6 ms·

No, but my camera watching what happens outside of my house is also not the same as a police camera. I didn't have such a camera at my old house, but if I did,

by jsight 7y ago

No, but my camera watching what happens outside of my house is also not the same as a police camera. I didn't have such a camera at my old house, but if I did, there were several happenings that would have been reported to police.

reaperducer 7y ago
there were several happenings that would have been reported to police. Reported. Not prevented. The companies that make money off of law enforcement have conditioned people to believe cameras=prevention and camera=safety, which is false.
- Tempest1981 7y ago
  True, but camera=deterrent?
  - jacobsenscott 7y ago
    Certainly not a ring doorbell camera. Mine is so slow to respond to motion it won't capture a pic unless you walk up to it and stand in one spot for a few seconds. 99% of my motion events are just an empty street. You can fast walk up to a ring doorbell camera and knock it off the wall, or just cover it with a piece of tape, before it has a chance to capture a picture. I would bet this is true of most consumer level "security" cameras.
    - Baeocystin 7y ago
      Oddly enough, they used to be faster. I have a Gen-1 ring, and for the first two years I had it, it would dutifully record folks walking up the path to my front door. Nowadays, unless it's the UPS guy waiting for a signature, it's 30 seconds of empty street, just like you said. It's enough of a change to genuinely decrease the utility of the camera.
    - cwalv 7y ago
      This is funny because it's true. The wired "pro" version works a lot better (it does reliably capture video from just before the motion was detected until the end of the event), but you can still just knock the camera off the wall since it takes a couple minutes to upload the footage to the mothership (even with a solid wifi connection and 1 gig symmetric fiber connection beyond that)
- jsight 7y ago
  These were vehicle related incidents. The important thing would be to get better descriptions of the vehicle to (hopefully) help with a later financial claim. Prevention is really a secondary goal.
matthewmacleod 7y ago
I think the general issue though is that devices like this exist in kind of a grey area of ownership. Yeah, it's "your" camera or "my" camera, but in reality they're wholly dependent on services provided by Amazon or Google or whatever other large data collator. And while there are pretty obvious reasons for that to be the case, it also opens up a rather large dragnet-style video surveillance system that looks juicy as heck to certain groups, and we have to rely on "large company not known for amazing defence of privacy" to prevent this. I mean, I have a couple of Nest cameras at home. They're useful, but even relatively recently Google forced an update that disabled some features. And despite the hardware being totally capable of it, there's no way for me to connect to it and get a video stream. I have to rely on a shitfest of an app and fork over money for any usable history. At that point… is it really "your" camera?
- jsight 7y ago
  I still think it is my camera, even if I chose a camera that is dependent upon third party services. I've had similar frustrations with them, though. The Ring doorbell is so slow to respond that it borders on uselessness for certain tasks. I really wish that I could just monitor an RTSP feed from it. I'm thinking that it will be replaced with one that is able to do that eventually.
heavyset_go 7y ago
Ring lets law enforcement know that potential video evidence exists, and with that knowledge, they can go to a judge and get a warrant for it. Law enforcement can do this without ever letting the user who recorded the video know. For that reason, it's essentially a police camera. The police can ask nicely for the video footage, and if you don't cooperate, they can easily get a warrant to obtain the potential evidence from Ring.
- throwaway_tech 7y ago
  >The police can ask nicely for the video footage, and if you don't cooperate, they can easily get a warrant to obtain the potential evidence from Ring. Or they could get the warrant to obtain the video directly from you....they just have 1 more option when a 3rd party vendor is involved that has a copy. It doesn't matter if it is Ring or CCTV, so I'm not sure the practical difference that you would classify 1 as a police camera and the other not, no matter what if your camera captures a crime the police will likely be able to get a warrant for it whether you have to turn it over or Ring does. I think most people would rather a vendor like ring have to deal with warrants on their behalf.
  - heavyset_go 7y ago
    > Or they could get the warrant to obtain the video directly from you.... They'd need knowledge that your cameras even exist. Ring provides an easy to use map of their surveillance network.
  - throwaway393955 7y ago
    They don't need a warrant necessarily, just a subpoena. And with Ring, you never would get a chance to challenge it, because you're not the recipient.

by jsight 7y ago

reaperducer 7y ago

there were several happenings that would have been reported to police. Reported. Not prevented. The companies that make money off of law enforcement have conditioned people to believe cameras=prevention and camera=safety, which is false.

Tempest1981 7y ago
True, but camera=deterrent?
- jacobsenscott 7y ago
  Certainly not a ring doorbell camera. Mine is so slow to respond to motion it won't capture a pic unless you walk up to it and stand in one spot for a few seconds. 99% of my motion events are just an empty street. You can fast walk up to a ring doorbell camera and knock it off the wall, or just cover it with a piece of tape, before it has a chance to capture a picture. I would bet this is true of most consumer level "security" cameras.
  - Baeocystin 7y ago
    Oddly enough, they used to be faster. I have a Gen-1 ring, and for the first two years I had it, it would dutifully record folks walking up the path to my front door. Nowadays, unless it's the UPS guy waiting for a signature, it's 30 seconds of empty street, just like you said. It's enough of a change to genuinely decrease the utility of the camera.
  - cwalv 7y ago
    This is funny because it's true. The wired "pro" version works a lot better (it does reliably capture video from just before the motion was detected until the end of the event), but you can still just knock the camera off the wall since it takes a couple minutes to upload the footage to the mothership (even with a solid wifi connection and 1 gig symmetric fiber connection beyond that)
jsight 7y ago
These were vehicle related incidents. The important thing would be to get better descriptions of the vehicle to (hopefully) help with a later financial claim. Prevention is really a secondary goal.

matthewmacleod 7y ago

I think the general issue though is that devices like this exist in kind of a grey area of ownership. Yeah, it's "your" camera or "my" camera, but in reality they're wholly dependent on services provided by Amazon or Google or whatever other large data collator. And while there are pretty obvious reasons for that to be the case, it also opens up a rather large dragnet-style video surveillance system that looks juicy as heck to certain groups, and we have to rely on "large company not known for amazing defence of privacy" to prevent this. I mean, I have a couple of Nest cameras at home. They're useful, but even relatively recently Google forced an update that disabled some features. And despite the hardware being totally capable of it, there's no way for me to connect to it and get a video stream. I have to rely on a shitfest of an app and fork over money for any usable history. At that point… is it really "your" camera?

jsight 7y ago
I still think it is my camera, even if I chose a camera that is dependent upon third party services. I've had similar frustrations with them, though. The Ring doorbell is so slow to respond that it borders on uselessness for certain tasks. I really wish that I could just monitor an RTSP feed from it. I'm thinking that it will be replaced with one that is able to do that eventually.

heavyset_go 7y ago

Ring lets law enforcement know that potential video evidence exists, and with that knowledge, they can go to a judge and get a warrant for it. Law enforcement can do this without ever letting the user who recorded the video know. For that reason, it's essentially a police camera. The police can ask nicely for the video footage, and if you don't cooperate, they can easily get a warrant to obtain the potential evidence from Ring.

throwaway_tech 7y ago
>The police can ask nicely for the video footage, and if you don't cooperate, they can easily get a warrant to obtain the potential evidence from Ring. Or they could get the warrant to obtain the video directly from you....they just have 1 more option when a 3rd party vendor is involved that has a copy. It doesn't matter if it is Ring or CCTV, so I'm not sure the practical difference that you would classify 1 as a police camera and the other not, no matter what if your camera captures a crime the police will likely be able to get a warrant for it whether you have to turn it over or Ring does. I think most people would rather a vendor like ring have to deal with warrants on their behalf.
- heavyset_go 7y ago
  > Or they could get the warrant to obtain the video directly from you.... They'd need knowledge that your cameras even exist. Ring provides an easy to use map of their surveillance network.
- throwaway393955 7y ago
  They don't need a warrant necessarily, just a subpoena. And with Ring, you never would get a chance to challenge it, because you're not the recipient.