy information/address.
I think you might be surprised how little of a deterrent surveillance cameras are to package theft. This likely depends on where you live, but in many cities the police won't really do anything about thefts in the value range of a typical package. I have multiple visible cameras on my house and have still had packages taken on a number of occasions by random transients. Even once had a woman come up on our porch, steal a package (put it in a bag she was carrying), and THEN ring our doorbell to see if anyone was home. Meth is a hell of a drug.
I feel the exact same way. Although, I got a remobell.
> police don't have default access to it, I'm cool.
That's the only thing that concerns me. Why are people up in arms about this? I mean if it deters people from stealing from you, that's a good thing also it's not pointed inside your house.
> That's the only thing that concerns me. Why are people up in arms about this? I mean if it deters people from stealing from you, that's a good thing also it's not pointed inside your house.
Because a citizen walking on the sidewalk doesn't consent to being captured with cameras everywhere they go. We know Amazon and other providers are including face recognition (and I wouldn't be surprised if they are working on other methods like gait recognition, tracking movement across cameras that are near each other etc).
Getting caught in the background of someone's selfie is one thing, mass surveillance by a mega-company and collaboration with the government/police is another. I should be able to go out in public without being tracked without my consent.
That's not even getting into data leaks, police corruption, and NSA style surveillance programs that this footage is inevitably going to get caught up in.
It is your right to choose. Devil's advocate question: would you feel the same if I followed you around your neighborhood filming you with my phone? These networks will become live video monitoring by the police and government because we need to stop "terrorists and pedophiles". How do you feel about 24/7 video surveillance being run by the government in all public spaces? This all feels too 1984 to me.
To be clear, I'm not against IoT devices but at least my Echo only listens to the sounds in the bathroom. That only affects me not everyone in my neighborhood. Video doorbells don't seem worth the loss in privacy just to get a packaged protected that Amazon will replace for free anyway.
Fair question. Of course I'd be against you following me around with your phone - but my Ring is pointed in my own front yard and walkway. A moving camera is different than a static one. I don't see how that's considered the same thing.
And my Ring will only start recording if someone is on my front porch (I have the range turned all the way down, with only the central zone recording [out of left/right/center]).
I don't know why that's invasive towards anyone who isn't trying to steal packages off my front porch. You won't show up on a recording unless you're on my property.
Maybe it's worth pointing out that I live in the suburbs and have a large front yard - I do understand your point for someone in an urban area who would theoretically be recording near-constantly as people walk by. But in this case, no one's showing up who isn't in my yard.
True, and it is good you have it turned down. But all your neighbors don't have too. They could be filming you 100% of the time you are outside. The biggest issue with these things is that they are networked and can be viewed 24/7 by people not outside your house right now. It is the scale of the surveillance that is most disturbing to me. I'm most worried about the people and cops turning my life into The Truman Show.
Yeah, that's all fair. Of course we're here on HN and natural tinkerers so the first thing I did was dial in the zones. Most people, as you mentioned indirectly, won't ever do this, and it'll just keep recording all day.
That being said we've had surveillance systems for ages and no one's ever thought about them, but I definitely get why people are nervous in some situations.
I kind of alluded to this but I even questioned my own ethics for a while with this thing. I lambast people for trading convenience for security or privacy all the time - the justification I give for having this myself is that a) it's not in my home (so I don't consider it a personal invasion), and b) it's restrained to my front porch and yard (so I don't consider it a public invasion).
Again, I can see why others would question my logic here.
The only clear moral breach I can find in this article is the questionable assertions of Ring cameras reducing crime. This is definitely wrong if Ring does not have any evidence of the truth of these claims and they should stop doing that.
Everything else, to me, can be boiled down to the fact that the author is uncomfortable with the tradeoffs people are making between privacy and security. The author engages with this point only in passing, at the very end of the piece:
"But for ordinary people, like those in Northwest Baltimore, the reason for trusting Ring is simple: they are scared. Pastor Moore said that he understands concerns that people have about Ring’s use of data. However, he said his community didn’t share these concerns."
Yea. I can't figure out why the "Law Enforcement Neighborhood Portal" is supposed to be so terrifying. It lets police see which addresses have Ring cameras running so the police can request footage directly from a nearby resident when there's been a crime in the neighborhood. I can't tell if I'm supposed to be afraid because this leaks the bit of info that the resident own cameras, or because police might get the footage "without a warrant" by, horror of horrors, asking the resident for it:
It comes down to data ownership. If my recordings of outside my home are “mine”, then police can’t get it without a warrant. Amazon certainly shouldn’t be able to access anything without my full consent.
In that case, I don’t see any reason it’s different than a closed loop system.
Precisely. Most of the controversy about Ring is the risk that the data is being accessed without user consent by parties hostile to the user's best interests, not that the device collects the data at all.
In general, people bought the device to collect this data (for their own use).
I didn't see anyone mention Wyzecam here. https://wyze.com/
Their models start at $20, the smartphone app is very well done, and you can configure it to record events under various conditions quite easily. Can anyone comment on Wyzecam's data security policy? AFAIK there's no cloud feature that lets it interact with other Wyzecams, and I like that.
I have a Ring doorbell which works great, but I put in a fake street address when registering it for this reason. So far as I've seen, it loses none of its utility from that. The only user-visible feature based on the address is the "neighborhood crime alerts" feature which I don't want since I live in a dense enough city that petty crime "near" me isn't really a concern.
I waded through those articles - and whilst I don't like the idea of 'cameras' everywhere, didn't actually spot the alluded to smoking gun that was going to blow the whole conspiracy open.
Obviously aspects like "black people getting reported as suspicious" is unwelcome, but this isn't a problem with Ring/cameras. I presume the people clicking the suspicious button are the same people traditionally calling in 'tips' whenever they spot somebody with a tan. (Or if you're in the middle of Baltimore it's black residents reporting black people being suspicious). But - I've no real idea/evidence, so I'll leave that.
What did appear to be deliberately misconstrued, was the police being directed to reach out on social media to their residents, to improve residents opting in to share their footage.
If "the government" asks me to provide a video-feed, my hackles would go up. If your local cop says "I'm trying to reduce crime near you and your footage would help me" - well.. am I going to tell them I'm not going to help?
Wouldn't want the camera in my home, or pointed at me whilst I work - but I'm OK with "me walking by"
Basically, I've accepted the neighbour is already allowed to see me as I walk by - this is just improving the efficiency of surveillance, not changing it.
I wouldn't have objected if they'd decided they wanted to start an old-school "twitching curtains" neighbourhood watch scheme - I might not have joined, but I wouldn't be feeling violates.
Many don't realize that we really only have two options for protecting yourself and your family:
1) A weapon, like a gun
2) a camera
Sure, we have the police, but by the time they arrive, it's usually after the fact and not easy to actually catch the person that did it.
Many countries, like Australia and England, have terrible gun rights, but essentially have turned into a surveillance state in its place, with the number cameras. It puts the fear into thieves because they know they will most likely be caught.
If you reject both, it will only result in more innocent people getting hurt or killed and crimes going unsolved.
I have ring cameras inside and outside my house. A group of 3 people broke into my house while I was on vacation. They saw the camera inside, and ran out of the window they broke through.
Nothing was taken, but if I didn't have the cameras, something would have been taken. On top of everything, this all happened about 5 minutes before my brother-in-law came back home for the night.
Cameras have also shown us all sorts of crime we would never have known: package thieves, trespassing, and just a better general awareness we never had before.
You missed the biggest weapon against crime: a functioning fair society. Crime isn't entropy, something that's inherent to the laws of the universe and that can only be managed, it cannot be solved.
A society where everyone and their mother is holding guns (and have cameras) doesn't seem ideal to me. Reminds me of this cartoon: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gFmrZp92QTQ
>If you reject both, it will only result in more innocent people getting hurt or killed and crimes going unsolved.
I don't see this is true. There is few cameras in Germany and even fewer historically, while there is still pretty strict gun laws and the vast majority of the population does not own a gun. What's not rampant, however, is violent home invasions. Sure, non-violent burglaries are on another card, but that's just stuff, and often insured stuff. Even then, "pro" burglars long adapted to cameras (wear masks) and stuff like fingerprinting (wear gloves). What they didn't fully adapt to yet is that nice little spying device called their own mobile phone.
I guess it depends on where you live. If you live in a place full of irrational tweekers, failed by society, who are out of their mind, looking for a quick score to fuel their drug habit, who don't mind getting extremely violent...
But if you just have "regular" burglars around, they will try to avoid other people, and even if they break in while somebody is at home, they will most often fuck off real quick because a confrontation does not only put the home owner at risk, it also puts THEM at risk (a home homer coming at your burglar ass with a huge kitchen knife is still something you will want to avoid). At least our local burglars will fuck off when they notice somebody is at home.
Yeah you could arm yourself to the teeth with weapons and surveillance gear, or you can push for a more equitable society and well-funded social safety nets so that folks can get educations and get back up on their feet after a job loss or medical issue without feeling like resorting to crime is a viable option.
> If you reject both, it will only result in more innocent people getting hurt or killed and crimes going unsolved.
Please cite some evidence that doorbell cameras have a causal impact on crime rates. Or guns for that matter. I doubt there's anything compelling. There's probably a small marginal effect, but there are bigger levers we can turn. The way to actually help people not get hurt is to make it so that fewer people want to do crime. (Which, BTW, we've been doing a pretty bang up job of the last thirty to forty years! Good news!)
There were increasing reports of burglaries in my neighborhood and one night my home was broken into while we were there sleeping. I installed a Ring camera the next weekend and was awakened to the world of my little cul-de-sac on an average night. There were generally multiple cars coming in, looping around, and leaving in the early-a.m. hours. But it lights up bright and immediately whenever someone comes back there, and in a matter of about two weeks, this dwindled down to absolutely no traffic. Now if I see an entry at 2:00am in my log, it's almost certainly an opossum video.
That's an nearly impossible metric to pin down. You'd have to ask criminals who would have done something in specific instances whether the cameras dissuaded them from doing it. Good luck with that.
What I can tell you is our cameras have assisted both us and police (via my consent) to identify a group of individuals who were breaking into cars in our neighborhood. Word will eventually get around that my neighborhood has cameras and people who are watching. That's a powerful deterrent.
You can surrender all of your liberties, and not actually end up any safer.
People are scared, and being scared, want to do something - and going through baggage checks, installing cameras, scanners, pat downs - well that all feels like doing something. Of course, it's not really, it's theater.
Did you get back your items? Was the person arrested and charged appropriately?
My neighbors have posted many reasonably clear, useful images of break-ins and shared them with the police. It has done no actual good - no items recovered, no perpetrators dissuaded.
Nothing was stolen, but if the person keeps doing it and is caught, that's just more evidence against them. Things like this often play out over a long period of time. I'd rather work towards actively deterring people than sit here and think up infinite paranoid scenarios.
I once caught dashcam footage of a hit and run. Clearly see the license plate, the vehicle occupant - easy case closed stuff. Called the local non-emergency number for the police station and they wouldn't even give me a place to send the footage, much less do anything about the fleeing driver. Had I been smarter, I would have given it to the insurance company of the car that had been hit - but lesson learned for next time.
Footage does nothing to deter people and it has no consequences. It can only be used against the interest of common people - because stopping crime does not lead to meaningful profit. Selling security devices to folks, charging per the hour for security checkpoints, selling x-ray machines, well, that's very profitable - but you can't do those things when nobody is concerned. Harvesting data, selling facial profiles - again, profitable, extremely so.
I've had a bike stolen from a closed off area surrounded by cameras and needing badges to enter. The police were called and didn't even bother with pulling footage, in fact no one did. I've heard almost a hundred stories about dashcams capturing the plates of at-fault drivers in accidents and nothing coming of it.
'You can surrender all of your liberties, and not actually end up any safer."
You mean giving up my ability to defend myself with a gun (many want to remove the rights of law abiding citizens) or use a camera to catch potential criminals (what you are proposing here in your comments)?
Like I said, I have cameras in my house and have already prevented at least a couple of crimes. It has made me safer for sure.
"well that all feels like doing something. Of course, it's not really, it's theater."
We haven't had a major attack in the US since 9/11. It's really almost impossible to prove what someone would have done without the security and decided against it.
We didn't have a major terror attack in the US using airplanes before 9/11 either. For what it's worth, I've never spilled coffee on myself when wearing my lucky blue shirt either.
People should defend their liberties, whether that's a right to privacy or a right to own firearms. Having a camera is not de facto bad - but having a camera whose data is controlled by a for-profit company is a shift away from liberty.
We have the freedom to choose a company like Ring/Amazon. It's not forced on us by the government.
"We didn't have a major terror attack in the US using airplanes before 9/11 either"
We also didn't have the terrorists with that level of sophistication. We still do today. Increased security definitely has a role in a decrease of terror attacks, but how much or how little would be needed to maintain this level? That much is unknown.
Post hoc ergo propter hoc. Terrorists have always been complex - both foreign and domestic, both in the last century and the last millenia. Terrorism is not new. Profiting nakedly off of the threat of it is.. well, unusual.
Remember that the people selling you security are not reliable indicators of truth. They are profiteers - and you are the one they profit from.
You can choose to do business with Amazon - but you can't choose if their cameras record you or if your facial profile gets added to their services. You don't get to object when the fed subpeonas AWS for that info because you don't get standing. You are not the consumer, you are the product.
"Profiting nakedly off of the threat of it is.. well, unusual."
We aren't talking about profiting from terrorists. We are talking about the idea of increased security making you safer from terrorists.
I suppose by this thinking, we should get rid of most firewalls, 2FA, and password managers because it won't actually make you safer.
Good safety practices are generally not convenient. It sounds like most people don't want the hassle of dealing with inconveniences at the airport, which will make them safer.
"Remember that the people selling you security are not reliable indicators of truth. They are profiteers - and you are the one they profit from."
I installed cameras because there were breakins in my neighborhood..and it paid off. Not only did I catch thieves in my house, I was able to give the footage to the police. Many of my neighbors have caught people breaking into cars and people trespassing on their property after midnight.
"but you can't choose if their cameras record you or if your facial profile gets added to their services. You don't get to object when the fed subpeonas AWS for that info because you don't get standing. You are not the consumer, you are the product."
You can trot out this cliche, but it doesn't make it true. I'm the consumer..and it's not like any of these other ring cameras (besides the ones I installed myself) are pointing inside my house. My neighbors all have cameras and it only records public space.
I have no problem with this. I have no expectation of privacy when I'm out in public and neither should you.
2FA is effective when done properly - but the TSA has a horrendous failure rate on their audits. You're confusing legitimate security (locks on your door, 2FA, firewalls) with theater (Most airport security, bag checks).
Nobody cares when your neighbor captures you leaving your house, or the local coffee house records you buying breakfast. When someone can see all the cameras though then they can do things like map out your day or make a list of your contacts - things which are not public and are privacy invasive.
And yes, AWS is capturing facial data and storing it - and providing the tools for others to do it cheaply. I got to play with their toolkit yesterday and it was trivially easy.
It is not about convenience - it is about your right to do things the government doesn't like freely. The government doesn't care for activists, whistleblowers or protestors - and it has and will abuse it's power to attack them.
You should have a problem with this. You should have a problem with for profit companies building profiles on your children. You should be upset when your human rights are curtailed under the lie of security. Humans were not meant to be farm animals for corporate consumption.
I actually don't see a problem with this. There would definitely be a need for products that facilitate police response. Now hopefully there are also products that have all the tech and also respect your data, however connecting to local law enforcement is at least very useful for businesses. They often need to monitor sidewalk activity and such, and even indoors businesses have no problem being transparent to law enforcement. Obviously if you want to monitor your baby don't buy this, or any third party cloud solution for that matter.
Amazon is giving deals to local governments to roll out Ring doorbells, but part of the deal is that they can't imply that what Ring does is "surveillance"
err it was always supposed to be for surveillance. people wanna know whos walking by their house and stealing their amazon packages. Everyone acts like this is new but that is the entire point of ring.
A blockchain would help about as much as changing the endianness or translating it to Cantonese, which is to say it has literally no bearing on the problem whatsoever.
I would install Ring if it was closed loop system. Same thing with other technologies to make a smart home. Why so many people (especially the ones that understand technology) seem to be ok with this? This attitude causes that there are less and less options for privacy conscious people.