11 ms·

Reject Google Nest or Amazon Ring Corp Surveillance and a Dystopic Future

202 points by nreece 7y ago

whitebread 7y ago
The fact that this is coming from one of the massive, OG news networks is pretty surprising. And refreshing
bart_spoon 7y ago
I am seeing increasing numbers of these types of articles, but I don't know how I feel. First of all, many of them, like this one, seem to conflate two separate issues: poor security practices and then the dystopic, surveillance concerns. I don't see the two being particularly related. I absolutely agree that Ring products should have better security features like required 2FA. But I'm not sold on the idea of our society becoming a surveillance state because people have video doorbells. It seems like a stretch and one that is born out of a tendency for people to see all technology as "the thing" that will be what ends our society and ushers in a 1984-esque dystopia. I'm skeptical. I don't have to be convinced that I shouldn't be trusting Amazon or Google with my best interests. But I don't see how security cameras, or at least the video doorbells, are more dangerous than all of the other things we've just already accepted, like constant tracking of our positions via smartphones and our online browsing habits. Perhaps I'm wrong, I suppose time will tell.
- bbmario 7y ago
  I agree. How is this any different from previous offerings from ADT and others? Cheaper to own, easier to setup.
  - bart_spoon 7y ago
    I think the argument is that people are more skeptical of Amazon and Google behaving, perhaps justifiably so. But I guess my feeling is, even assuming they are bad actors and people's fears regarding these devices are realized, it still seems far less dangerous than the ways we've already allowed these companies to insert themselves in our lives and have just accepted. I feel like there is a relatively low ceiling to the damage that can be done by something like a Ring doorbell in the case Amazon lives up to people's worries. But the recent trend of these kind of fearmongering articles make it sound like it could be the end of human society and civil liberty.
    - laughinghan 7y ago
      Does ADT encourage police to get the footage they record without a warrant? That's a big difference from the smartphones tracking our location thing you mentioned—police need a warrant, companies don't actively work to make it easier for police to access that information without a warrant.
- mentat 7y ago
  I was pretty unconcerned until I saw https://www.insecam.org/ https://www.insecam.org/ which really disturbed me. The dystopia might just arise from cheap cameras, fast networks, and no commercial interest in security.
- WolfeReader 7y ago
  Consider two scenarios: 1. Your neighbor buys an Alexa for their house. Now Amazon gets to learn all about your neighbor's private conversations. Your neighbor is presumably OK with this, or possibly unaware, but either way their decisions only affect them. 2. Your neighbor buys a Ring. Now it's you who are being monitored. Amazon will learn details about you and anyone who comes to visit you, and they will profit from it. (Also they will share the details with law enforcement.) The current big tech companies have established a new business model based on two important facts: your time/attention/data are valuable to them, and you are encouraged to give them your time/attention/data for free. You should have the right to not do business with Amazon, in exactly the same way that you should have the right to not do business with, for example, a fast-food place you don't like. But anyone who lives near a Ring owner is going to be contributing to Amazon's business, whether they want to or not. None of my neighbors have Rings yet. I'm going to have a talk with them the first time I see one get put up.
  - bart_spoon 7y ago
    > 2. Your neighbor buys a Ring. Now it's you who are being monitored. Amazon will learn details about you and anyone who comes to visit you, and they will profit from it. (Also they will share the details with law enforcement.) How though? What information could possibly be gleaned from a Ring camera that isn't already available? It's a unidirectional facing camera with limited range pointed at a public area. The amount of information it could possibly collect on passerby is miniscule, and is already information that is readily available via: smartphone tracking, satellite imaging, or literally anyone on the street with eyeballs, including law enforcement. I fail to see how a neighbor having a Ring doorbell meaningfully changes anything for their neighbors. > anyone who lives near a Ring owner is going to be contributing to Amazon's business Again, how? I fail to see how a person's Ring is going to generate anything in terms of usable data on their neighbors for Amazon to act on. It seems like jumping to the worst possible conclusion, on par with those who assume every new application of AI is one step closer to Skynet.
    - TeMPOraL 7y ago
      > is already information that is readily available via: smartphone tracking, satellite imaging, or literally anyone on the street with eyeballs, including law enforcement It's not "readily available". It's distributed across multiple parties that rarely talk with one and another, and each of them is collecting different types of information. In particular, you can't easily turn "literally anyone on the street with eyeballs" into a searchable database of information. What makes information useful is it being collected, preferably by a single party, in an aggregate that can be searched and can have analysis run on top of it. Ring checks all of these boxes, and is provided by a company that has already proven to not pay particular attention to ethics or customer well-being if more profit can be made this way.
- pmoriarty 7y ago
  "First of all, many of them, like this one, seem to conflate two separate issues: poor security practices and then the dystopic, surveillance concerns. I don't see the two being particularly related." Since the poor security practices have led to people getting spied upon and harassed, those poor security practices are clearly related to dystopic surveillance concerns. The article also directly addresses larger issues than poor security practices. Two examples: "And Amazon's surveillance doorbell cameras are just the start: The company is selling a multitude of other gadgets equipped with microphones, cameras and sensors, all designed to gather enormous amounts of data, which Amazon refines -- like crude oil -- into power and profit. Alexa, the company's "home assistant," is constantly listening and explosive investigations revealed that Amazon employees have also listened, via Alexa, not just to private conversations, but also to deeply intimate moments such as couples having sex or kids singing in the shower. Amazon even marketed its microphone-enabled Echo Dot Kids directly to children." "Amazon devices aren't just giving hackers and Amazon employees an eye or an ear into our homes. The company has also partnered with more than 600 police departments across the country to tap into the surveillance network its customers are creating for them, developing a seamless process for government agents to request footage from tens of thousands of Ring cameras without warrants or any judicial oversight."
  - bart_spoon 7y ago
    > Since the poor security practices have led to people getting spied upon and harassed, those poor security practices are clearly related to dystopic surveillance concerns. Typically, these dystopias generally imply state surveillance on an unwilling or unsuspecting populace. Yes, hackers can gain access to your indoor security cameras, but that only affects people willingly installing security cameras inside their own homes and adhering to bad security practices. Doorbell cameras aren't compelling targets for hackers, which is why all of the stories we hear are about cameras installed in someone's bedroom. And I don't see how this differentiates Ring's products in any way from having your bank account hacked, or your email, or any other personal data. Problematic and worth consideration? Yes. Dystopic? Not really. > "And Amazon's surveillance doorbell cameras are just the start: The company is selling a multitude of other gadgets equipped with microphones, cameras and sensors, all designed to gather enormous amounts of data, which Amazon refines -- like crude oil -- into power and profit. Alexa, the company's "home assistant," is constantly listening and explosive investigations revealed that Amazon employees have also listened, via Alexa, not just to private conversations, but also to deeply intimate moments such as couples having sex or kids singing in the shower. Amazon even marketed its microphone-enabled Echo Dot Kids directly to children." Entirely valid complaints, regarding Alexa devices. Its unrelated to Ring, and especially doorbell cameras. Unless people are having numerous and long private conversations in front of their doorbell, it seems again like those concerns don't apply here. > The company has also partnered with more than 600 police departments across the country to tap into the surveillance network its customers are creating for them, developing a seamless process for government agents to request footage from tens of thousands of Ring cameras without warrants or any judicial oversight. Can someone verify this? Because I was under the impression that customers had to opt in. And regardless, I still fail to see what people might be concerned about regarding doorbell cams. They aren't capturing anything that isn't readily available. Perhaps these are arguments against putting Ring security cameras in your house, but I still am not seeing the end of the world scenarios these articles are prophesying resulting from doorbell cameras.
- orev 7y ago
  Sounds like there’s a logical fallacy in there somewhere. Death by 1000 cuts? Isn’t that how we got into the current situation — by slowly giving up privacy one step at a time? With a phone, I can at least make the choice whether to track myself or not (by using the phone). With a doorbell cam, now you’re involving everyone in your neighborhood. They don’t have a choice. I have no doubt someone is going to say that those people are in a public space, but there there is a huge difference between the theoretical concept of being in public, and the actual reality of public spaces being under video surveillance 24x7. Have you not heard that Amazon has been partnering with local law enforcement to give them access to a bunch of cameras? It’s not about just giving your data to Amazon or Google anymore. Also, in the US, there is the Third Party Doctrine. Any data you give to a third party can be given to the government without any Fourth Amendment protections. By using these services you are giving up your Constitutional rights.
  - bart_spoon 7y ago
    Well the "slippery slope" argument is also a logical fallacy. > With a doorbell cam, now you’re involving everyone in your neighborhood. They don’t have a choice. With a phone, I can at least make the choice whether to track myself or not (by using the phone). With a doorbell cam, now you’re involving everyone in your neighborhood. They don’t have a choice. I have no doubt someone is going to say that those people are in a public space, but there there is a huge difference between the theoretical concept of being in public, and the actual reality of public spaces being under video surveillance 24x7. I'll say it. There is nothing being tracked that isn't public information. There is no information being revealed other than the fact that someone was walking by house A at time Y, which is information anyone looking at the street at that time would have. What is the meaningful difference between the "theory" of being in public, and a particular area being under surveillance 24x7? > Also, in the US, there is the Third Party Doctrine. Any data you give to a third party can be given to the government without any Fourth Amendment protections. By using these services you are giving up your Constitutional rights. Again, what is the worry about the data a doorbell cam generates falling into the hands of the government? I do not argue that it can be dangerous to serve up private information and data in a way that can be obtained by undesired third parties and the government. I argue that a doorbell cam doesn't generate any data of the kind people need to worry about. Hence, why these articles are largely sensationalism in my view.
- BiteCode_dev 7y ago
  > But I don't see how security cameras, or at least the video doorbells, are more dangerous than all of the other things we've just already accepted, like constant tracking of our positions via smartphones and our online browsing habits. Things add up, that's all. Before, you had the danger to personally be tracked in an area around you and listened to. Now you add a device that can get sound, image and movement of anybody in a zone, and possibly extrapolate their position and potentially face recognition. The phone story is bad, very bad. But at least we can switch it off, not take it with us, etc. When you walk in the street in front of those camera, you have no choice but to be spied on. The sum of all the phones + smart speakers + e-health devices + Ring-like products has a deadly potential for democracy. Their coverage is monumental. Right now we feel like the benefits are huge, and the cost minimal: most people are not affected in their daily life by the surveillance, or at least not in a way that is annoying enough. So we accept it. But the issue is not about what it does right no. Just like climate change, it's about what it can do in the future.
- Baeocystin 7y ago
  I just find it bizarre that it's people's doorbells that somehow seems to have been the triggering point, and not the billion or so closed-circuit surveillance cameras already deployed. Of all the cameras to complain about, seeing who is at your front door is, IMO, the least possibly offensive.
  - bart_spoon 7y ago
    Yeah, I guess that's my point. I can understand if the conversation was more centered around the security cameras people are putting up, especially within their own homes. And we already get tracked nearly 24/7 both geographically via our smartphones, as well as online. The possible scenarios where footage from a doorbell cam gets misused seems pretty limited and innocuous. And yet I've seen article after article in recent months about how Ring doorbells are what leads us to 1984.
- raxxorrax 7y ago
  > not sold on the idea of our society becoming a surveillance state If the police can access them without warrant and even promote the devices on their twitter accounts? I am completely sold on it. I am more skeptical about calling door bells with cameras a technological innovation or progress. > things we've just already accepted, like constant tracking of our positions via smartphones and our online browsing habits. I don't think people have accepted being tracked 24/7. I know plenty of people that actively use guards against these practices and that isn't restricted to technically inclinded personalities. It is just that legislative powers seem to be sleeping. But accepting invasions of privacy as inevitable is certainly a dystopian development.
- nreece 7y ago
  >> But I don't see how security cameras, or at least the video doorbells, are more dangerous than all of the other things we've just already accepted, like constant tracking of our positions via smartphones and our online browsing habits. Nothing personal, but I can't fathom such naive viewpoints in this day & age, specially as a parent. One of the many stories: "Man hacks Ring camera in 8-year-old girl's bedroom, taunts her: 'I'm Santa Claus' " https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/man-hacks-ring-camera-8-year-old-girl-s-bedroom-n1100586 https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/man-hacks-ring-camera-8...
  - bart_spoon 7y ago
    So don't install a security camera in your 8 year old daughter's bedroom, especially if you don't intend to use good security practices. That isn't a societal issue, that is an issue of the parents being idiots. Like I said, I fail to see how a doorbell camera, even with bad security practice, is going to be more dangerous than a smartphone which tracks what you are browsing on the internet and your positional data within a few feet at literally every second of the day.
    - nreece 7y ago
      You're not entirely wrong. Parents, and individuals in general, have to more careful. I won't call them total idiots though, because these companies promise those very use-cases through their marketing. Any device that compromises the privacy of you/others without your/their permission is dangerous, as is a video doorbell for your street and neighbors, a voice assistant secretly used for persona marketing, or even a webcam on your laptop. A false sense of security with a huge potential for misuse. I won't go into details, but my past gov projects tell me it's better to be safe than sorry.
- nullc 7y ago
  People don't really grok the problems of things like web access or location privacy because they don't understand what that kind of privacy means. They've seldom had access to their own data at all (or at least a clear view of it), nor have most suffered with snoopy busybodies with access to it... nor have they had that data about other people. But for Cameras that record video (and maybe sound) people have a much more visceral understanding of the privacy consequences even though audio/video is often _less_ of a wide scale privacy problem than web access data, location, or phone/email metadata (because of the logistics about manipulating and analyzing that data). But whatever. Just because people should care a lot more about their other (web/geo/meta)data than they do, doesn't mean that A/V privacy isn't a huge deal. If we, as technologists and experts, can manage to motivate the public on this issue we should do so. Advancement on this front will make success easier on others. Failure on this front-- where people do have an innate understanding of the privacy problems will bode very poorly for areas where they do not.
- moksly 7y ago
  Privacy isn’t a huge concern in a free society, which is likely why none of us really care. But imagine having those systems in a country where having a specific opinion, or sexuality could result in a death penalty. You wouldn’t want to be filmed sneaking into your lovers house in such an area, and you really wouldn’t want to be overheard. In the west, it’s much more a question of what you want companies to know about you, than what you have to hide. But we haven’t always been free. Imagine planning a revolution to overthrow a despot with the current level of surveillance.
  - rchaud 7y ago
    > You wouldn’t want to be filmed sneaking into your lovers house in such an area, This is particularly ironic because Bezos, now part owner of Ring.com, is facing a multi-billion $ divorce bill for doing exactly this and getting caught.
bbmario 7y ago
I own a couple of Arlo cameras that I bought 3 years ago. They still offer free cloud storage because I'm an old customer, so it's kind of a good deal. I only turn them on when I'm out of town. They have a separate router, so it's a little bit harder to hack than Ring. I wish, however, there was an affordable DIY solution to home cameras. And yet, I still couldn't find a setup that is completely open-source and/or provides me enough freedom. Has anyone started digging into this?
- glaslong 7y ago
  You can get an Esp32-Cam for ~$10 and plug it into Home Assistant. https://randomnerdtutorials.com/esp32-cam-video-streaming-web-server-camera-home-assistant/ https://randomnerdtutorials.com/esp32-cam-video-streaming-we...
- sirmoveon 7y ago
  Zoneminder is open source. A little hard to setup just right, but has a lot of potential.
  - slantyyz 7y ago
    Zoneminder is pretty good, all things considered. It was my go-to NVR before I switched to the Unifi ecosystem. I guess the one drawback (when I was using it) was that it didn't record audio, and that its UI was relatively unpolished. Having said that, setting up motion sensing on the cameras in Zoneminder was far better than a lot of other solutions that I had tried.
DrivebyPoster 7y ago
"Don't ask questions, just consume product and get excited for next products." Fucking bugmen. Make a home security arduino setup if you wanna stroke your tech skill egos, at least then you'd have less privacy leaks and save a bit of money. All they do is buy redundant crap that spies on them and exacerbate inequality by feeding into this mindset. Don't they have anything better to do with their incomes? What else can you expect from a community of "tech enthusiasts"?
mh8h 7y ago
Disclaimer: Apple employee, but not working on anything related to this. You can achieve a privacy focused solution by doing the processing localy. I am looking forward to more HomeKit Secure Video compatible hardware becoming available. The idea is to process the video feed locally on an Apple TV or iPad, and then send notifications to your iPhone. An encrypted video can be uploaded to iCloud upon detecting some motion. Also... with the photo library available on the Apple TV, I guess face detection in the video feed might be possible in the future.
- gduffy 7y ago
  Disclaimer: I left Apple in June. Processing on local devices is slightly better but ultimately it’s cold comfort when those devices are locked down, closed source, and opaque to anyone but hackers. From the end customer perspective, the only protection was Apple’s customer-focused business model, which is now slowly tilting from “sell slick technology products” to “monetize the user base.” Another solution is needed. Since I created Dropcam (Nest cam), I am working on fixing this: send us a message at https://duffy.org https://duffy.org if you want to learn more.
- ezzzzz 7y ago
  Hmm... this is interesting. I would like to learn more about how this works, given apple's history, my guess is they won't advertise such solutions until they have either developed their own camera, or have struck some deal with a 3rd party. I'd still likely plunk down the inflated price if their privacy model was actually proven. I've looked into flashing a CFW on a cheap Xaomi ip camera, running ZoneMinder and a NAS for storage and backups and whatnot, and while setting all this up is pretty trivial, I feel like I'd be better off just paying for a commercial system rather than administering my own. But then you look into the security practices in such systems and well, lets just say, off the shelf isn't really a great option either.
  - syndeo 7y ago
    I used to work at a startup that built products for parents of infants and toddlers, such as "smart socks" to monitor babies' vitals, and was involved in the late-stage development of their smart baby monitor camera, which released last year. (A quick web search of certain terms above should give you a good guess as to which company I'm talking about.) They—and dozens of other companies—use off-the-shelf commodity components from the Chinese corporation Aoni, and their camera is essentially the device linked below, but in a different case: http://anc.cn/ip-camera/smart-wireless-cube-camera/smart-wireless-cube-camera-e966-g0109.html http://anc.cn/ip-camera/smart-wireless-cube-camera/smart-wir... Check the specs, as well as the general appearance of the thing from the front. While inspecting the traffic coming in and out of this thing, I saw it making a ton of requests to really weird Chinese IP addresses and uploading a lot of data. It was encrypted, so I couldn't tell for sure what it was, but it presumably was video footage. I raised these concerns to others on my team, but besides a "huh, weird", none of them seemed to care enough to investigate further or properly escalate it. I was just a temp, so I didn't have the pull or influence that full-time employees had. It was really concerning to me that this stuff wasn't properly addressed, but instead was swept under the rug, despite the fact that it's going to be pointed at babies and toddlers. There are some real disgusting folks out there who will take advantage of this, if they haven't already, especially since it has the same two-way audio that "Santa" used with the Ring cameras. (If any of my former co-workers are reading this, I genuinely don't mean you any ill will in particular. But the company really needs to fix those issues, and not simply re-case commodity camera systems from surveillance states. There's obviously a backdoor, and if Aoni/China can access it, so can the aforementioned disgusting people.)
arkanciscan 7y ago
I like my Eufy Cam. The video lives on an SD card in my house. NSA probably still watches it, but at least it's not every other Google/Amazon employee.
- bbmario 7y ago
  Never heard of that before. I love it. Thanks!
  - SlowRobotAhead 7y ago
    Eufy IIRC is Anker’s video line, could be wrong. The baby monitor they make is actually pretty great. 2.4Ghz propriety not-WiFi. I was pretty impressed.
ropiwqefjnpoa 7y ago
People seem all too willing to trade their privacy for inexpensive convenience and novelty. Although they probably don't view it that way. In any case, Google, Amazon and the like are chipping away at peoples desire for privacy and soon, I imagine privacy will be viewed as a quaint notion from the past. All this just to sell us more stuff.
- drukenemo 7y ago
  I use Ring. Convenience and novelty were not the reasons I decide to buy it. I did it because of its advertised feature: security.
  - frockington1 7y ago
    I use Ring as well, the best feature has been with package delivery. You can check if the package is reasonably hidden and more than once police have been able to catch scumbag criminals within minutes of them stealing a package. It's incredibly beneficial
  - ropiwqefjnpoa 7y ago
    Well, you know what has been said about purchasing security and giving up liberty...
    - bart_spoon 7y ago
      Thats only applicable if you believe that owning a Ring doorbell requires giving up some portion of your liberty. I have failed to be convinced that it does. Also, if you are going to make an argument, I would hope it would be more substantial than a pithy argument from 300 years ago. Otherwise, you fall into the same category as those who argue against climate change/evolution using bible verses.
      - ropiwqefjnpoa 7y ago
        We'll see if in another 20 years the government and law authorities have easy access to things like our Nest and Ring in the name of security.
ptah 7y ago
> In his book “1984,” George Orwell imagined that Big Brother-type surveillance would be imposed on us by a violent state as predicted by william gibson, corporations are becoming more powerful than states and the oppressive state in 1984 is more likely to be a corporation as time progresses also the "violent" is redundant as "state" already includes some form of violence
- fyfy18 7y ago
  Brave New World is a much more realistic dystopian future than 1984. Just give people enough of what they want and they will conform.
- caymanjim 7y ago
  The largest corporations have been more powerful than small states for centuries. The Dutch East India company, the United Fruit Company, various mining conglomerates. DEI was straight up put in charge of nations, complete with a military force. UFC had governments overthrown and didn't even try to hide it. They're better at PR now so their machinations aren't as proudly displayed, but if a major natural resource company wants to operate in a small, less-powerful nation, they're going to get their way, just as they have for centuries.
MandieD 7y ago
"Convenient" is the new c-word. "Because it's convenient" is the main excuse I hear for excessive plastic packaging, disposable everything, taking a 3 hr drive instead of a 4 hr train/transit ride, posting to Facebook instead of your own blog, placing voice-"activated" spy devices in your home. I'm coming to despise that word.
- balladeer 7y ago
  I had bought an Echo Dot sometimes back. I had decided I'll use it judiciously. After I acceded my past recording (all of it) on Alexa app and heard some of them I just packed it away. I also have a Smart TV. Of Vu brand - https://www.vutvs.com https://www.vutvs.com - quite famous in India and apparently a California company. I don't even know whether they listen in the background. I tried looking for documents related to that and talking to the customer care but they were clueless. They would get stuck at repeating "do you want to schedule a repair?".
  - cbm-vic-20 7y ago
    > I tried looking for documents related to that and talking to the customer care but they were clueless. They would get stuck at repeating "do you want to schedule a repair?". No company is going to train their first-, second- or even third-line support to answer a question being asked of 0.00001% of their customers.
- markosaric 7y ago
  Completely agree! I do many "inconvenient" things these days. It takes more time to make better and more informed decisions about products you use/buy or organizations you support rather than simply buy by habit. It can be more expensive to buy locally produced and environmentally friendly products rather than something mass-produced or coming from the other side of the world. It is more inconvenient to carry your own bags and bottles rather than simply buying single-use items and throwing them away. And on and on. I'm happy to make these compromises but the system we've built where the better choices are more inconvenient certainly doesn't help us reach the goals we need.
LatteLazy 7y ago
Getting a vpn, using a niche browser and binning your smart phone are the only ways you get privacy. Complaining about nest and ring is "picking out a natt and swallowing a camel".
- brosinante 7y ago
  Exactly what google and amazon would like you to believe - that it's a case of black and white, and privacy is supposedly impossible to achieve.
  - LatteLazy 7y ago
    Respectfully, can you have meaningful privacy with a (mainstream) smartphone? How? On a desktop you could tor everything I guess, but on an android/iOS device, everything down to the keyboard is compromised by design...
    - brosinante 7y ago
      You're absolutely correct and that's not an excuse to compromise or abandon privacy universally.
      - LatteLazy 7y ago
        I mean, it is though isn't it? If Google know where I am at all times because of my phone, and they have all my selfies, what privacy am I actually losing because they know what time I got home from my doorbell which took a picture of me? If the same phone is listening constantly to me incase I use voice commands, what privacy am I losing by having a nest do the same thing, but only when I'm home?
Calashle0202 7y ago
Really don't understand why people are surprised about the latest new stories about strangers "hacking" their Google Nest or Amazon Ring account. Especially when they use Password as their password (or something equally as stupid). You would think someone at Google or Amazon would take a moment before launch and set password policies in place and a mandatory 2 form factor authentication process to view their account. My analogy is, would you set your verbal security password with ADT to be "Password"? Then, don't do the same with a 24/7 surveillance device in your childrens bedrooms.
tyingq 7y ago
It really seems like there's a viable niche for a privacy focused line of digital assistants, cameras, doorbells, thermometers, etc. Honeywell, for example, seems to do well with their learning thermostat. You'll never own the bigger market, but there does seem to be an opportunity.
- daxorid 7y ago
  The niche of people who actually care about privacy is vanishingly small, and I would hazard a guess that it overlaps strongly with the niche of people who would buy a raspberry pi to tinker with. At this point, we're better off rolling our own with cheap CMOS camera modules, IR LEDs, 3d printed enclosures, arduinos, and rpis. Perhaps there's room in the market for a few people to do this as a side hustle, and sell completed boxes with software for those who don't have time to build their own, but likely not much more than that. Alternatively, any decent A/V store will still sell you wired cameras and base stations that don't connect to the Internet at all. Then your inconvenience is fishing coax or cat5 through the walls of your house.
  - tyingq 7y ago
    "The niche of people who actually care about privacy is vanishingly small" You could market to adjacent fears, like "being hacked", "your videos go to the police", etc. Companies like Lifelock seem to do well.
- rchaud 7y ago
  It's a niche, but I doubt if it's viable. The segment of people who care enough about privacy to pay for it (VPN or Fastmail/Protonmail for example), is likely to overlap with the segment of people who claim they could reverse-engineer your solution with a Raspberry Pi over a couple of weekends.
onreact 7y ago
Dear NBC editor: It's "topic" but "dystopian".
- tyingq 7y ago
  A write-up on that: https://www.dailywritingtips.com/is-dystopic-a-word/ https://www.dailywritingtips.com/is-dystopic-a-word/
- workthrowaway 7y ago
  both dystopic and dystopian are synonyms. btw did you know that grep (as in the unix tool) is in the dictionary? it even says it comes from the operating system.
  - onreact 7y ago
    "Dystopic" [sic!] may lead to misunderstandings. Also the article above states that it isn't an actual word. You can't even pronounce it. People will only hear "this topic" or something like that.
RickJWagner 7y ago
Huh. I think there's a market for an upgrade that uses recognition software to see the home owners, then omit them from tracking. Only the bad guys get 'tracked'. Sounds better.
oxymoran 7y ago
What I don’t understand is why people are putting internet connected cameras INSIDE their house. How do indoor cameras, that catch somebody already inside your house, make you safer? Why not just get door and window sensors? Outdoor cameras make a bit more sense but a hacker could still use info about when you are home or similar against you.
- bobongo 7y ago
  > why people are putting internet connected cameras INSIDE their house - To monitor the animals in the house - To get alerts if a smoke alarm goes off - In case of break in, to capture the person's face and get a notification - Access historical and real-time feed to check when <event> happened - Etc In an apartment with no other security system, a single indoors camera can do these. (In a house, you're better off with a complete security system since you have control over both indoor and outdoor configuration of your residence.) The alternative is time consuming and potentially less secure, though much more fun to play with: - Set up a raspberry pi-based camera system that can be scaled to multiple cameras and sensors - Set up an raspberry pi NextCloud instance for the cameras to save their feeds to - Set up an ML algorithm to recognize faces, animals, and types of noises - Set up a Twilio instance to send SMS notifications - Set up a mail server to send email notifications - Set up a back up system in case the sdcard on one of the raspberry pis gets corrupted - Set up a Home Assistant instance to control the cameras etc - Set up an Auth mechanism for your residents and guests to control the IoTs - Harden any systems that are exposed to the internet as a result of this set up
rasvj 7y ago
How is this a dystopic future? Unlike a telescreen, you're not forced to put a Nest in your home.
- caymanjim 7y ago
  Maybe not, but many of your neighbors, the police (via ubiquitous public space abuse), every store, every mode of public transportation, and an increasing number of automobiles are all pointing cameras at you, whether you like it or not, and companies like Amazon in particular are actively seeking to aid law enforcement access to all these devices. It's not like you can opt out just because you haven't installed one in your own home.
  - rasvj 7y ago
    >neighbors, the police (via ubiquitous public space abuse), every store, every mode of public transportation, and an increasing number of automobiles are all pointing cameras at you Can be regulated, it is regulated in many places already (like, you can't store recordings for more than 15 days, or you can ask for your images to be removed). >companies like Amazon in particular are actively seeking to aid law enforcement access to all these devices Good.

202 points by nreece 7y ago

The fact that this is coming from one of the massive, OG news networks is pretty surprising. And refreshing

I am seeing increasing numbers of these types of articles, but I don't know how I feel. First of all, many of them, like this one, seem to conflate two separate issues: poor security practices and then the dystopic, surveillance concerns. I don't see the two being particularly related. I absolutely agree that Ring products should have better security features like required 2FA. But I'm not sold on the idea of our society becoming a surveillance state because people have video doorbells. It seems like a stretch and one that is born out of a tendency for people to see all technology as "the thing" that will be what ends our society and ushers in a 1984-esque dystopia. I'm skeptical. I don't have to be convinced that I shouldn't be trusting Amazon or Google with my best interests. But I don't see how security cameras, or at least the video doorbells, are more dangerous than all of the other things we've just already accepted, like constant tracking of our positions via smartphones and our online browsing habits. Perhaps I'm wrong, I suppose time will tell.

bbmario 7y ago
I agree. How is this any different from previous offerings from ADT and others? Cheaper to own, easier to setup.
- bart_spoon 7y ago
  I think the argument is that people are more skeptical of Amazon and Google behaving, perhaps justifiably so. But I guess my feeling is, even assuming they are bad actors and people's fears regarding these devices are realized, it still seems far less dangerous than the ways we've already allowed these companies to insert themselves in our lives and have just accepted. I feel like there is a relatively low ceiling to the damage that can be done by something like a Ring doorbell in the case Amazon lives up to people's worries. But the recent trend of these kind of fearmongering articles make it sound like it could be the end of human society and civil liberty.
  - laughinghan 7y ago
    Does ADT encourage police to get the footage they record without a warrant? That's a big difference from the smartphones tracking our location thing you mentioned—police need a warrant, companies don't actively work to make it easier for police to access that information without a warrant.
mentat 7y ago
I was pretty unconcerned until I saw https://www.insecam.org/ https://www.insecam.org/ which really disturbed me. The dystopia might just arise from cheap cameras, fast networks, and no commercial interest in security.
WolfeReader 7y ago
Consider two scenarios: 1. Your neighbor buys an Alexa for their house. Now Amazon gets to learn all about your neighbor's private conversations. Your neighbor is presumably OK with this, or possibly unaware, but either way their decisions only affect them. 2. Your neighbor buys a Ring. Now it's you who are being monitored. Amazon will learn details about you and anyone who comes to visit you, and they will profit from it. (Also they will share the details with law enforcement.) The current big tech companies have established a new business model based on two important facts: your time/attention/data are valuable to them, and you are encouraged to give them your time/attention/data for free. You should have the right to not do business with Amazon, in exactly the same way that you should have the right to not do business with, for example, a fast-food place you don't like. But anyone who lives near a Ring owner is going to be contributing to Amazon's business, whether they want to or not. None of my neighbors have Rings yet. I'm going to have a talk with them the first time I see one get put up.
- bart_spoon 7y ago
  > 2. Your neighbor buys a Ring. Now it's you who are being monitored. Amazon will learn details about you and anyone who comes to visit you, and they will profit from it. (Also they will share the details with law enforcement.) How though? What information could possibly be gleaned from a Ring camera that isn't already available? It's a unidirectional facing camera with limited range pointed at a public area. The amount of information it could possibly collect on passerby is miniscule, and is already information that is readily available via: smartphone tracking, satellite imaging, or literally anyone on the street with eyeballs, including law enforcement. I fail to see how a neighbor having a Ring doorbell meaningfully changes anything for their neighbors. > anyone who lives near a Ring owner is going to be contributing to Amazon's business Again, how? I fail to see how a person's Ring is going to generate anything in terms of usable data on their neighbors for Amazon to act on. It seems like jumping to the worst possible conclusion, on par with those who assume every new application of AI is one step closer to Skynet.
  - TeMPOraL 7y ago
    > is already information that is readily available via: smartphone tracking, satellite imaging, or literally anyone on the street with eyeballs, including law enforcement It's not "readily available". It's distributed across multiple parties that rarely talk with one and another, and each of them is collecting different types of information. In particular, you can't easily turn "literally anyone on the street with eyeballs" into a searchable database of information. What makes information useful is it being collected, preferably by a single party, in an aggregate that can be searched and can have analysis run on top of it. Ring checks all of these boxes, and is provided by a company that has already proven to not pay particular attention to ethics or customer well-being if more profit can be made this way.
pmoriarty 7y ago
"First of all, many of them, like this one, seem to conflate two separate issues: poor security practices and then the dystopic, surveillance concerns. I don't see the two being particularly related." Since the poor security practices have led to people getting spied upon and harassed, those poor security practices are clearly related to dystopic surveillance concerns. The article also directly addresses larger issues than poor security practices. Two examples: "And Amazon's surveillance doorbell cameras are just the start: The company is selling a multitude of other gadgets equipped with microphones, cameras and sensors, all designed to gather enormous amounts of data, which Amazon refines -- like crude oil -- into power and profit. Alexa, the company's "home assistant," is constantly listening and explosive investigations revealed that Amazon employees have also listened, via Alexa, not just to private conversations, but also to deeply intimate moments such as couples having sex or kids singing in the shower. Amazon even marketed its microphone-enabled Echo Dot Kids directly to children." "Amazon devices aren't just giving hackers and Amazon employees an eye or an ear into our homes. The company has also partnered with more than 600 police departments across the country to tap into the surveillance network its customers are creating for them, developing a seamless process for government agents to request footage from tens of thousands of Ring cameras without warrants or any judicial oversight."
- bart_spoon 7y ago
  > Since the poor security practices have led to people getting spied upon and harassed, those poor security practices are clearly related to dystopic surveillance concerns. Typically, these dystopias generally imply state surveillance on an unwilling or unsuspecting populace. Yes, hackers can gain access to your indoor security cameras, but that only affects people willingly installing security cameras inside their own homes and adhering to bad security practices. Doorbell cameras aren't compelling targets for hackers, which is why all of the stories we hear are about cameras installed in someone's bedroom. And I don't see how this differentiates Ring's products in any way from having your bank account hacked, or your email, or any other personal data. Problematic and worth consideration? Yes. Dystopic? Not really. > "And Amazon's surveillance doorbell cameras are just the start: The company is selling a multitude of other gadgets equipped with microphones, cameras and sensors, all designed to gather enormous amounts of data, which Amazon refines -- like crude oil -- into power and profit. Alexa, the company's "home assistant," is constantly listening and explosive investigations revealed that Amazon employees have also listened, via Alexa, not just to private conversations, but also to deeply intimate moments such as couples having sex or kids singing in the shower. Amazon even marketed its microphone-enabled Echo Dot Kids directly to children." Entirely valid complaints, regarding Alexa devices. Its unrelated to Ring, and especially doorbell cameras. Unless people are having numerous and long private conversations in front of their doorbell, it seems again like those concerns don't apply here. > The company has also partnered with more than 600 police departments across the country to tap into the surveillance network its customers are creating for them, developing a seamless process for government agents to request footage from tens of thousands of Ring cameras without warrants or any judicial oversight. Can someone verify this? Because I was under the impression that customers had to opt in. And regardless, I still fail to see what people might be concerned about regarding doorbell cams. They aren't capturing anything that isn't readily available. Perhaps these are arguments against putting Ring security cameras in your house, but I still am not seeing the end of the world scenarios these articles are prophesying resulting from doorbell cameras.
orev 7y ago
Sounds like there’s a logical fallacy in there somewhere. Death by 1000 cuts? Isn’t that how we got into the current situation — by slowly giving up privacy one step at a time? With a phone, I can at least make the choice whether to track myself or not (by using the phone). With a doorbell cam, now you’re involving everyone in your neighborhood. They don’t have a choice. I have no doubt someone is going to say that those people are in a public space, but there there is a huge difference between the theoretical concept of being in public, and the actual reality of public spaces being under video surveillance 24x7. Have you not heard that Amazon has been partnering with local law enforcement to give them access to a bunch of cameras? It’s not about just giving your data to Amazon or Google anymore. Also, in the US, there is the Third Party Doctrine. Any data you give to a third party can be given to the government without any Fourth Amendment protections. By using these services you are giving up your Constitutional rights.
- bart_spoon 7y ago
  Well the "slippery slope" argument is also a logical fallacy. > With a doorbell cam, now you’re involving everyone in your neighborhood. They don’t have a choice. With a phone, I can at least make the choice whether to track myself or not (by using the phone). With a doorbell cam, now you’re involving everyone in your neighborhood. They don’t have a choice. I have no doubt someone is going to say that those people are in a public space, but there there is a huge difference between the theoretical concept of being in public, and the actual reality of public spaces being under video surveillance 24x7. I'll say it. There is nothing being tracked that isn't public information. There is no information being revealed other than the fact that someone was walking by house A at time Y, which is information anyone looking at the street at that time would have. What is the meaningful difference between the "theory" of being in public, and a particular area being under surveillance 24x7? > Also, in the US, there is the Third Party Doctrine. Any data you give to a third party can be given to the government without any Fourth Amendment protections. By using these services you are giving up your Constitutional rights. Again, what is the worry about the data a doorbell cam generates falling into the hands of the government? I do not argue that it can be dangerous to serve up private information and data in a way that can be obtained by undesired third parties and the government. I argue that a doorbell cam doesn't generate any data of the kind people need to worry about. Hence, why these articles are largely sensationalism in my view.
BiteCode_dev 7y ago
> But I don't see how security cameras, or at least the video doorbells, are more dangerous than all of the other things we've just already accepted, like constant tracking of our positions via smartphones and our online browsing habits. Things add up, that's all. Before, you had the danger to personally be tracked in an area around you and listened to. Now you add a device that can get sound, image and movement of anybody in a zone, and possibly extrapolate their position and potentially face recognition. The phone story is bad, very bad. But at least we can switch it off, not take it with us, etc. When you walk in the street in front of those camera, you have no choice but to be spied on. The sum of all the phones + smart speakers + e-health devices + Ring-like products has a deadly potential for democracy. Their coverage is monumental. Right now we feel like the benefits are huge, and the cost minimal: most people are not affected in their daily life by the surveillance, or at least not in a way that is annoying enough. So we accept it. But the issue is not about what it does right no. Just like climate change, it's about what it can do in the future.
Baeocystin 7y ago
I just find it bizarre that it's people's doorbells that somehow seems to have been the triggering point, and not the billion or so closed-circuit surveillance cameras already deployed. Of all the cameras to complain about, seeing who is at your front door is, IMO, the least possibly offensive.
- bart_spoon 7y ago
  Yeah, I guess that's my point. I can understand if the conversation was more centered around the security cameras people are putting up, especially within their own homes. And we already get tracked nearly 24/7 both geographically via our smartphones, as well as online. The possible scenarios where footage from a doorbell cam gets misused seems pretty limited and innocuous. And yet I've seen article after article in recent months about how Ring doorbells are what leads us to 1984.
raxxorrax 7y ago
> not sold on the idea of our society becoming a surveillance state If the police can access them without warrant and even promote the devices on their twitter accounts? I am completely sold on it. I am more skeptical about calling door bells with cameras a technological innovation or progress. > things we've just already accepted, like constant tracking of our positions via smartphones and our online browsing habits. I don't think people have accepted being tracked 24/7. I know plenty of people that actively use guards against these practices and that isn't restricted to technically inclinded personalities. It is just that legislative powers seem to be sleeping. But accepting invasions of privacy as inevitable is certainly a dystopian development.
nreece 7y ago
>> But I don't see how security cameras, or at least the video doorbells, are more dangerous than all of the other things we've just already accepted, like constant tracking of our positions via smartphones and our online browsing habits. Nothing personal, but I can't fathom such naive viewpoints in this day & age, specially as a parent. One of the many stories: "Man hacks Ring camera in 8-year-old girl's bedroom, taunts her: 'I'm Santa Claus' " https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/man-hacks-ring-camera-8-year-old-girl-s-bedroom-n1100586 https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/man-hacks-ring-camera-8...
- bart_spoon 7y ago
  So don't install a security camera in your 8 year old daughter's bedroom, especially if you don't intend to use good security practices. That isn't a societal issue, that is an issue of the parents being idiots. Like I said, I fail to see how a doorbell camera, even with bad security practice, is going to be more dangerous than a smartphone which tracks what you are browsing on the internet and your positional data within a few feet at literally every second of the day.
  - nreece 7y ago
    You're not entirely wrong. Parents, and individuals in general, have to more careful. I won't call them total idiots though, because these companies promise those very use-cases through their marketing. Any device that compromises the privacy of you/others without your/their permission is dangerous, as is a video doorbell for your street and neighbors, a voice assistant secretly used for persona marketing, or even a webcam on your laptop. A false sense of security with a huge potential for misuse. I won't go into details, but my past gov projects tell me it's better to be safe than sorry.
nullc 7y ago
People don't really grok the problems of things like web access or location privacy because they don't understand what that kind of privacy means. They've seldom had access to their own data at all (or at least a clear view of it), nor have most suffered with snoopy busybodies with access to it... nor have they had that data about other people. But for Cameras that record video (and maybe sound) people have a much more visceral understanding of the privacy consequences even though audio/video is often _less_ of a wide scale privacy problem than web access data, location, or phone/email metadata (because of the logistics about manipulating and analyzing that data). But whatever. Just because people should care a lot more about their other (web/geo/meta)data than they do, doesn't mean that A/V privacy isn't a huge deal. If we, as technologists and experts, can manage to motivate the public on this issue we should do so. Advancement on this front will make success easier on others. Failure on this front-- where people do have an innate understanding of the privacy problems will bode very poorly for areas where they do not.
moksly 7y ago
Privacy isn’t a huge concern in a free society, which is likely why none of us really care. But imagine having those systems in a country where having a specific opinion, or sexuality could result in a death penalty. You wouldn’t want to be filmed sneaking into your lovers house in such an area, and you really wouldn’t want to be overheard. In the west, it’s much more a question of what you want companies to know about you, than what you have to hide. But we haven’t always been free. Imagine planning a revolution to overthrow a despot with the current level of surveillance.
- rchaud 7y ago
  > You wouldn’t want to be filmed sneaking into your lovers house in such an area, This is particularly ironic because Bezos, now part owner of Ring.com, is facing a multi-billion $ divorce bill for doing exactly this and getting caught.

bbmario 7y ago

I own a couple of Arlo cameras that I bought 3 years ago. They still offer free cloud storage because I'm an old customer, so it's kind of a good deal. I only turn them on when I'm out of town. They have a separate router, so it's a little bit harder to hack than Ring. I wish, however, there was an affordable DIY solution to home cameras. And yet, I still couldn't find a setup that is completely open-source and/or provides me enough freedom. Has anyone started digging into this?

glaslong 7y ago
You can get an Esp32-Cam for ~$10 and plug it into Home Assistant. https://randomnerdtutorials.com/esp32-cam-video-streaming-web-server-camera-home-assistant/ https://randomnerdtutorials.com/esp32-cam-video-streaming-we...
sirmoveon 7y ago
Zoneminder is open source. A little hard to setup just right, but has a lot of potential.
- slantyyz 7y ago
  Zoneminder is pretty good, all things considered. It was my go-to NVR before I switched to the Unifi ecosystem. I guess the one drawback (when I was using it) was that it didn't record audio, and that its UI was relatively unpolished. Having said that, setting up motion sensing on the cameras in Zoneminder was far better than a lot of other solutions that I had tried.

DrivebyPoster 7y ago

"Don't ask questions, just consume product and get excited for next products." Fucking bugmen. Make a home security arduino setup if you wanna stroke your tech skill egos, at least then you'd have less privacy leaks and save a bit of money. All they do is buy redundant crap that spies on them and exacerbate inequality by feeding into this mindset. Don't they have anything better to do with their incomes? What else can you expect from a community of "tech enthusiasts"?

mh8h 7y ago

Disclaimer: Apple employee, but not working on anything related to this. You can achieve a privacy focused solution by doing the processing localy. I am looking forward to more HomeKit Secure Video compatible hardware becoming available. The idea is to process the video feed locally on an Apple TV or iPad, and then send notifications to your iPhone. An encrypted video can be uploaded to iCloud upon detecting some motion. Also... with the photo library available on the Apple TV, I guess face detection in the video feed might be possible in the future.

gduffy 7y ago
Disclaimer: I left Apple in June. Processing on local devices is slightly better but ultimately it’s cold comfort when those devices are locked down, closed source, and opaque to anyone but hackers. From the end customer perspective, the only protection was Apple’s customer-focused business model, which is now slowly tilting from “sell slick technology products” to “monetize the user base.” Another solution is needed. Since I created Dropcam (Nest cam), I am working on fixing this: send us a message at https://duffy.org https://duffy.org if you want to learn more.
ezzzzz 7y ago
Hmm... this is interesting. I would like to learn more about how this works, given apple's history, my guess is they won't advertise such solutions until they have either developed their own camera, or have struck some deal with a 3rd party. I'd still likely plunk down the inflated price if their privacy model was actually proven. I've looked into flashing a CFW on a cheap Xaomi ip camera, running ZoneMinder and a NAS for storage and backups and whatnot, and while setting all this up is pretty trivial, I feel like I'd be better off just paying for a commercial system rather than administering my own. But then you look into the security practices in such systems and well, lets just say, off the shelf isn't really a great option either.
- syndeo 7y ago
  I used to work at a startup that built products for parents of infants and toddlers, such as "smart socks" to monitor babies' vitals, and was involved in the late-stage development of their smart baby monitor camera, which released last year. (A quick web search of certain terms above should give you a good guess as to which company I'm talking about.) They—and dozens of other companies—use off-the-shelf commodity components from the Chinese corporation Aoni, and their camera is essentially the device linked below, but in a different case: http://anc.cn/ip-camera/smart-wireless-cube-camera/smart-wireless-cube-camera-e966-g0109.html http://anc.cn/ip-camera/smart-wireless-cube-camera/smart-wir... Check the specs, as well as the general appearance of the thing from the front. While inspecting the traffic coming in and out of this thing, I saw it making a ton of requests to really weird Chinese IP addresses and uploading a lot of data. It was encrypted, so I couldn't tell for sure what it was, but it presumably was video footage. I raised these concerns to others on my team, but besides a "huh, weird", none of them seemed to care enough to investigate further or properly escalate it. I was just a temp, so I didn't have the pull or influence that full-time employees had. It was really concerning to me that this stuff wasn't properly addressed, but instead was swept under the rug, despite the fact that it's going to be pointed at babies and toddlers. There are some real disgusting folks out there who will take advantage of this, if they haven't already, especially since it has the same two-way audio that "Santa" used with the Ring cameras. (If any of my former co-workers are reading this, I genuinely don't mean you any ill will in particular. But the company really needs to fix those issues, and not simply re-case commodity camera systems from surveillance states. There's obviously a backdoor, and if Aoni/China can access it, so can the aforementioned disgusting people.)

arkanciscan 7y ago

I like my Eufy Cam. The video lives on an SD card in my house. NSA probably still watches it, but at least it's not every other Google/Amazon employee.

bbmario 7y ago
Never heard of that before. I love it. Thanks!
- SlowRobotAhead 7y ago
  Eufy IIRC is Anker’s video line, could be wrong. The baby monitor they make is actually pretty great. 2.4Ghz propriety not-WiFi. I was pretty impressed.

ropiwqefjnpoa 7y ago

People seem all too willing to trade their privacy for inexpensive convenience and novelty. Although they probably don't view it that way. In any case, Google, Amazon and the like are chipping away at peoples desire for privacy and soon, I imagine privacy will be viewed as a quaint notion from the past. All this just to sell us more stuff.

drukenemo 7y ago
I use Ring. Convenience and novelty were not the reasons I decide to buy it. I did it because of its advertised feature: security.
- frockington1 7y ago
  I use Ring as well, the best feature has been with package delivery. You can check if the package is reasonably hidden and more than once police have been able to catch scumbag criminals within minutes of them stealing a package. It's incredibly beneficial
- ropiwqefjnpoa 7y ago
  Well, you know what has been said about purchasing security and giving up liberty...
  - bart_spoon 7y ago
    Thats only applicable if you believe that owning a Ring doorbell requires giving up some portion of your liberty. I have failed to be convinced that it does. Also, if you are going to make an argument, I would hope it would be more substantial than a pithy argument from 300 years ago. Otherwise, you fall into the same category as those who argue against climate change/evolution using bible verses.
    - ropiwqefjnpoa 7y ago
      We'll see if in another 20 years the government and law authorities have easy access to things like our Nest and Ring in the name of security.

ptah 7y ago

> In his book “1984,” George Orwell imagined that Big Brother-type surveillance would be imposed on us by a violent state as predicted by william gibson, corporations are becoming more powerful than states and the oppressive state in 1984 is more likely to be a corporation as time progresses also the "violent" is redundant as "state" already includes some form of violence

fyfy18 7y ago
Brave New World is a much more realistic dystopian future than 1984. Just give people enough of what they want and they will conform.
caymanjim 7y ago
The largest corporations have been more powerful than small states for centuries. The Dutch East India company, the United Fruit Company, various mining conglomerates. DEI was straight up put in charge of nations, complete with a military force. UFC had governments overthrown and didn't even try to hide it. They're better at PR now so their machinations aren't as proudly displayed, but if a major natural resource company wants to operate in a small, less-powerful nation, they're going to get their way, just as they have for centuries.

MandieD 7y ago

"Convenient" is the new c-word. "Because it's convenient" is the main excuse I hear for excessive plastic packaging, disposable everything, taking a 3 hr drive instead of a 4 hr train/transit ride, posting to Facebook instead of your own blog, placing voice-"activated" spy devices in your home. I'm coming to despise that word.

balladeer 7y ago
I had bought an Echo Dot sometimes back. I had decided I'll use it judiciously. After I acceded my past recording (all of it) on Alexa app and heard some of them I just packed it away. I also have a Smart TV. Of Vu brand - https://www.vutvs.com https://www.vutvs.com - quite famous in India and apparently a California company. I don't even know whether they listen in the background. I tried looking for documents related to that and talking to the customer care but they were clueless. They would get stuck at repeating "do you want to schedule a repair?".
- cbm-vic-20 7y ago
  > I tried looking for documents related to that and talking to the customer care but they were clueless. They would get stuck at repeating "do you want to schedule a repair?". No company is going to train their first-, second- or even third-line support to answer a question being asked of 0.00001% of their customers.
markosaric 7y ago
Completely agree! I do many "inconvenient" things these days. It takes more time to make better and more informed decisions about products you use/buy or organizations you support rather than simply buy by habit. It can be more expensive to buy locally produced and environmentally friendly products rather than something mass-produced or coming from the other side of the world. It is more inconvenient to carry your own bags and bottles rather than simply buying single-use items and throwing them away. And on and on. I'm happy to make these compromises but the system we've built where the better choices are more inconvenient certainly doesn't help us reach the goals we need.

LatteLazy 7y ago

Getting a vpn, using a niche browser and binning your smart phone are the only ways you get privacy. Complaining about nest and ring is "picking out a natt and swallowing a camel".

brosinante 7y ago
Exactly what google and amazon would like you to believe - that it's a case of black and white, and privacy is supposedly impossible to achieve.
- LatteLazy 7y ago
  Respectfully, can you have meaningful privacy with a (mainstream) smartphone? How? On a desktop you could tor everything I guess, but on an android/iOS device, everything down to the keyboard is compromised by design...
  - brosinante 7y ago
    You're absolutely correct and that's not an excuse to compromise or abandon privacy universally.
    - LatteLazy 7y ago
      I mean, it is though isn't it? If Google know where I am at all times because of my phone, and they have all my selfies, what privacy am I actually losing because they know what time I got home from my doorbell which took a picture of me? If the same phone is listening constantly to me incase I use voice commands, what privacy am I losing by having a nest do the same thing, but only when I'm home?

Calashle0202 7y ago

Really don't understand why people are surprised about the latest new stories about strangers "hacking" their Google Nest or Amazon Ring account. Especially when they use Password as their password (or something equally as stupid). You would think someone at Google or Amazon would take a moment before launch and set password policies in place and a mandatory 2 form factor authentication process to view their account. My analogy is, would you set your verbal security password with ADT to be "Password"? Then, don't do the same with a 24/7 surveillance device in your childrens bedrooms.

tyingq 7y ago

It really seems like there's a viable niche for a privacy focused line of digital assistants, cameras, doorbells, thermometers, etc. Honeywell, for example, seems to do well with their learning thermostat. You'll never own the bigger market, but there does seem to be an opportunity.

daxorid 7y ago
The niche of people who actually care about privacy is vanishingly small, and I would hazard a guess that it overlaps strongly with the niche of people who would buy a raspberry pi to tinker with. At this point, we're better off rolling our own with cheap CMOS camera modules, IR LEDs, 3d printed enclosures, arduinos, and rpis. Perhaps there's room in the market for a few people to do this as a side hustle, and sell completed boxes with software for those who don't have time to build their own, but likely not much more than that. Alternatively, any decent A/V store will still sell you wired cameras and base stations that don't connect to the Internet at all. Then your inconvenience is fishing coax or cat5 through the walls of your house.
- tyingq 7y ago
  "The niche of people who actually care about privacy is vanishingly small" You could market to adjacent fears, like "being hacked", "your videos go to the police", etc. Companies like Lifelock seem to do well.
rchaud 7y ago
It's a niche, but I doubt if it's viable. The segment of people who care enough about privacy to pay for it (VPN or Fastmail/Protonmail for example), is likely to overlap with the segment of people who claim they could reverse-engineer your solution with a Raspberry Pi over a couple of weekends.

onreact 7y ago

Dear NBC editor: It's "topic" but "dystopian".

tyingq 7y ago
A write-up on that: https://www.dailywritingtips.com/is-dystopic-a-word/ https://www.dailywritingtips.com/is-dystopic-a-word/
workthrowaway 7y ago
both dystopic and dystopian are synonyms. btw did you know that grep (as in the unix tool) is in the dictionary? it even says it comes from the operating system.
- onreact 7y ago
  "Dystopic" [sic!] may lead to misunderstandings. Also the article above states that it isn't an actual word. You can't even pronounce it. People will only hear "this topic" or something like that.

RickJWagner 7y ago

Huh. I think there's a market for an upgrade that uses recognition software to see the home owners, then omit them from tracking. Only the bad guys get 'tracked'. Sounds better.

oxymoran 7y ago

What I don’t understand is why people are putting internet connected cameras INSIDE their house. How do indoor cameras, that catch somebody already inside your house, make you safer? Why not just get door and window sensors? Outdoor cameras make a bit more sense but a hacker could still use info about when you are home or similar against you.

bobongo 7y ago
> why people are putting internet connected cameras INSIDE their house - To monitor the animals in the house - To get alerts if a smoke alarm goes off - In case of break in, to capture the person's face and get a notification - Access historical and real-time feed to check when <event> happened - Etc In an apartment with no other security system, a single indoors camera can do these. (In a house, you're better off with a complete security system since you have control over both indoor and outdoor configuration of your residence.) The alternative is time consuming and potentially less secure, though much more fun to play with: - Set up a raspberry pi-based camera system that can be scaled to multiple cameras and sensors - Set up an raspberry pi NextCloud instance for the cameras to save their feeds to - Set up an ML algorithm to recognize faces, animals, and types of noises - Set up a Twilio instance to send SMS notifications - Set up a mail server to send email notifications - Set up a back up system in case the sdcard on one of the raspberry pis gets corrupted - Set up a Home Assistant instance to control the cameras etc - Set up an Auth mechanism for your residents and guests to control the IoTs - Harden any systems that are exposed to the internet as a result of this set up

rasvj 7y ago

How is this a dystopic future? Unlike a telescreen, you're not forced to put a Nest in your home.

caymanjim 7y ago
Maybe not, but many of your neighbors, the police (via ubiquitous public space abuse), every store, every mode of public transportation, and an increasing number of automobiles are all pointing cameras at you, whether you like it or not, and companies like Amazon in particular are actively seeking to aid law enforcement access to all these devices. It's not like you can opt out just because you haven't installed one in your own home.
- rasvj 7y ago
  >neighbors, the police (via ubiquitous public space abuse), every store, every mode of public transportation, and an increasing number of automobiles are all pointing cameras at you Can be regulated, it is regulated in many places already (like, you can't store recordings for more than 15 days, or you can ask for your images to be removed). >companies like Amazon in particular are actively seeking to aid law enforcement access to all these devices Good.