17 ms·

Ring Gave Police Stats About Users Who Said No to Law Enforcement Requests

368 points by eth0up 7y ago

diego 7y ago
The title makes it sound more nefarious than it is. The stats are simply "the percentage of users who agreed to share videos with you is X."
- landcoctos 7y ago
  Hopefully 100%. edit: Read as who agreed not to share. In that case, hopefully 0% agreed to share.
  - Goronmon 7y ago
    It says users can review footage before sharing, so I could see situations where users reviewed footage and had no problem sharing the result. Doesn't seem like a big deal as long as its voluntary.
    - jermaustin1 7y ago
      I don't know how I feel about this. If someone who lives across the street from a Ring door bell, hasn't given permission to be filmed by Ring/their neighbor/etc, shouldn't they have a "reasonable expectation of privacy" on their own property?
      - flyingfences 7y ago
        No. You cannot reasonably expect privacy in plain view of a public roadway.
        netsharc 7y ago
        Huh. Not OP, but if the view is constant, I would be very pissed off. If I walk naked out my front door right now, chances are low anyone will see me (quiet neighborhood, it's past midnight), but if OP does it, boom, there s/he is on camera. And the camera owner can extrapolate when OP/their family members are home or not, when people visit, etc, etc. Could that not be considered surveillance?
        homonculus1 7y ago
        The law has not defined it as such. In reality, we absolutely expect our neighbors not to film our front doors 24/7 and give police access to the feed. The law is outdated and ought to be updated to protect against new abuses.
        flyingfences 7y ago
        Neither reality nor morality is defined by the law. Observation of public space is not "abuse" in any way.
        homonculus1 7y ago
        Clearly some forms of observation are abuse, while others aren't. If I repeatedly hide inside the bushes right outside your land and look into your house, I'm merely observing. I'm still a stalker. If I set up a camera to do the same, why is that better? People are constantly recording their neighbors' comings and goings, their visitors and associations, and sending that data to a bureaucratic megacorp that actively cozies up to law enforcement. "Observation of public space" is reductive, that's a cyberpunk nightmare. It's poisonous to free society.
      - kaikai 7y ago
        Unfortunately (?) there is no reasonable expectation of privacy for activities visible from public areas. That reasoning is used for everything from license plate scanners to upskirt videos.
      - JohnFen 7y ago
        This is actually my major objection to Ring. I'm glad that Ring surveillance gear has a unique light on it, so I know what neighborhoods to avoid. I'd want to avoid those neighborhoods partly to avoid being surveilled, and partly because if a neighborhood has more than the occasional Ring installed, that seems like a major indicator that the neighborhood has a high crime problem.
    - reaperducer 7y ago
      as long as its voluntary Until it isn't. All it takes is one person holding out in a neighborhood with a child kidnapping for enough hysteria to build for this to become legislated as mandatory.
    - Spooky23 7y ago
      Read the EULA. It's subject to change without notice, and your continued use is implied acceptance.
    - AlexandrB 7y ago
      The Snowden revelations were 6 years ago and since then there there has been no meaningful reigning in of federal surveillance power or of public/private surveillance "partnerships". The world in which Amazon/Ring would respect your wishes regarding the footage is not the one we live in.
  - tdb7893 7y ago
    This is weird to be because I would share in most cases. I'm for pretty massive reforms in policing in the US but there are also burglaries, missing persons, and other investigations where I would definitely help when I could.
    - micmil 7y ago
      That should be your choice, with your knowledge.
    - Spooky23 7y ago
      It's really dumb. The only thing dumber is using cloud-hosted surveillance of your home. There are any number of solutions that store surveillance camera hits in your home on an SD card or hard disk. Police can subpoena this information if they want it. They will if they need it for a prosecution. This whole practice is all about saving Amazon money on discovery requests. If there's a serious event they'll canvass neighborhoods and look for cameras anyway and approach you directly. There are obvious issues with participating in something like this. The rules can change at any time, and you might find yourself in a pickle if you meet some vague description at a particular time of the day.
    - JohnFen 7y ago
      I probably wouldn't share -- I'd much, much prefer that the police actually get a warrant. But I also wouldn't be willing to install a surveillance camera that can be accessed by anybody except for me in the first place, so that's meaningless.
- eth0up 7y ago
  First, it should be emphasized that no warrant or even probable cause seems needed for LE to obtain video from Amazon directly when a customer refuses or ignores a request.[1] Secondly, there is valid reason for concern if a customer declines compliance and is identified/profiled as a result. 1. https://reason.com/2019/08/09/no-probable-cause-required-for-cops-to-access-user-data-from-popular-apps/ https://reason.com/2019/08/09/no-probable-cause-required-for... Additional points of concern: https://boingboing.net/2019/08/06/ring-ring-snitchphone-2.html https://boingboing.net/2019/08/06/ring-ring-snitchphone-2.ht... https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/43kga3/amazon-is-coaching-cops-on-how-to-obtain-surveillance-footage-without-a-warrant https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/43kga3/amazon-is-coaching...
- nitwit005 7y ago
  Yes, I don't particularly have an issue with sharing email response rates. The police can figure it out if they want to. They can just divide the amount of footage received by the number of ring doorbells on front doors.
- danso 7y ago
  The article says that Ring keeps track of how many users ignore/take no action, and how many explicitly push the “Do not share” button in the emails.
- anigbrowl 7y ago
  The subtext of that is that such data is collected and stored, and can thus become the object of a warrant request at some future date. Your disinclination to assist today could be redefined as a crime tomorrow.
- blondin 7y ago
  well also... assuming "maybe" or "skip" are not valid answers, if you have the people who answered "yes", don't you indirectly also have those who said "no"?
annoyingnoob 7y ago
One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them, One Ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them
- _bxg1 7y ago
  Didn't realize Peter Thiel was involved in Ring
maximente 7y ago
of course they did! Ring's PR strategy heavily involves law enforcement: they feed LE juicy surveillance in order to get softball quotes that play on people's insecurity about how infrequent crime actually is, thus increasing their incentive to buy Ring stuff, increasing Ring's market share, surveillance collection potential, and making law enforcement more and more supportive. getting a permanently funded government agency as an advocate for your thing is a great startup play: you'll easily crush competitors and roll your way into an enshrined monopoly because "we cannot possibly lose this valuable tool against criminals everywhere"
- scarface74 7y ago
  Isn’t that the same scare tactics that gun manufacturers use? They act as if anyone is dumb if they don’t carry around an automatic weapon to protect themselves against the lawless hordes roaming the streets of suburban America.
  - dsr_ 7y ago
    Every issue of the NRA's monthly magazine has a column that runs reports of people defending themselves with guns. They are typically not sourced well enough for an independent confirmation.
    - CompanionCuuube 7y ago
      And practically none of them are against "lawless hordes". Who would have thought? Edit: Some people getting angry about their juvenile strawman being pointed out.
    - Frondo 7y ago
      Letters to Penthouse, NRA Edition
      - dsr_ 7y ago
        Typically third person rather than first, but it's not clear that they have much greater factual basis.
legitster 7y ago
This is like getting web analytics on how many users are blocking analytics.
- rantwasp 7y ago
  yes, it's exactly like that and the police are now writing javascript to get the analytics /s
nullc 7y ago
I boggle at why security cameras would be sending the video offsite to a third party. Storing it locally is absurdly more efficient and ... actually compatible with having security unlike blindly sending the footage to a third party. Why have we normalized this absurd behavior?
- pdonis 7y ago
  > I boggle at why security cameras would be sending the video offsite to a third party. Ring isn't a "third party", they're the party from which users (of which I am one) buy the cameras and the services that go with them. One of the services is being able to see live views from your cameras, or watch stored videos, from anywhere through the app. This is very useful if you're away from home. Storing videos locally wouldn't support that.
  - MereInterest 7y ago
    Yes, storing video locally would support that. On request, the app and the local storage would negotiate a session key, and the video would be transferred to the phone. Ring would only have the encrypted video, and would not have the decryption key for it. Yes, it would be slower, would require video encoding/rescaling near the local storage, but it would actually be secure that way.
    - pdonis 7y ago
      > storing video locally would support that. On request, the app and the local storage would negotiate a session key, and the video would be transferred to the phone. How do they do that if the app is halfway across the country? They have to go through a common server.
      - paggle 7y ago
        With public key encryption.
        7y ago
british_india 7y ago
Anyone who uses a Nest or Ring device is asking for trouble.
alphabettsy 7y ago
Anyone have a good recommendation for similar products (near feature parity), with better privacy?
- moate 7y ago
  What are the key features you're looking for here? I mean security camera have been around forever. If you want something that backs up to the cloud instead of a local drive, there's tons of those as well. AFAIK The NetGear Arlo system is pretty good and doesn't sell your data to the cops.
- ckrailo 7y ago
  I'm a fan of https://unifi-protect.ui.com/ https://unifi-protect.ui.com/
JohnFen 7y ago
Of course they did. Ring is a dangerous trojan horse.
rc_kas 7y ago
I'm in the market for a doorbell Camera. What options besides ring are out there?
- abstractbarista 7y ago
  I use the Uniden DB1 doorbell camera. It is powered by existing wiring to your doorbell. It connects to your WiFi and has a web admin interface. Also some IR lights for night vision. It has a shitty app but instead I just pull the HD RTSP stream over the network into my DVR. Also integrated with Home Assistant for notifications and remote viewing. A good option for the technically-minded who want no sketchy remote access. https://www.amazon.com/Uniden-U-Bell-Doorbell-faceplates-DB1/dp/B075V9ZKTY https://www.amazon.com/Uniden-U-Bell-Doorbell-faceplates-DB1... They are resold under many names: https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B07888LWLM/ref=cm_cr_arp_mb_bdcrb_top?ie=UTF8 https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B07888LWLM/ref=cm_cr_arp_mb_b...
- chadlavi 7y ago
  Roll your own with a raspberry pi. More work, but also way less sneaky BS.
- fooey 7y ago
  There are rumors that Wyze has a doorbell camera under development Their regular cams are only $19.99, and I've been very happy with them so far. If they do a doorbell, that's definitely the way I'll be going.
- ngneer 7y ago
  My wife tells me uefy does local storage. Worth checking out.
imgabe 7y ago
> The request data acquired by Gizmodo, which covers a five-month period in 2018, showed that Ring customers in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, had largely ignored police requests for footage. Between May and September of 2018, the Fort Lauderdale Police Department issued 22 requests via Ring’s law enforcement portal. Those requests resulted in 319 emails being sent to residents asking them to hand over footage, a statistic that the company now says it keeps confidential. I wonder how much of this is just because who's going to believe some random email that "law enforcement" wants to see my security camera footage? We live in an age where the "IRS" calls every day to inform me that they're going to come arrest me, and I'm supposed to hand over surveillance footage to some random email? About a year ago someone was murdered near my office. Our office is in a townhouse in a mostly residential neighborhood. Detectives came by in person to ask if we had any surveillance cameras that might have footage they can look at to see if it might have the killer on it. They didn't just send an email.
- ben509 7y ago
  That was my immediate reaction. And it's very common for organizations to assume that we see an email from them or get a phone call or find a website claiming to be them and trust it. It's amazing how hard it is for people to grasp that I don't know who they are.
  - cwkoss 7y ago
    Also, to what extent can Ring verify that requests are from a real police officer who is currently employed? How rapidly can they invalidate portal credentials after an officer is fired? Do departments use shared credentials for these portals, and if so, how frequently are they rotated? Would be great if there was a national database of law enforcement officers' name and badge numbers, that typing in both with a match would show any member of the public an official image of the officer's face. I'd love to be able to authenticate whether someone is a cop before letting them into my home: fake badges are cheap. Similarly, would be cool to have a facial recognition database, so a citizen could take a picture of a cop's face to lookup name and badge number if they are a real cop, or report impersonation of an officer if they are not found.
shadowgovt 7y ago
In the common discourse around privacy and statistics, there are some gaps between people's expectations in different problem domains that come up. For example, it's perfectly reasonable to believe that a request not to have your information shared doesn't imply your information is not included in anonymized, aggregated statistics (much like not listing your address anywhere public doesn't imply you don't increment the population count of the city you live in, or the need for the police to have a reason to stop a vehicle doesn't imply cars driving around on public streets don't trigger traffic counters). But it's also perfectly reasonable to believe such a do-not-share request does imply do-not-aggregate. I think we still lack a common set of definitions and expectations in the public discourse to wrestle down what people really want out of privacy controls vs. what is practical to provide.
kraig 7y ago
I really wish Ubiquiti would put out a doorbell camera so I could dump these guys
geggam 7y ago
I have a ring doorbell.. it shows only they front driveway area of the house. This latest round of govt skirting around the 4th has me looking to replace it with a closed circuit system I control.
pg_is_a_butt 7y ago
I asked the police for help once, and instead they held me as the prime suspect and interrogated me until the problem solved itself without anyone's help, and then I was told I could go like they were doing me a favor. FUCK the police. They can eat shit.
campfireveteran 7y ago
"Big Brother is watching" but people forgot the crucial rest "... listening, measuring and recording, and people paid money for and installed him voluntarily."

368 points by eth0up 7y ago

The title makes it sound more nefarious than it is. The stats are simply "the percentage of users who agreed to share videos with you is X."

landcoctos 7y ago
Hopefully 100%. edit: Read as who agreed not to share. In that case, hopefully 0% agreed to share.
- Goronmon 7y ago
  It says users can review footage before sharing, so I could see situations where users reviewed footage and had no problem sharing the result. Doesn't seem like a big deal as long as its voluntary.
  - jermaustin1 7y ago
    I don't know how I feel about this. If someone who lives across the street from a Ring door bell, hasn't given permission to be filmed by Ring/their neighbor/etc, shouldn't they have a "reasonable expectation of privacy" on their own property?
    - flyingfences 7y ago
      No. You cannot reasonably expect privacy in plain view of a public roadway.
      - netsharc 7y ago
        Huh. Not OP, but if the view is constant, I would be very pissed off. If I walk naked out my front door right now, chances are low anyone will see me (quiet neighborhood, it's past midnight), but if OP does it, boom, there s/he is on camera. And the camera owner can extrapolate when OP/their family members are home or not, when people visit, etc, etc. Could that not be considered surveillance?
      - homonculus1 7y ago
        The law has not defined it as such. In reality, we absolutely expect our neighbors not to film our front doors 24/7 and give police access to the feed. The law is outdated and ought to be updated to protect against new abuses.
        flyingfences 7y ago
        Neither reality nor morality is defined by the law. Observation of public space is not "abuse" in any way.
        homonculus1 7y ago
        Clearly some forms of observation are abuse, while others aren't. If I repeatedly hide inside the bushes right outside your land and look into your house, I'm merely observing. I'm still a stalker. If I set up a camera to do the same, why is that better? People are constantly recording their neighbors' comings and goings, their visitors and associations, and sending that data to a bureaucratic megacorp that actively cozies up to law enforcement. "Observation of public space" is reductive, that's a cyberpunk nightmare. It's poisonous to free society.
    - kaikai 7y ago
      Unfortunately (?) there is no reasonable expectation of privacy for activities visible from public areas. That reasoning is used for everything from license plate scanners to upskirt videos.
    - JohnFen 7y ago
      This is actually my major objection to Ring. I'm glad that Ring surveillance gear has a unique light on it, so I know what neighborhoods to avoid. I'd want to avoid those neighborhoods partly to avoid being surveilled, and partly because if a neighborhood has more than the occasional Ring installed, that seems like a major indicator that the neighborhood has a high crime problem.
  - reaperducer 7y ago
    as long as its voluntary Until it isn't. All it takes is one person holding out in a neighborhood with a child kidnapping for enough hysteria to build for this to become legislated as mandatory.
  - Spooky23 7y ago
    Read the EULA. It's subject to change without notice, and your continued use is implied acceptance.
  - AlexandrB 7y ago
    The Snowden revelations were 6 years ago and since then there there has been no meaningful reigning in of federal surveillance power or of public/private surveillance "partnerships". The world in which Amazon/Ring would respect your wishes regarding the footage is not the one we live in.
- tdb7893 7y ago
  This is weird to be because I would share in most cases. I'm for pretty massive reforms in policing in the US but there are also burglaries, missing persons, and other investigations where I would definitely help when I could.
  - micmil 7y ago
    That should be your choice, with your knowledge.
  - Spooky23 7y ago
    It's really dumb. The only thing dumber is using cloud-hosted surveillance of your home. There are any number of solutions that store surveillance camera hits in your home on an SD card or hard disk. Police can subpoena this information if they want it. They will if they need it for a prosecution. This whole practice is all about saving Amazon money on discovery requests. If there's a serious event they'll canvass neighborhoods and look for cameras anyway and approach you directly. There are obvious issues with participating in something like this. The rules can change at any time, and you might find yourself in a pickle if you meet some vague description at a particular time of the day.
  - JohnFen 7y ago
    I probably wouldn't share -- I'd much, much prefer that the police actually get a warrant. But I also wouldn't be willing to install a surveillance camera that can be accessed by anybody except for me in the first place, so that's meaningless.
eth0up 7y ago
First, it should be emphasized that no warrant or even probable cause seems needed for LE to obtain video from Amazon directly when a customer refuses or ignores a request.[1] Secondly, there is valid reason for concern if a customer declines compliance and is identified/profiled as a result. 1. https://reason.com/2019/08/09/no-probable-cause-required-for-cops-to-access-user-data-from-popular-apps/ https://reason.com/2019/08/09/no-probable-cause-required-for... Additional points of concern: https://boingboing.net/2019/08/06/ring-ring-snitchphone-2.html https://boingboing.net/2019/08/06/ring-ring-snitchphone-2.ht... https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/43kga3/amazon-is-coaching-cops-on-how-to-obtain-surveillance-footage-without-a-warrant https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/43kga3/amazon-is-coaching...
nitwit005 7y ago
Yes, I don't particularly have an issue with sharing email response rates. The police can figure it out if they want to. They can just divide the amount of footage received by the number of ring doorbells on front doors.
danso 7y ago
The article says that Ring keeps track of how many users ignore/take no action, and how many explicitly push the “Do not share” button in the emails.
anigbrowl 7y ago
The subtext of that is that such data is collected and stored, and can thus become the object of a warrant request at some future date. Your disinclination to assist today could be redefined as a crime tomorrow.
blondin 7y ago
well also... assuming "maybe" or "skip" are not valid answers, if you have the people who answered "yes", don't you indirectly also have those who said "no"?

annoyingnoob 7y ago

One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them, One Ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them

_bxg1 7y ago
Didn't realize Peter Thiel was involved in Ring

maximente 7y ago

of course they did! Ring's PR strategy heavily involves law enforcement: they feed LE juicy surveillance in order to get softball quotes that play on people's insecurity about how infrequent crime actually is, thus increasing their incentive to buy Ring stuff, increasing Ring's market share, surveillance collection potential, and making law enforcement more and more supportive. getting a permanently funded government agency as an advocate for your thing is a great startup play: you'll easily crush competitors and roll your way into an enshrined monopoly because "we cannot possibly lose this valuable tool against criminals everywhere"

scarface74 7y ago
Isn’t that the same scare tactics that gun manufacturers use? They act as if anyone is dumb if they don’t carry around an automatic weapon to protect themselves against the lawless hordes roaming the streets of suburban America.
- dsr_ 7y ago
  Every issue of the NRA's monthly magazine has a column that runs reports of people defending themselves with guns. They are typically not sourced well enough for an independent confirmation.
  - CompanionCuuube 7y ago
    And practically none of them are against "lawless hordes". Who would have thought? Edit: Some people getting angry about their juvenile strawman being pointed out.
  - Frondo 7y ago
    Letters to Penthouse, NRA Edition
    - dsr_ 7y ago
      Typically third person rather than first, but it's not clear that they have much greater factual basis.

legitster 7y ago

This is like getting web analytics on how many users are blocking analytics.

rantwasp 7y ago
yes, it's exactly like that and the police are now writing javascript to get the analytics /s

nullc 7y ago

I boggle at why security cameras would be sending the video offsite to a third party. Storing it locally is absurdly more efficient and ... actually compatible with having security unlike blindly sending the footage to a third party. Why have we normalized this absurd behavior?

pdonis 7y ago
> I boggle at why security cameras would be sending the video offsite to a third party. Ring isn't a "third party", they're the party from which users (of which I am one) buy the cameras and the services that go with them. One of the services is being able to see live views from your cameras, or watch stored videos, from anywhere through the app. This is very useful if you're away from home. Storing videos locally wouldn't support that.
- MereInterest 7y ago
  Yes, storing video locally would support that. On request, the app and the local storage would negotiate a session key, and the video would be transferred to the phone. Ring would only have the encrypted video, and would not have the decryption key for it. Yes, it would be slower, would require video encoding/rescaling near the local storage, but it would actually be secure that way.
  - pdonis 7y ago
    > storing video locally would support that. On request, the app and the local storage would negotiate a session key, and the video would be transferred to the phone. How do they do that if the app is halfway across the country? They have to go through a common server.
    - paggle 7y ago
      With public key encryption.
      - 7y ago

british_india 7y ago

Anyone who uses a Nest or Ring device is asking for trouble.

alphabettsy 7y ago

Anyone have a good recommendation for similar products (near feature parity), with better privacy?

moate 7y ago
What are the key features you're looking for here? I mean security camera have been around forever. If you want something that backs up to the cloud instead of a local drive, there's tons of those as well. AFAIK The NetGear Arlo system is pretty good and doesn't sell your data to the cops.
ckrailo 7y ago
I'm a fan of https://unifi-protect.ui.com/ https://unifi-protect.ui.com/

JohnFen 7y ago

Of course they did. Ring is a dangerous trojan horse.

rc_kas 7y ago

I'm in the market for a doorbell Camera. What options besides ring are out there?

abstractbarista 7y ago
I use the Uniden DB1 doorbell camera. It is powered by existing wiring to your doorbell. It connects to your WiFi and has a web admin interface. Also some IR lights for night vision. It has a shitty app but instead I just pull the HD RTSP stream over the network into my DVR. Also integrated with Home Assistant for notifications and remote viewing. A good option for the technically-minded who want no sketchy remote access. https://www.amazon.com/Uniden-U-Bell-Doorbell-faceplates-DB1/dp/B075V9ZKTY https://www.amazon.com/Uniden-U-Bell-Doorbell-faceplates-DB1... They are resold under many names: https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B07888LWLM/ref=cm_cr_arp_mb_bdcrb_top?ie=UTF8 https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B07888LWLM/ref=cm_cr_arp_mb_b...
chadlavi 7y ago
Roll your own with a raspberry pi. More work, but also way less sneaky BS.
fooey 7y ago
There are rumors that Wyze has a doorbell camera under development Their regular cams are only $19.99, and I've been very happy with them so far. If they do a doorbell, that's definitely the way I'll be going.
ngneer 7y ago
My wife tells me uefy does local storage. Worth checking out.

imgabe 7y ago

> The request data acquired by Gizmodo, which covers a five-month period in 2018, showed that Ring customers in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, had largely ignored police requests for footage. Between May and September of 2018, the Fort Lauderdale Police Department issued 22 requests via Ring’s law enforcement portal. Those requests resulted in 319 emails being sent to residents asking them to hand over footage, a statistic that the company now says it keeps confidential. I wonder how much of this is just because who's going to believe some random email that "law enforcement" wants to see my security camera footage? We live in an age where the "IRS" calls every day to inform me that they're going to come arrest me, and I'm supposed to hand over surveillance footage to some random email? About a year ago someone was murdered near my office. Our office is in a townhouse in a mostly residential neighborhood. Detectives came by in person to ask if we had any surveillance cameras that might have footage they can look at to see if it might have the killer on it. They didn't just send an email.

ben509 7y ago
That was my immediate reaction. And it's very common for organizations to assume that we see an email from them or get a phone call or find a website claiming to be them and trust it. It's amazing how hard it is for people to grasp that I don't know who they are.
- cwkoss 7y ago
  Also, to what extent can Ring verify that requests are from a real police officer who is currently employed? How rapidly can they invalidate portal credentials after an officer is fired? Do departments use shared credentials for these portals, and if so, how frequently are they rotated? Would be great if there was a national database of law enforcement officers' name and badge numbers, that typing in both with a match would show any member of the public an official image of the officer's face. I'd love to be able to authenticate whether someone is a cop before letting them into my home: fake badges are cheap. Similarly, would be cool to have a facial recognition database, so a citizen could take a picture of a cop's face to lookup name and badge number if they are a real cop, or report impersonation of an officer if they are not found.

shadowgovt 7y ago

In the common discourse around privacy and statistics, there are some gaps between people's expectations in different problem domains that come up. For example, it's perfectly reasonable to believe that a request not to have your information shared doesn't imply your information is not included in anonymized, aggregated statistics (much like not listing your address anywhere public doesn't imply you don't increment the population count of the city you live in, or the need for the police to have a reason to stop a vehicle doesn't imply cars driving around on public streets don't trigger traffic counters). But it's also perfectly reasonable to believe such a do-not-share request does imply do-not-aggregate. I think we still lack a common set of definitions and expectations in the public discourse to wrestle down what people really want out of privacy controls vs. what is practical to provide.

kraig 7y ago

I really wish Ubiquiti would put out a doorbell camera so I could dump these guys

geggam 7y ago

I have a ring doorbell.. it shows only they front driveway area of the house. This latest round of govt skirting around the 4th has me looking to replace it with a closed circuit system I control.

pg_is_a_butt 7y ago

I asked the police for help once, and instead they held me as the prime suspect and interrogated me until the problem solved itself without anyone's help, and then I was told I could go like they were doing me a favor. FUCK the police. They can eat shit.

campfireveteran 7y ago

"Big Brother is watching" but people forgot the crucial rest "... listening, measuring and recording, and people paid money for and installed him voluntarily."