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As someone who tends to fall on the side of privacy more often than not, I'm actually not sure how I feel about facial recog+home security cameras. I'm complet

As someone who tends to fall on the side of privacy more often than not, I'm actually not sure how I feel about facial recog+home security cameras. I'm completely against any fully automated system where the police can have access to the camera's data. But on the other hand, what if the system was implemented completely locally, and all with the owner's control and permission? So your Ring app pops up and says "Hey, your local police department is looking for a suspect and your camera spotted them. Would you like to share the footage?". So many petty crimes (e.g. home burglaries, car breakins, etc) go unsolved because the police just don't have the tools and resources to go after all those crimes. I have neighbors who've had their homes and cars broken into. It's a violating experience, and I think it's justified to want the perpetrators of those crimes caught and sentenced appropriately; at the very least to dissuade others. Within the context of a well built, local, permissioned system, I'm not sure I'm against it. Of course A) The likes of Amazon would never build such a system responsibly; they'd rather gobble up and abuse the data themselves. B) There are serious security concerns, as evidenced by TFA. C) Civil disobedience and similar acts are an important part of democratic society, and mass surveillance, responsible or not, threatens that. And finally, D) something which I think everyone misses when it comes to facial recognition systems ... they're still not very good. SOTA published recog systems make a mistake on 1 in 1000 faces (http://vis-www.cs.umass.edu/lfw/results.html http://vis-www.cs.umass.edu/lfw/results.html), and that's on LFW which is fairly high quality. I'm sure FAANG does better, and SOTA will continue to improve quickly, but is that good enough for this kind of application? So I'm torn.

trevyn 7y ago
How do you know the request is connected to violation of a law you agree with?
- mikepurvis 7y ago
  If nothing else, you could review the footage yourself before deciding to share. If they person the system thinks it recognized looks like they're minding their own business, bury it.
- fpgaminer 7y ago
  You raise an excellent point. It's certainly possible for the notification to specify what crime is being investigated. I'd say that's an important addition, for the reasons you've alluded to. And interestingly enough I've seen things just like that. The "police" at my old college would occasionally send out emails if they were looking for a suspect. The emails would always include a brief description of the alleged crime. Perhaps they included that as a means to motivate people into reporting. I wonder if they'd have second thoughts about it if they knew some witnesses would explicitly not report anything if it was related to a crime they didn't agree with (for example, marijuana use).
mikepurvis 7y ago
I'm a four season bike commuter, and have been wearing a helmet cam for the past year or so— it's just breathtaking the amount of small violations I catch on camera: I don't even go looking for them or dwell at hotspots, and I pick up probably 5-10 instances per week of things like cars turning right on red without fully stopping, going through stop signs without fully stopping, not fully yielding to pedestrians in crosswalks, changing lanes in roundabouts/intersections, etc etc. As it is, it's a huge amount of effort to slice out these clips, upload them somewhere, figure out the plates involved, and then go through my police department's clunky incident reporting system. On the handful of times I've bothered to do it (like when I was almost creamed by someone running a red light), the response has been either nothing or "thanks but we just don't have time for that", or in one case an indication that they would be unable to charge the person unless I also had a face shot of who it was in the driver's seat. Now, we can argue until we're blue in the face about whether it's right to snitch on people for these "victimless crimes", but I suspect (and commenters like Neil Arason agree) that more consistent enforcement would go a long way toward promoting safer and more respectful driving. A lot fewer people would drift through stop signs and crosswalks if they didn't think they could get away with it 99% of the time. All that to say, if there was a portal somewhere where I could just upload my timestamped helmet cam and porch cam videos as part of a dragnet operation to identify and catch repeat violators of the rules of the road, I'd be awfully tempted to participate, despite ideological misgivings about pervasive surveillance.
- catalogia 7y ago
  > As it is, it's a huge amount of effort to slice out these clips, upload them somewhere, figure out the plates involved, and then go through my police department's clunky incident reporting system. On the handful of times I've bothered to do it (like when I was almost creamed by someone running a red light), the response has been either nothing or "thanks but we just don't have time for that", or in one case an indication that they would be unable to charge the person unless I also had a face shot of the driver." They're probably just sick of the cyclist who fancies himself an amateur traffic cop and want you to go away.
  - huebomont 7y ago
anarchodev 7y ago
Consider that nobody breaks into your home/vehicles because it's fun. They do it out of desperation. I'm not alleging any ignorance on your part, it's just not the sort of thing we think about often. The penalties for these crimes are already extremely severe. So I fall on the side of, I'd rather change the system proximally to help those who resort to this sort of petty crime for cash so they don't need it, rather than making it easier for cops to put these people back into a system which enslaves and disenfranchises them for generations (leading to more crime), and in so doing gives them an excuse to monitor literally anyone else in your neighborhood without a warrant for any reason.
- susijdjdjxa 7y ago
  If someone robbed your home and you recognized them, would you report them to the police?
  - anarchodev 7y ago
    Absolutely not. I don't want police anywhere near my community. EDIT: Yeah I don't call the cops. Go ahead and downvote I guess, or feel free to try another hypothetical you came up with in your head for this discussion.
    - throwawayhhakdl 7y ago
      What if someone shoots you in the leg and robs your house?
    - susijdjdjxa 7y ago
      I didn’t downvote you.
- baddox 7y ago
  The fact that some people commit crimes out of desperation isn’t a very good argument for removing disincentives to commit crimes. You don’t lock your door at night because you think someone might break in for fun and you want to deprive them of that fun. You lock your door to protect your family and your belongings. The question of moral culpability might be relevant when discussing legal punishments, rehabilitation, social welfare, etc. but it really isn’t relevant to what basic measures one can take to protect their home. To use an extreme example, someone could be forced under duress to break into your home. They clearly wouldn’t be morally culpable, but that simply isn’t relevant. You still lock your doors.
xkcd-sucks 7y ago
Would you be interested in a marketplace where video you record could be made available (indexed by time and location) for purchase by interested parties? The goal here is to make video surveillance data equally accessible to police as to the general public for e.g. court defense, police brutality proof, insurance claims etc.
- fpgaminer 7y ago
  I'm happy to share footage from my cameras with neighbors who need it for anything like the reasons you've listed. I don't see why a for-profit marketplace would be needed for any of that?
  - freeone3000 7y ago
    1) to encourage mass surveillance of citizens by citizens 2) to allow people with money and power easier access to discredit their rivals 3) in order for a founder and a small team to be millionaires from profiting on the above
    - xkcd-sucks 7y ago
      Yes, with the additional goal of raising awareness + accelerating social backlash against surveillance
clairity 7y ago
you seem to draw a clear line between what you think is acceptable and what is not (mass, open, profit-driven surveillance = bad; local, secure, personal camera = ok), so i'm not sure why you're torn? in any case, that seems to be a good delineation. one further issue to consider is the capture of spaces/property other than your own. cameras should be pointed at your property only, and not used to generally surveil public spaces (legal but icky) or other private property (legally murky).
throwthisaway2 7y ago
Heres the real question. Is it more safe. The answer is,not really. We already have the ability to create complex locks. But if someone holds you at gun point to get into your house it matters,little if the code is a key or algo. 2nd amendment is the only true prevention. Make the crooks pay too much for the treasure.
math0ne 7y ago
The founder of Ring was on an episode of the Vergecast where he describes this exact system. I'm not sure how far they are with this but it was clear that his goal is a system like that. I'm pretty sure this is it: https://www.theverge.com/2018/10/9/17953050/ring-ceo-jamie-siminoff-interview-smart-video-doorbell-security-police https://www.theverge.com/2018/10/9/17953050/ring-ceo-jamie-s...
krick 7y ago
> So your Ring app pops up and says "Hey, your local police department is looking for a suspect and your camera spotted them. Would you like to share the footage?". This doesn't sound ok at all. I won't delve into a thousand reasons why I don't like the idea, but let's just start with that answering "no" to that question can be easily treated as the obstruction of justice. So, to cut it short, if I'm not volunteering to lend my video feed to local police department by installing some additional plug-in that would download people faces from their DB and scanning the street for them, it shouldn't even attempt to by default.
- wpietri 7y ago
  I don't think that's anything like obstruction of justice under US law. If you were right, then so too would be recognizing a face from a wanted poster and not calling the police. It isn't even obstruction of justice if they explicitly ask you something and you refuse to respond: https://www.aclu.org/know-your-rights/what-do-when-encountering-law-enforcement-questioning/ https://www.aclu.org/know-your-rights/what-do-when-encounter... So I don't see how not responding to a question they didn't ask could be illegal.
  - xmprt 7y ago
    It's a blurred line though. If the police know that the perpetrator was in line of sight of your camera and they knew you had the footage, then not giving it to them is a lot closer to obstruction of justice than the example you gave. I'm no lawyer but I'm sure a competent one would be able to argue either side.
    - kortilla 7y ago
      If they have a warrant, sure.
    - wpietri 7y ago
      Only if they ask for it in a way where you're legally compelled to give to them. Otherwise, no. Cops want things all the time, like searching without a warrant. But not doing what they want isn't obstruction.
tyingq 7y ago
Nextdoor ended up with issues around this sort of thing. Like people posting images of neighborhood people that didn't "look like" they belonged there.
heavyset_go 7y ago
> So your Ring app pops up and says "Hey, your local police department is looking for a suspect and your camera spotted them. Would you like to share the footage?" This is enough information for the police to get a warrant or subpoena for your footage. Ring's business model involves integration with law enforcement, and as long as you keep them in the loop, that means the existence of your video evidence will be passed on to police. With that knowledge, law enforcement doesn't need your permission to get access to your videos, they just need to get a warrant or subpoena for them.
mdorazio 7y ago
I understand your position, but have a few issues with it. 1) Why do you need a camera facing outside from your door to deter or help solve burglaries? Burglars generally steal things inside houses (assuming we're not talking about porch pirates, which is a separate issue). A ring-style camera pointed at your neighbors constantly isn't needed - put a camera inside your home if you're concerned about burglars. 2) If you start using ring-style cameras en masse to solve crimes, the criminals are just going to adapt to the expectation that there's a front door camera and commit crimes in ways that circumvent that single point (ex. go in the back door or side window, wear a mask, use a fake license plate, etc. I don't really see this solving any underlying problems - it's more of a temporary solution that escalates the surveillance state model to another level via an arms race.
- jolmg 7y ago
  I'm not in favor or against it, but I think you misunderstood the point of the post you replied to. > Why do you need a camera facing outside from your door to deter or help solve burglaries? Burglars generally steal things inside houses If the police tells you they're looking for a suspect and that if you could help by supplying some of your footage of the outside, I think it's probably not burglars trying to steal from you. They could be any kind of suspect that the police at least have good reason to believe passed through the front of your home. Maybe they committed a crime at a neighbor's home. Maybe they're driving from far away, and the police heard that they might have passed through your street. > If you start using ring-style cameras en masse to solve crimes, the criminals are just going to adapt to the expectation that there's a front door camera and commit crimes in ways that circumvent that single point They'd also need to circumvent the points of maybe a few other homes nearby that cover the whole of the house the criminal is trying to get into.
  - mdorazio 7y ago
    Thanks for the response. I think I wasn't clear. The problem here is that if you support this kind of thing for hypothetical "catch the bad guy" situations that don't happen inside your own home where an indoor camera might make sense, we might as well just put a camera on every street corner running 24/7 and be done with it. If you're willing to cede your neighbors' privacy in the name of safety, well, there's a quote for that about liberty. It's important to note that in an actual courtroom or investigation setting, having blurry footage of a person across the street really isn't very helpful unless you're going full-on dragnet and intend to track their every movement over a period of hours. Foiling any investigation involving rings is pretty trivial otherwise - wear a mask and nondescript clothing and the video footage is pretty much useless.
anongraddebt 7y ago
There is an argument that is sometimes made in this debate, and it concerns the gradual nature of the change to our privacy rights (or just privacy). It is an old argument. It took a number of years for me to convince myself that it was right. But it is a correct argument. In a round about way, the argument ends up concluding that we are, in fact, on some version of a slippery slope. We can see that slope quite clearly in what you write: "So many petty crimes (e.g. home burglaries, car breakins, etc) go unsolved because the police just don't have the tools and resources to go after all those crimes." Even just ten years ago, a number of the ideas being batted around now about privacy would have seemed alien. I understand that attitudes can change, but do we have the right attitudes now? Are they good attitudes? The attitude that sees nothing wrong with seriously contemplating whether it's a net good to have the police sitting in a tiny camera outside your front door? Go back a couple decades and we would have been appalled at the notion. Sometimes I surprise myself with how much ground I've given up already (even if just on a personal level).
- lopmotr 7y ago
  I think it's a particularly American idea to want to cripple the police. They don't trust their government or their police, and perhaps rightly so, I don't know. Where I'm from, I would be happy if the police could use cameras everywhere to catch all the horrible petty crimes. People get their lifetime collections of things trashed and stolen during burglaries. It's quite upsetting for the victims. The police usually can't do anything because there's no-body to talk to. If their computer could tell them who somebody is by their face, then we'd all be safer and happier. There are also actual murders that go unsolved because there's again no-one to talk to. If the police themselves are corrupt and abuse their power, that's a problem, but it's a separate problem that not every country faces. If I was an American, I'd want to have proper accountability for the police first. They should be held to a higher standard than ordinary people, not a lower standard, like it seems they are.
  - Mirioron 7y ago
    I don't think it's uniquely American at all. It's weird to me that some places don't feel this way. Remember that every state-caused atrocity is aided by the police in some way. Even if you're okay with the police right now, you might not be in 30 years. Also, I think the chance of the police (as a group) not being corrupt is about the same as politicians (as a group) not being corrupt - essentially zero. The incentives just aren't there for there to be no corruption in law enforcement. And even if there's no corruption in law enforcement and your government is great, you still have to remember that police officers generally aren't the cream of the crop of society. They make mistakes and there usually isn't much recourse.
tsukurimashou 7y ago
on what planet are you living in and what did you smoke, I can't agree with anything you said
tripzilch 7y ago
> So your Ring app pops up and says "Hey, your local police department is looking for a suspect and your camera spotted them. Would you like to share the footage?". Yes it would be absolutely super if apps asked permission before sending your private data to a third party. But we all know that because presumably there exist sufficient software engineers that do not consider the ramifications of their work (like AT ALL), this just isn't the way commercial software is going currently.

trevyn 7y ago

How do you know the request is connected to violation of a law you agree with?

mikepurvis 7y ago
If nothing else, you could review the footage yourself before deciding to share. If they person the system thinks it recognized looks like they're minding their own business, bury it.
fpgaminer 7y ago
You raise an excellent point. It's certainly possible for the notification to specify what crime is being investigated. I'd say that's an important addition, for the reasons you've alluded to. And interestingly enough I've seen things just like that. The "police" at my old college would occasionally send out emails if they were looking for a suspect. The emails would always include a brief description of the alleged crime. Perhaps they included that as a means to motivate people into reporting. I wonder if they'd have second thoughts about it if they knew some witnesses would explicitly not report anything if it was related to a crime they didn't agree with (for example, marijuana use).

mikepurvis 7y ago

I'm a four season bike commuter, and have been wearing a helmet cam for the past year or so— it's just breathtaking the amount of small violations I catch on camera: I don't even go looking for them or dwell at hotspots, and I pick up probably 5-10 instances per week of things like cars turning right on red without fully stopping, going through stop signs without fully stopping, not fully yielding to pedestrians in crosswalks, changing lanes in roundabouts/intersections, etc etc. As it is, it's a huge amount of effort to slice out these clips, upload them somewhere, figure out the plates involved, and then go through my police department's clunky incident reporting system. On the handful of times I've bothered to do it (like when I was almost creamed by someone running a red light), the response has been either nothing or "thanks but we just don't have time for that", or in one case an indication that they would be unable to charge the person unless I also had a face shot of who it was in the driver's seat. Now, we can argue until we're blue in the face about whether it's right to snitch on people for these "victimless crimes", but I suspect (and commenters like Neil Arason agree) that more consistent enforcement would go a long way toward promoting safer and more respectful driving. A lot fewer people would drift through stop signs and crosswalks if they didn't think they could get away with it 99% of the time. All that to say, if there was a portal somewhere where I could just upload my timestamped helmet cam and porch cam videos as part of a dragnet operation to identify and catch repeat violators of the rules of the road, I'd be awfully tempted to participate, despite ideological misgivings about pervasive surveillance.

catalogia 7y ago
> As it is, it's a huge amount of effort to slice out these clips, upload them somewhere, figure out the plates involved, and then go through my police department's clunky incident reporting system. On the handful of times I've bothered to do it (like when I was almost creamed by someone running a red light), the response has been either nothing or "thanks but we just don't have time for that", or in one case an indication that they would be unable to charge the person unless I also had a face shot of the driver." They're probably just sick of the cyclist who fancies himself an amateur traffic cop and want you to go away.
- huebomont 7y ago

anarchodev 7y ago

Consider that nobody breaks into your home/vehicles because it's fun. They do it out of desperation. I'm not alleging any ignorance on your part, it's just not the sort of thing we think about often. The penalties for these crimes are already extremely severe. So I fall on the side of, I'd rather change the system proximally to help those who resort to this sort of petty crime for cash so they don't need it, rather than making it easier for cops to put these people back into a system which enslaves and disenfranchises them for generations (leading to more crime), and in so doing gives them an excuse to monitor literally anyone else in your neighborhood without a warrant for any reason.

susijdjdjxa 7y ago
If someone robbed your home and you recognized them, would you report them to the police?
- anarchodev 7y ago
  Absolutely not. I don't want police anywhere near my community. EDIT: Yeah I don't call the cops. Go ahead and downvote I guess, or feel free to try another hypothetical you came up with in your head for this discussion.
  - throwawayhhakdl 7y ago
    What if someone shoots you in the leg and robs your house?
  - susijdjdjxa 7y ago
    I didn’t downvote you.
baddox 7y ago
The fact that some people commit crimes out of desperation isn’t a very good argument for removing disincentives to commit crimes. You don’t lock your door at night because you think someone might break in for fun and you want to deprive them of that fun. You lock your door to protect your family and your belongings. The question of moral culpability might be relevant when discussing legal punishments, rehabilitation, social welfare, etc. but it really isn’t relevant to what basic measures one can take to protect their home. To use an extreme example, someone could be forced under duress to break into your home. They clearly wouldn’t be morally culpable, but that simply isn’t relevant. You still lock your doors.

xkcd-sucks 7y ago

Would you be interested in a marketplace where video you record could be made available (indexed by time and location) for purchase by interested parties? The goal here is to make video surveillance data equally accessible to police as to the general public for e.g. court defense, police brutality proof, insurance claims etc.

fpgaminer 7y ago
I'm happy to share footage from my cameras with neighbors who need it for anything like the reasons you've listed. I don't see why a for-profit marketplace would be needed for any of that?
- freeone3000 7y ago
  1) to encourage mass surveillance of citizens by citizens 2) to allow people with money and power easier access to discredit their rivals 3) in order for a founder and a small team to be millionaires from profiting on the above
  - xkcd-sucks 7y ago
    Yes, with the additional goal of raising awareness + accelerating social backlash against surveillance

clairity 7y ago

you seem to draw a clear line between what you think is acceptable and what is not (mass, open, profit-driven surveillance = bad; local, secure, personal camera = ok), so i'm not sure why you're torn? in any case, that seems to be a good delineation. one further issue to consider is the capture of spaces/property other than your own. cameras should be pointed at your property only, and not used to generally surveil public spaces (legal but icky) or other private property (legally murky).

throwthisaway2 7y ago

Heres the real question. Is it more safe. The answer is,not really. We already have the ability to create complex locks. But if someone holds you at gun point to get into your house it matters,little if the code is a key or algo. 2nd amendment is the only true prevention. Make the crooks pay too much for the treasure.

math0ne 7y ago

The founder of Ring was on an episode of the Vergecast where he describes this exact system. I'm not sure how far they are with this but it was clear that his goal is a system like that. I'm pretty sure this is it: https://www.theverge.com/2018/10/9/17953050/ring-ceo-jamie-siminoff-interview-smart-video-doorbell-security-police https://www.theverge.com/2018/10/9/17953050/ring-ceo-jamie-s...

krick 7y ago

> So your Ring app pops up and says "Hey, your local police department is looking for a suspect and your camera spotted them. Would you like to share the footage?". This doesn't sound ok at all. I won't delve into a thousand reasons why I don't like the idea, but let's just start with that answering "no" to that question can be easily treated as the obstruction of justice. So, to cut it short, if I'm not volunteering to lend my video feed to local police department by installing some additional plug-in that would download people faces from their DB and scanning the street for them, it shouldn't even attempt to by default.

wpietri 7y ago
I don't think that's anything like obstruction of justice under US law. If you were right, then so too would be recognizing a face from a wanted poster and not calling the police. It isn't even obstruction of justice if they explicitly ask you something and you refuse to respond: https://www.aclu.org/know-your-rights/what-do-when-encountering-law-enforcement-questioning/ https://www.aclu.org/know-your-rights/what-do-when-encounter... So I don't see how not responding to a question they didn't ask could be illegal.
- xmprt 7y ago
  It's a blurred line though. If the police know that the perpetrator was in line of sight of your camera and they knew you had the footage, then not giving it to them is a lot closer to obstruction of justice than the example you gave. I'm no lawyer but I'm sure a competent one would be able to argue either side.
  - kortilla 7y ago
    If they have a warrant, sure.
  - wpietri 7y ago
    Only if they ask for it in a way where you're legally compelled to give to them. Otherwise, no. Cops want things all the time, like searching without a warrant. But not doing what they want isn't obstruction.

tyingq 7y ago

Nextdoor ended up with issues around this sort of thing. Like people posting images of neighborhood people that didn't "look like" they belonged there.

heavyset_go 7y ago

> So your Ring app pops up and says "Hey, your local police department is looking for a suspect and your camera spotted them. Would you like to share the footage?" This is enough information for the police to get a warrant or subpoena for your footage. Ring's business model involves integration with law enforcement, and as long as you keep them in the loop, that means the existence of your video evidence will be passed on to police. With that knowledge, law enforcement doesn't need your permission to get access to your videos, they just need to get a warrant or subpoena for them.

mdorazio 7y ago

I understand your position, but have a few issues with it. 1) Why do you need a camera facing outside from your door to deter or help solve burglaries? Burglars generally steal things inside houses (assuming we're not talking about porch pirates, which is a separate issue). A ring-style camera pointed at your neighbors constantly isn't needed - put a camera inside your home if you're concerned about burglars. 2) If you start using ring-style cameras en masse to solve crimes, the criminals are just going to adapt to the expectation that there's a front door camera and commit crimes in ways that circumvent that single point (ex. go in the back door or side window, wear a mask, use a fake license plate, etc. I don't really see this solving any underlying problems - it's more of a temporary solution that escalates the surveillance state model to another level via an arms race.

jolmg 7y ago
I'm not in favor or against it, but I think you misunderstood the point of the post you replied to. > Why do you need a camera facing outside from your door to deter or help solve burglaries? Burglars generally steal things inside houses If the police tells you they're looking for a suspect and that if you could help by supplying some of your footage of the outside, I think it's probably not burglars trying to steal from you. They could be any kind of suspect that the police at least have good reason to believe passed through the front of your home. Maybe they committed a crime at a neighbor's home. Maybe they're driving from far away, and the police heard that they might have passed through your street. > If you start using ring-style cameras en masse to solve crimes, the criminals are just going to adapt to the expectation that there's a front door camera and commit crimes in ways that circumvent that single point They'd also need to circumvent the points of maybe a few other homes nearby that cover the whole of the house the criminal is trying to get into.
- mdorazio 7y ago
  Thanks for the response. I think I wasn't clear. The problem here is that if you support this kind of thing for hypothetical "catch the bad guy" situations that don't happen inside your own home where an indoor camera might make sense, we might as well just put a camera on every street corner running 24/7 and be done with it. If you're willing to cede your neighbors' privacy in the name of safety, well, there's a quote for that about liberty. It's important to note that in an actual courtroom or investigation setting, having blurry footage of a person across the street really isn't very helpful unless you're going full-on dragnet and intend to track their every movement over a period of hours. Foiling any investigation involving rings is pretty trivial otherwise - wear a mask and nondescript clothing and the video footage is pretty much useless.

anongraddebt 7y ago

There is an argument that is sometimes made in this debate, and it concerns the gradual nature of the change to our privacy rights (or just privacy). It is an old argument. It took a number of years for me to convince myself that it was right. But it is a correct argument. In a round about way, the argument ends up concluding that we are, in fact, on some version of a slippery slope. We can see that slope quite clearly in what you write: "So many petty crimes (e.g. home burglaries, car breakins, etc) go unsolved because the police just don't have the tools and resources to go after all those crimes." Even just ten years ago, a number of the ideas being batted around now about privacy would have seemed alien. I understand that attitudes can change, but do we have the right attitudes now? Are they good attitudes? The attitude that sees nothing wrong with seriously contemplating whether it's a net good to have the police sitting in a tiny camera outside your front door? Go back a couple decades and we would have been appalled at the notion. Sometimes I surprise myself with how much ground I've given up already (even if just on a personal level).

lopmotr 7y ago
I think it's a particularly American idea to want to cripple the police. They don't trust their government or their police, and perhaps rightly so, I don't know. Where I'm from, I would be happy if the police could use cameras everywhere to catch all the horrible petty crimes. People get their lifetime collections of things trashed and stolen during burglaries. It's quite upsetting for the victims. The police usually can't do anything because there's no-body to talk to. If their computer could tell them who somebody is by their face, then we'd all be safer and happier. There are also actual murders that go unsolved because there's again no-one to talk to. If the police themselves are corrupt and abuse their power, that's a problem, but it's a separate problem that not every country faces. If I was an American, I'd want to have proper accountability for the police first. They should be held to a higher standard than ordinary people, not a lower standard, like it seems they are.
- Mirioron 7y ago
  I don't think it's uniquely American at all. It's weird to me that some places don't feel this way. Remember that every state-caused atrocity is aided by the police in some way. Even if you're okay with the police right now, you might not be in 30 years. Also, I think the chance of the police (as a group) not being corrupt is about the same as politicians (as a group) not being corrupt - essentially zero. The incentives just aren't there for there to be no corruption in law enforcement. And even if there's no corruption in law enforcement and your government is great, you still have to remember that police officers generally aren't the cream of the crop of society. They make mistakes and there usually isn't much recourse.

tsukurimashou 7y ago

on what planet are you living in and what did you smoke, I can't agree with anything you said

tripzilch 7y ago

> So your Ring app pops up and says "Hey, your local police department is looking for a suspect and your camera spotted them. Would you like to share the footage?". Yes it would be absolutely super if apps asked permission before sending your private data to a third party. But we all know that because presumably there exist sufficient software engineers that do not consider the ramifications of their work (like AT ALL), this just isn't the way commercial software is going currently.