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I've wrote about it before on HN, but a local busybody saw me committing the crime of walking down the street in my own neighborhood on their Ring camera and us

I've wrote about it before on HN, but a local busybody saw me committing the crime of walking down the street in my own neighborhood on their Ring camera and used that as pretext for calling the cops on me, who then harassed me for being "suspicious" without having actually looked at the footage themselves at all. Unsurprisingly, I am not a fan of the surveillance state that's found itself at my literal doorstep.

shadowgovt 4y ago
For what it's worth, that same neighbor could have called the cops to harass you after seeing you walking with their own eyeballs, or the ancient art of lying to the cops that they saw anything at all. The presence of the Ring in this story adds nothing to the risk scenario
- heavyset_go 4y ago
  I've been walking in the neighborhoods I've lived in everyday for literal decades, and this only became a problem recently. The difference here is that Ring and its companion apps like Neighbors continuously send their users scary alerts and video clips of innocuous neighborhood activities they'd otherwise miss entirely, or just ignore. I see this all the time with such apps like Nextdoor and Neighbors, where in the past loud sounds in the summer would be written off as fireworks and ignored, but now we have legions of people working themselves into frenzies about how "gun shots" were detected, with calls to action for video evidence of the "perpetrators". What then happens is that people start sharing clips of their neighbors doing essentially nothing and accusing them of actually committing crimes.
MetaWhirledPeas 4y ago
Sounds like your real problem is your neighbor being a jerk. If they didn't have Ring that wouldn't stop them from calling the cops on a "suspicious" person.
- heavyset_go 4y ago
  I think there's a big difference between a busybody staring out the window sometimes and being upset with what they see versus a busybody with a 24/7 security system that pings them at all hours of the day with alerts and video clips about "suspicious" activity it detects, along with apps like Nextdoor, Citizen and the Ring Neighbors app that allow the paranoid to continuously share said clips and create local echo chambers of paranoia, suspicion and distrust.
  - googlryas 4y ago
    In this case we have no idea whether that happened, or whether the crappy neighbor was just looking out their window at that moment. It is silly to blame a doorbell camera for this.
    - heavyset_go 4y ago
      When the cops that stopped me bring up the fact that I was acting "suspicious" according to a neighbor's Ring recording, I can easily blame the doorbell camera for the interaction.

shadowgovt 4y ago

For what it's worth, that same neighbor could have called the cops to harass you after seeing you walking with their own eyeballs, or the ancient art of lying to the cops that they saw anything at all. The presence of the Ring in this story adds nothing to the risk scenario

heavyset_go 4y ago
I've been walking in the neighborhoods I've lived in everyday for literal decades, and this only became a problem recently. The difference here is that Ring and its companion apps like Neighbors continuously send their users scary alerts and video clips of innocuous neighborhood activities they'd otherwise miss entirely, or just ignore. I see this all the time with such apps like Nextdoor and Neighbors, where in the past loud sounds in the summer would be written off as fireworks and ignored, but now we have legions of people working themselves into frenzies about how "gun shots" were detected, with calls to action for video evidence of the "perpetrators". What then happens is that people start sharing clips of their neighbors doing essentially nothing and accusing them of actually committing crimes.

MetaWhirledPeas 4y ago

Sounds like your real problem is your neighbor being a jerk. If they didn't have Ring that wouldn't stop them from calling the cops on a "suspicious" person.

heavyset_go 4y ago
I think there's a big difference between a busybody staring out the window sometimes and being upset with what they see versus a busybody with a 24/7 security system that pings them at all hours of the day with alerts and video clips about "suspicious" activity it detects, along with apps like Nextdoor, Citizen and the Ring Neighbors app that allow the paranoid to continuously share said clips and create local echo chambers of paranoia, suspicion and distrust.
- googlryas 4y ago
  In this case we have no idea whether that happened, or whether the crappy neighbor was just looking out their window at that moment. It is silly to blame a doorbell camera for this.
  - heavyset_go 4y ago
    When the cops that stopped me bring up the fact that I was acting "suspicious" according to a neighbor's Ring recording, I can easily blame the doorbell camera for the interaction.