6 ms·

You opted-in by buying the product in the first place. People are buying these things out of fear anyways. I thought they'd be happy big brother is watching.

nrjames 1y ago
When a man murdered a woman in front of my house last year, our Ring camera's photos of his car led to his arrest within 24 hours, so not entirely useless?
- arlcode 1y ago
  It's all trade offs. Even in the most dystopian sci-fi future where a hostile and totalitarian government watches everything everybody does, they would still use the information to investigate boring everyday crimes. The (non rethoric) question is, are people willing to pay the increasing price of non-crime related surveillance as we see diminished security margins.
- nativeit 1y ago
  I heard there could be zero crime soon, once they start “pre-registration” and open up the death camps for everyone Grok says is a baddy. So useful!
- matthewdgreen 1y ago
  I’m ok with that as long as I, the camera owner, am choosing to hand over the footage. At best I can see some sort of watermarking to ensure that it’s legitimate.
  - nrjames 1y ago
    There are legitimate reasons to want a camera either at your front door or surveilling your property. These can range from an increased sense of security to having documentation to support insurance claims, or even for watching wildlife. We installed our Ring camera after an ongoing string of nighttime car break-ins hit us and we had no direct proof of what happened for insurance. It was meant to be both a deterrent to that type of event and also for documentation if it happened again. There's also a pack of coyotes that lives in the woods near our house and occasionally eats our chickens. While that usage was more out of curiosity (if you have chickens, you're going to lose one from time to time), we were able to develop a sense of when that threat was higher. I live on a bucolic cul-de-sac in a house that I've lived in since the mid 1970s. Most of the neighbors are the same. I never in my life expected a random person to drive down the street, drag a lady out of his trunk, chase her around the cul-de-sac, and stab her to death in front of my house. I never expected to find the body in the woods 40' from my side door. This is when I also learned that nobody comes to clean up after a crime like that and that if I didn't want pools of blood in front of my house and a 50' streak of it crossing the circle or the splatters all over the mailboxes that I was going to have to go out there and clean it up myself. I was in PTSD therapy for a while after that. I'm glad the Ring camera caught some of the activity. After an event like that, it's easy to lose a sense of security in your home. How are you supposed to sleep the night after that happens, when the perpetrator remains at large? You can't lock your doors hard enough or do anything at all to feel secure. That lack of sense of security does not go away in a day or a week or a month. It goes away when you can find "normal" again. It helped us to find normal by installing other cameras around the house. I don't want Ring or Arlo or anybody to be automatically sharing my camera footage with anybody. Even with the murder event, it was my choice to go through the footage and share it with the authorities. I don't support authoritarian "law enforcement" activities, I don't want anybody tapping into my camera feed to find lost pets or for any other reason. They shouldn't be allowed to do it. Like many other services we all use, we're more of the product than the customer, as our data is harvested and used for other purposes. Personal security is different than targeted advertising. Most people won't know they need or want a camera until after they have experienced something that makes them feel less secure in their home. I just hope they have the wits to read the Terms and understand what they're opting into before automatically accepting all of the opt-in-by-default data sharing.
    - matthewdgreen 1y ago
      Not one disagreement with what you're saying. I have cameras outside my house. I'd like them to be end-to-end encrypted and am perfectly fine with a voluntary self-report feature. But what Ring seems to be pushing for is opt-out mass surveillance, and once connected to AI this means we're going to the bad place.
- somenameforme 1y ago
  I think a good thought experiment to consider, in terms of defining what your own views are, is to consider that if every single person had a mandatory 24/7 uplinked camera on them with redundancies, then the number of unsolved crimes would rapidly approach zero. It would be essentially impossible to get away with crime, so the only crimes that would happen would be those of passion, ignorance, or the political elite who would certainly excuse themselves from such social obligations, as usual. But I definitely would not want to live in that world. And I think that's true for most people. It's kind of interesting too because there's some really nasty arguments one can make about this like, 'What, you'd rather see children kidnapped and even killed than consenting to surveillance that won't even be looked at unless you're under suspicion?' But it's quite disingenuous, because with any freedom there is always a cost, and that cost is often extreme. 40,000+ people die per year because of our freedom to drive, yet few would ever use that as an argument to prohibit driving.
  - plasticchris 1y ago
    The trouble is, there would also be no unsolved thought crimes
    - neuralRiot 1y ago
      Another problem is that “crime” is a very flexible term and when you have a hammer everything looks like a nail. Also the legal system specially in the US likes to equate convictions with solved cases which is not always the same.
  - red-iron-pine 1y ago
    > 40,000+ people die per year because of our freedom to drive, yet few would ever use that as an argument to prohibit driving. that is a fantastic argument to force reduced driving and shows up in virtually all discussions about car safety and public transit.
  - charcircuit 1y ago
    >And I think that's true for most people. I think it's the opposite. I think people would prefer the peace of mind of living in a high trust society. People like predictability and being able to trust people. I also think people would enjoy that laws that people pass are actually applied and we can efficiently apply the will of the people to the country. >with any freedom there is always a cost Laws ultimately would be what restrict your freedom, not the enforcement of them. I don't think freedom should rely on poor enforcement of laws.
- reaperducer 1y ago
  When a man murdered a woman in front of my house last year, our Ring camera's photos of his car led to his arrest within 24 hours, so not entirely useless? Your doorbell photo of a car was really the only evidence to convict someone of murder? I'm glad I live somewhere that needs more proof that.
  - nrjames 1y ago
    No, it enabled them to find him quickly. There was other evidence, but with no previously know connection to the victim and the perpetrator having no prior criminal record, I was told it was unlikely they would have found him otherwise.
ongy 1y ago
Why do you think it's fear? The owners I know consider it a convenience device.
- jeromegv 1y ago
  Convenience for? Security? Isn’t increased security measures based on fear?
  - morshu9001 1y ago
    Just knowing when stuff happens outside your house when you're not home. Like, someone in the household came back from work, a package arrived, or a cool animal showed up. Or you're home and appreciate a little more notice before a visitor rings the doorbell. Personally not a compelling enough reason to buy the camera in the first place, but those non crime notifications end up being the most common once it's up.
    - ongy 1y ago
      Or having a quick chat with the delivery guy/neighbour while remote.
  - ongy 1y ago
    Who said anything about security? They are toys
Ancapistani 1y ago
I bought a Ring doorbell several years ago, because I wanted an app-connected doorbell camera. That's it. Once Amazon started rolling out other stuff and it was clear they were setting up a private panopticon, I trashed it and went with Blink, adding five wireless cameras as well. Blink isn't much better, but they're not as broadly compatible and don't have as many bells and whistles yet - but they're getting there. The next step is to roll my own stuff. I expect I'll have that done by the end of the year. I'll also note that none of my Blink cameras are pointing outward from my home. The closest to that is that I have one mounted on the front corner eave, but I made sure to point it so that it's looking at where I park my vehicles, and turned off motion detection for the small area of the street that it can see. What I don't understand is that most of the ones I've seen others install are mounted under the eaves of the house, pointing outward. What's the purpose of that? They're not going to capture anyone actually trying to mess with your property. Most of mine are mounted in trees (front yard) or on posts that I installed for that purpose (back yard).

nrjames 1y ago

When a man murdered a woman in front of my house last year, our Ring camera's photos of his car led to his arrest within 24 hours, so not entirely useless?

arlcode 1y ago
It's all trade offs. Even in the most dystopian sci-fi future where a hostile and totalitarian government watches everything everybody does, they would still use the information to investigate boring everyday crimes. The (non rethoric) question is, are people willing to pay the increasing price of non-crime related surveillance as we see diminished security margins.
nativeit 1y ago
I heard there could be zero crime soon, once they start “pre-registration” and open up the death camps for everyone Grok says is a baddy. So useful!
matthewdgreen 1y ago
I’m ok with that as long as I, the camera owner, am choosing to hand over the footage. At best I can see some sort of watermarking to ensure that it’s legitimate.
- nrjames 1y ago
  There are legitimate reasons to want a camera either at your front door or surveilling your property. These can range from an increased sense of security to having documentation to support insurance claims, or even for watching wildlife. We installed our Ring camera after an ongoing string of nighttime car break-ins hit us and we had no direct proof of what happened for insurance. It was meant to be both a deterrent to that type of event and also for documentation if it happened again. There's also a pack of coyotes that lives in the woods near our house and occasionally eats our chickens. While that usage was more out of curiosity (if you have chickens, you're going to lose one from time to time), we were able to develop a sense of when that threat was higher. I live on a bucolic cul-de-sac in a house that I've lived in since the mid 1970s. Most of the neighbors are the same. I never in my life expected a random person to drive down the street, drag a lady out of his trunk, chase her around the cul-de-sac, and stab her to death in front of my house. I never expected to find the body in the woods 40' from my side door. This is when I also learned that nobody comes to clean up after a crime like that and that if I didn't want pools of blood in front of my house and a 50' streak of it crossing the circle or the splatters all over the mailboxes that I was going to have to go out there and clean it up myself. I was in PTSD therapy for a while after that. I'm glad the Ring camera caught some of the activity. After an event like that, it's easy to lose a sense of security in your home. How are you supposed to sleep the night after that happens, when the perpetrator remains at large? You can't lock your doors hard enough or do anything at all to feel secure. That lack of sense of security does not go away in a day or a week or a month. It goes away when you can find "normal" again. It helped us to find normal by installing other cameras around the house. I don't want Ring or Arlo or anybody to be automatically sharing my camera footage with anybody. Even with the murder event, it was my choice to go through the footage and share it with the authorities. I don't support authoritarian "law enforcement" activities, I don't want anybody tapping into my camera feed to find lost pets or for any other reason. They shouldn't be allowed to do it. Like many other services we all use, we're more of the product than the customer, as our data is harvested and used for other purposes. Personal security is different than targeted advertising. Most people won't know they need or want a camera until after they have experienced something that makes them feel less secure in their home. I just hope they have the wits to read the Terms and understand what they're opting into before automatically accepting all of the opt-in-by-default data sharing.
  - matthewdgreen 1y ago
    Not one disagreement with what you're saying. I have cameras outside my house. I'd like them to be end-to-end encrypted and am perfectly fine with a voluntary self-report feature. But what Ring seems to be pushing for is opt-out mass surveillance, and once connected to AI this means we're going to the bad place.
somenameforme 1y ago
I think a good thought experiment to consider, in terms of defining what your own views are, is to consider that if every single person had a mandatory 24/7 uplinked camera on them with redundancies, then the number of unsolved crimes would rapidly approach zero. It would be essentially impossible to get away with crime, so the only crimes that would happen would be those of passion, ignorance, or the political elite who would certainly excuse themselves from such social obligations, as usual. But I definitely would not want to live in that world. And I think that's true for most people. It's kind of interesting too because there's some really nasty arguments one can make about this like, 'What, you'd rather see children kidnapped and even killed than consenting to surveillance that won't even be looked at unless you're under suspicion?' But it's quite disingenuous, because with any freedom there is always a cost, and that cost is often extreme. 40,000+ people die per year because of our freedom to drive, yet few would ever use that as an argument to prohibit driving.
- plasticchris 1y ago
  The trouble is, there would also be no unsolved thought crimes
  - neuralRiot 1y ago
    Another problem is that “crime” is a very flexible term and when you have a hammer everything looks like a nail. Also the legal system specially in the US likes to equate convictions with solved cases which is not always the same.
- red-iron-pine 1y ago
  > 40,000+ people die per year because of our freedom to drive, yet few would ever use that as an argument to prohibit driving. that is a fantastic argument to force reduced driving and shows up in virtually all discussions about car safety and public transit.
- charcircuit 1y ago
  >And I think that's true for most people. I think it's the opposite. I think people would prefer the peace of mind of living in a high trust society. People like predictability and being able to trust people. I also think people would enjoy that laws that people pass are actually applied and we can efficiently apply the will of the people to the country. >with any freedom there is always a cost Laws ultimately would be what restrict your freedom, not the enforcement of them. I don't think freedom should rely on poor enforcement of laws.
reaperducer 1y ago
When a man murdered a woman in front of my house last year, our Ring camera's photos of his car led to his arrest within 24 hours, so not entirely useless? Your doorbell photo of a car was really the only evidence to convict someone of murder? I'm glad I live somewhere that needs more proof that.
- nrjames 1y ago
  No, it enabled them to find him quickly. There was other evidence, but with no previously know connection to the victim and the perpetrator having no prior criminal record, I was told it was unlikely they would have found him otherwise.

ongy 1y ago

Why do you think it's fear? The owners I know consider it a convenience device.

jeromegv 1y ago
Convenience for? Security? Isn’t increased security measures based on fear?
- morshu9001 1y ago
  Just knowing when stuff happens outside your house when you're not home. Like, someone in the household came back from work, a package arrived, or a cool animal showed up. Or you're home and appreciate a little more notice before a visitor rings the doorbell. Personally not a compelling enough reason to buy the camera in the first place, but those non crime notifications end up being the most common once it's up.
  - ongy 1y ago
    Or having a quick chat with the delivery guy/neighbour while remote.
- ongy 1y ago
  Who said anything about security? They are toys

Ancapistani 1y ago

I bought a Ring doorbell several years ago, because I wanted an app-connected doorbell camera. That's it. Once Amazon started rolling out other stuff and it was clear they were setting up a private panopticon, I trashed it and went with Blink, adding five wireless cameras as well. Blink isn't much better, but they're not as broadly compatible and don't have as many bells and whistles yet - but they're getting there. The next step is to roll my own stuff. I expect I'll have that done by the end of the year. I'll also note that none of my Blink cameras are pointing outward from my home. The closest to that is that I have one mounted on the front corner eave, but I made sure to point it so that it's looking at where I park my vehicles, and turned off motion detection for the small area of the street that it can see. What I don't understand is that most of the ones I've seen others install are mounted under the eaves of the house, pointing outward. What's the purpose of that? They're not going to capture anyone actually trying to mess with your property. Most of mine are mounted in trees (front yard) or on posts that I installed for that purpose (back yard).