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Amazon's Ring and Google's Nest reveal the severity of U.S. surveillance state
- N_Lens 8mo agoAnyone have an archive link?
- dredmorbius 8mo ago<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47023400 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47023400>
- user205738 8mo agowhy do you need it? The article is available in full via the link.
- farklenotabot 8mo ago[flagged]
- roxolotl 8mo agoIt would be foolish to believe this isn’t happening basically everywhere. The reason this is news right now is because Amazon got cocky enough to buy an ad spot on the most watched TV event in the US showing the extent of their surveillance network.
- anonzzzies 8mo agohere in my town in Spain I still see no cams, just phones and you cannot publish without consent when filmed in a public venue.
- Argonaut998 8mo ago1. Because it is referring to the Super Bowl which was last week 2. Because everyone knows China is a surveillance state. It’s also entirely done by the state. 3. As above, the US’ surveillance is masked under private companies. This is far different from everywhere else. 4. Whataboutism (although I generally hate this newspeak term).
- treetalker 8mo agohttps://archive.ph/20260214004458/https://greenwald.substack.com/p/amazons-ring-and-googles-nest-unwittingly https://archive.ph/20260214004458/https://greenwald.substack...
- user205738 8mo agoIt looks like an endless captcha.
- esseph 8mo agoBrowser / DNS issue. Wireless fine here on WiFi and mobile.
- ThePowerOfFuet 8mo agohttps://web.archive.org/web/20260215130824/https://greenwald.substack.com/p/amazons-ring-and-googles-nest-unwittingly https://web.archive.org/web/20260215130824/https://greenwald...
- 4272026_Change 8mo ago[dead]
- SVAintNoWay 8mo ago> But the graphic Amazon used seems to have unwittingly depicted how invasive this technology can be This is a calculated move to normalize such technology. Yes, it will cause controversy in the short term, and these companies knew this was a possibility—but as a result the image in people's minds won't be the gestapo rounding up grannies; it'll kids finding puppies. To call this "unwitting" is simply naive (not surprising for Greenwald).
- californical 8mo agoThat’s why I’m hoping the news picks this up more - especially about the intended integration with flock/ICE. That might be the issue that brings awareness mainstream beyond the tech-aware circles
- baobabKoodaa 8mo agoNo marketing team would willingly do this and it's insane to think otherwise.
- Forgeties79 8mo agoAnd yet this went up. I understand it’s easy to just say “marketing teams don’t understand anything,“ but I have worked with many and they are incredibly sensitive to negative feelings/reactions. They get it wrong but they tend to air on the side of caution which means the vast majority of the time they avoid situations like this incredibly intentionally.
- tw04 8mo ago> I have worked with many and they are incredibly sensitive to negative feelings/reactions. And yet there are countless examples that show the exact opposite. This made it through one of the largest marketing budgets in the world… https://youtu.be/uwvAgDCOdU4 https://youtu.be/uwvAgDCOdU4
- Forgeties79 8mo ago
- vintagedave 8mo ago> "All of this is particularly remarkable, and particularly disconcerting, since we are barely more than a decade removed from the disclosures about mass domestic surveillance enabled by the courageous whistleblower Edward Snowden..." With respect to Greenwald, I don't think it's remarkable at all. I have learned, through experience, that sometimes when people want to do things they should not, or against which there is opposition, there is enormous power in simply doing it. If you ignore people enough, you can do anything. Preventing this requires systems with accountability. And as HN commenters frequently note, accountability for government, tech, or corporate leaders in general seems culturally missing in the US. Despite Snowden, nothing here is remarkable. This has grown because it _can_ grow.
- Throaway1982 8mo agoUSA society has devolved into a game. The only object is to win. Nothing else matters.
- shadowgovt 8mo agoWho would have thought that after changing no laws to ban the behavior, firing nobody, and re-upping the post-9/11 laws consistently, that the process would continue? I, for one, am shocked... that anyone might be shocked about this.
- ozmodiar 8mo agoDon't worry, I'm sure that trusting these systems to a group of ghouls from the Epstein files won't have any negative consequences.
- lenerdenator 8mo agoAt this point, it's fair to assume that if the US government wanted to surveil you to a nefarious end, they absolutely could, easily, using things you bought to make your life more convenient. The keys then become: 1) Implementing policies discouraging them from doing so at the societal level and 2) Implementing force behind those policies at the personal and societal level DHS isn't getting paid right now because Kristi "Dog Shooter" Noem managed to screw up so badly that even Congressional Republicans under Trump don't want to own her agency's behavior and carved DHS out of the normal funding bill. There's still a chance for #1 to be achieved. #2 remains to be seen at the societal level, but you can start working on that yourself for the personal level.
- freeopinion 8mo agoI laugh at myself sometimes for things like this: I refuse to provide my phone number to the cashier who promises me loyalty points, then I hand over the same credit card number I use for all my purchases. Boy, I really showed them how much I value my privacy!
- jb1991 8mo agoHow are those two things the same?!
- ambicapter 8mo agoThey're both a single long-lived identifier that identifies a single person and their habits?
- throwawayqqq11 8mo agoI always pay in cash. I go out of my way to get cash and travel to more distant stores to spend it.
- Brian_K_White 8mo agoSame, exactly the same here. But the other holes in the bucket doesn't mean you have to help. From a real opsec point of view a single tiny hole is the same as no wall at all. But from a day to day view less is less. It does at least reduce the spam. And there is also, say you plug hole A and you can't do anything about hole B. Some day something may develop that changes hole B (maybe a new law, maybe it's a service that you can stop using, maybe one org stops cooperating with another, whatever). If hole A has already been wide open for years then closing hole B may not change much. But if hole A has been closed for years when the opportunity to close hole B comes along, then maybe closing hole B actually does something. I choose to see it as something is better than nothing and it's worth it to apply pressure and be sand in the gears. It's got to be better for everyone that there is at least some sand in the gears than if there were no sand in the gears.
- oefrha 8mo agoIt’s pretty amazing when you get the worst of both worlds—total surveillance, yet still rampant crime.
- kgwxd 8mo agoThe rampant crime is largely made up.
- oefrha 8mo agoWho’s making up the homicide and other violent crime statistics and for what purpose?
- ses1984 8mo agoHow do the stats look compared to 5, 10, 20, 40 years ago?
- ori_b 8mo agoWhich statistics are you looking at? Crime has been dropping since the 90s, with the exception of short term regressions. https://jasher.substack.com/p/crime-is-likely-down-an-enormous https://jasher.substack.com/p/crime-is-likely-down-an-enormo...
- oefrha 8mo agoYou do realize these are still crap compared to other countries right?
- SV_BubbleTime 8mo agoSmall rich counties with vast majority homogeneous populations?
- ori_b 8mo agoAgreed, the world overall is pretty safe these days.
- mark_l_watson 8mo agoGreat writeup. Glenn mentions that he stopped using Gemini. While I still use Gemini for technical research and occasional coding/design work via Antigravity, for all day to day queries and prompts I have switched to using Proton's Lumo that is really quite good: use of a strong Mistral model and web search is 100% private, and while chat history is preserved for a while it is stored and processed like Proton Mail. More good reading that I found helpful are the books: Privacy is Power and Surveillance Capitalism.
- stogot 8mo agoI wasn’t aware of the 100% private web search, I’ll have to look. How well does this work?
- mark_l_watson 8mo agoTry it for free. I pay $10 a month for unlimited use.
- throwjjj 8mo ago[dead]
- api 8mo agoHe’s not wrong but screw Glenn Greenwald. I assume his solution will be to back the current or next strongman, because strongman rule will save us? It’s like the “don’t tread on me” militia crowd voting by like a 90% margin for a regime that is now enacting every single one of the things they’ve been afraid of for 50 years: masked cops, opaque detention centers, assaulting (and murdering) people for legally exercising second amendment rights, mass surveillance, social credit systems, and so on. Or, I guess, like Lenin creating a totalitarian state to enslave the workers to liberate the workers? Or the French Revolution replacing the monarchy with the terror? Many examples in history I suppose.
- danesparza 8mo agoWhat evidence do you have the Glenn Greenwald wants a strongman? If anything, he has been attacked by numerous 'strong men' (in various governments!) over several years.
- jeffbee 8mo agoGreenwald is a vocal and consistent anti-institutionalist, and this creates the conditions for strongmen to take over. Whether he is aware of having this effect is not relevant.
- alejohausner 8mo agoHe criticizes the military-industrial complex. Don’t you think that’s an institution worth dismantling?
- jeffbee 8mo agoGreenwald has criticized every institution that exists, so there's not a signal there.
- acdha 8mo agoWhat’s been dismantled? The major impact of his recent work was helping elect Trump twice and get tech companies to drop anti-disinformation campaigns. The military-industrial complex not only isn’t dismantled, it’s growing!
- ornornor 8mo agoThis probably even has ramifications beyond US residents. I'm confident Google etc will be compelled (if they haven't already been) to share their dossiers with the US and allies so that there is a file on each individual's psychology, weaknesses, and a how-to manual for gaslighting that person with the goal to silence them or coerce them into acting a certain way. And by then, the Stasi would look like cute amateurs in comparison. Those raising these concerns have been dismissed as paranoid for decades, even post-Snowden. And yet, surprising no-one, here we are.
- itsanaccount 8mo agoI've noticed a big split in viewpoint between people who don't live in the US. Its like those who live in the states have a incentive to act like everything going on is ok, while those outside are increasingly having statements like yours. "How do you not see this power 13 years past Snowden" I've not given up trying to point out how dangerous the US govs powers are in the hands of an ever less capable and more fascist government, ie posting here on HN, but the odds to convince people are low.
- titanomachy 8mo agoI spend significant time in the US, Canada, and Europe, and nobody I talk to seems to think that what's going on is OK. Both Canada and Europe are undertaking major projects to reduce their interdependence with America, and public sentiment on America has changed rapidly since the current administration assumed power. Europeans have always distrusted American tech, and Canadians have started trying to break away as well. The Americans I spend time with are also unhappy with the direction things are going, but most of them still use Google Chrome and buy everything on Amazon. They seem to be less willing to accept a little bit of inconvience to take a moral stand.
- retrac 8mo agoOpinion poll Dec 2025 Canada-wide: "How do you think the Canadian government should approach the following countries?" https://thehub.ca/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/c9Enf-how-do-you-think-the-canadian-government-should-approach-the-following-countries-1.png https://thehub.ca/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/c9Enf-how-do-yo... Some is just shock and overreaction I think. But it is an enormous shift.
- wordsunite 8mo agoI know it seems hard, but just stop using Google, Amazon, Meta products. Tell everyone you know to stop using their products. They have all been acquiring and amassing surveillance for years through their products and now they're just double dipping with AI training to sell you more of it. The more you can get people to realize and disconnect the better. I wish more people would use AI to build alternatives with a clear, binding mission not to exploit the data, not to sell or be funded by investors who expect it to, etc. We have the power to build more than ever. We should use it.
- okanat 8mo agoThat is going to work as the same as telling people to stop buying gas from Standard Oil or stop using Bell Telephone. Without government intervention you cannot break up their control.
- derbOac 8mo agoI agree that government restrictions usually help if they're implemented well, but part of the issue is the government is benefiting from this kind of thing. Also, most people don't actually need something like Amazon. Not to minimize the level of investment in it, but I don't see Amazon or Google as being quite the same as Bell or Standard Oil. Maybe between Google and Apple there's some kind of duopoly like that? My impression is people don't value — either because they don't understand or minimize — things that protect privacy and anonymity. This is a standard refrain on these kinds of forums and elsewhere — "your typical person doesn't know or care about [feature X that preserves privacy, choice, and autonomy], they just want something that works and is fun". It's been belittled as unfashionable or paranoid or performative or something, when it's really something that's had short term costs that pale in comparison to the long-term costs. I'm not saying governments don't need to be on the "right side" but I think people need to see security as involving not just encryption and so forth, but also decentralization, anonymity, demonopolization, and censorship resistance. It needs to be seen as part of the product or service benefits. A lot of this reminds me of stuff from the 90s, when network security was ignored for awhile for customer convenience's sake. It seems really similar now, only the thing that's been ignored is like user control and privacy or something like that. I think the thing that's surprising to me, for example, is that it takes a Super Bowl ad for people to realize that maybe there are downsides to letting a monopoly have access to video throughout the neighborhood everywhere.
- alejohausner 8mo agoGlenn Greenwald is back on substack. Yay! For the past few years, he’s mostly done videos on rumble, and he’s fun to watch, but personally I prefer his writing. In case you’ve been under a rock for 10 years, Greenwald was the guy who published Snowden’s revelations. His focus has always been on censorship, surveillance, and hypocrisy in government.
- jeffbee 8mo ago"Yay" Greenwald is (still) playing footsie down at the Nazi bar. https://www.theguardian.com/media/2026/feb/07/revealed-how-substack-makes-money-from-hosting-nazi-newsletters https://www.theguardian.com/media/2026/feb/07/revealed-how-s...
- embedding-shape 8mo ago> Revealed: How Substack makes money from hosting Nazi newsletters If we're gonna judge authors for what platforms they're using, does that mean we're all bad guys here on HN too, since a lot of current misery is because of startups and technology companies who used to receive a lot praise here?
- zrail 8mo agoYes.
- nvr219 8mo agoSuffering from success.
- lqstuart 8mo agoIt's always fun reminding people that the internet was invented by the US military
- embedding-shape 8mo agoSo was the programming compiler, not sure what that's supposed to tell us. Programming languages are violent?
- softwaredoug 8mo agoThis type of centralization breeds authoritarianism. See also the Iran protests. There’s too many single points of failure in technology. These systems become sources of oppression inevitably. How do we build a resilient system that doesn’t rely on single platforms?
- chii 8mo ago> How do we build a resilient system that doesn’t rely on single platforms? by making sure that compatibility is enshrined into law, so that competition occurs, rather than walled gardens. It has to start at the top - gov't has to mandate it.
- softwaredoug 8mo agoAnything that relies on gov't can be undone by gov't. Or weaponized by gov't. We need resilience that's hard to regulate or undo.
- tremon 8mo agoYou already had resilience that was very hard to undo: three independent branches of government, indirect elections via the electoral college, separation of church and state, strong protections for freedom of speech, independent journalism. Yet you still managed to have it undone. What does a non-government solution look like to you that can't be undone by the People?
- mindslight 8mo agoThe real problem isn't that it was undone by "the People", but rather that the surveillance industry effectively formed a fourth branch of government that grew and grew, then finally had enough sway over the People to convince them to undo it. To head off what we're currently staring down, we needed a US equivalent of the GDPR and enforcement against anti-competitive bundling 15+ years ago.
- intended 8mo ago
- alejohausner 8mo agoThe backlash against the use of Ring cameras began with their tone-deaf superbowl ad. Amazon assumed that customers would buy their surveillance technology. The whole thing reminds me that we have returned to the Gilded Age, when the rich people who run the world strutted about arrogantly, without fear of shame or public disapproval. It’s as if Bezos is telling us “you have no choice. You will buy our product whether you like it or not.” Will another Progressive Era bring about more equality, or are the billionaires too entrenched?
- wwweston 8mo agoThe bigger problem is that our digital gilded age is founded in an entrenched culture organizing and framing support for it. It’s one that has been carefully created with several tracks of effort going back decades (some even a century). Counterculture is disorganized and shallow, and funding is not as abundant where understanding of this problem exists.
- tsunamifury 8mo agoI can say from direct experience Apple is not any better and at times much worse as they actively lie about their security measures by obscuring loopholes left open for direct government access as well as they cooperate with little to no push back.
- acdha 8mo agoDo you have any details about those loopholes? It seems like a potentially big story.
- tsunamifury 8mo agoiCloud loophole, push notification loophole, RCS loophole, business messaging loophole. These are just the semi public ones. No one cares.
- acdha 8mo agoThose aren’t loopholes and are widely known? I mean, they have an entire E2EE iCloud feature giving customers a choice between security and convenience: https://support.apple.com/en-gb/108756 https://support.apple.com/en-gb/108756 RCS has never offered that security guarantee at the protocol level. Google has deployed a proprietary encryption layer on top but refuses to allow other clients access. This was rather famously part of the blue/green message divide which was in the news for years. Similarly push notifications have had privacy recommendations for ages - that’s why apps like Signal give users the option to choose their level of risk exposure.
- tsunamifury 8mo agoIm referring to the legal and cooperation loopholes Apple has put behind those. Each one allows for access, at times warrant less, at any moment. It’s bizarre that you think this is “Ok”. Insane you are defending it. Combined it makes a hard hard take that they are security oriented. Beyond that Apple has cooperated with data turnover at the personal request of President Trump multiple times. So pull your head out of the sand.
- m348e912 8mo agoI know Ring is getting a bad rap for enabling state level surveillance, but the Ring app offers an option to enable end-to-end encryption between the camera and your phone. The stored video is encrypted with key generated on your phone. You have to be physically close to the camera in order to share the key and complete the set-up. Once encrypted, the video can't be analyzed by AI or used in a broad surveillance effort. It's entirely possible that the encryption keys have a backdoor, but I doubt it. Although there is no way to verify.
- sillywabbit 8mo agoEnd-to-end encryption only means something if you trust the endpoints.
- rvnx 8mo agoThey often also tend to call HTTPS end-to-end encryption https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/media/securing-your-origin-for-media-and-entertainment-workflows/ https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/media/securing-your-origin-for-... even Amazon Web Services: Benefits of using HTTPS connections: HTTPS provides end-to-end encryption
- sillywabbit 8mo agoI wonder if that's why it's called Transport Layer Security.
- ivan_gammel 8mo agoWhen national interests require that, it can get a firmware update which sends a copy of data to comrades in U.S. Ministerium für Staatssicherheit even before that e2e encrypted copy reaches your phone.
- deleted 8mo ago[deleted]
- SV_BubbleTime 8mo ago
- calibas 8mo agoIt's a clear violation of the 4th Amendment, but the government acts like they've found a "loophole" because it's private businesses doing the spying.
- verisimi 8mo agoIf corporations and government are acting together, this is fascism (according to Mussolini). It seems that is already the case. It's just we call it 'democracy'. Perhaps 'crypto-fascism' is the right term.
- mindslight 8mo ago"Inverted totalitarianism" is the term you're looking for, although with Trumpism we're flipping to just straightforward totalitarianism. "Crypto-fascism" is applicable to Surveillance Valley's fake strain of "libertarianism", which is more accurately described as corporate authoritarianism.
- otterley 8mo agoAs an attorney I’d like to understand why you think there is a “clear” Constitutional violation going on here. What activity, specifically, are you referring to, and what precedent supports your claim?
- calibas 8mo agoYou're an attorney and you're asking me why the government spying on everyone is a clear violation of the 4th Amendment?
- otterley 8mo agoYes. You’re the one making the assertion (not just that there is a violation but also that the activity is that “the government spying on everyone”); the burden of proof is thus on you. Attorneys challenge each other as a matter of course in every case before a court. This is how the adversarial system works. Perhaps what you meant to say is that “I don’t like the activity that is happening here,” or “I think some of this might be unconstitutional.” When someone makes a naked blanket assertion about the law, it’s usually a sign that that person doesn’t know what they’re talking about.
- jmyeet 8mo agoOnce again we see tech companies capitulating to the US government who is actually doing the things we accuse China is theoretically doing in the future. I don't own a smart speaker. It's actually annoying because there are so few options for a music system now. I've previously owned a Sonos but honestly it's just not a polished product. Anyway, my issue with smart speakers is I don't want a cloud-connected always-on microphones in my house. Sorry but no. You simply never know when law enforcement will use such a thing via a warrant nobody can tell you about (ie FISA). It could be targeted to you, individually but there are far worse alternatives. It could be a blanket warrant against, say, people posting negatively against ICE online. Or microphones couldd be used to identify such people based on what it hears. You just have no control. And once again, Google handed over PII voluntarily to the government recently [1]. Companies don't need to comply with administrative subpoenas. It takes a court order signed by a judge to enforce. All of this is just another reason why China was correct to keep US tech companies out, basically. But here's where it's going to get much worse for the US and those same companies: when the EU decides enough is enough and creates their own versins that are subject to EU jurisdiction. [1]: https://techcrunch.com/2026/02/10/google-sent-personal-and-financial-information-of-student-journalist-to-ice/ https://techcrunch.com/2026/02/10/google-sent-personal-and-f...
- titanomachy 8mo agoI bought some tower speakers made in the early 2000s and they sound awesome. Huge heavy things, but it's not like I've ever had to move them since I bought them. I power them with an inexpensive NAD amplifier that supports streaming and bluetooth sources.
- tomleelive 8mo agoBig Brother… It's a cliché, but I think it's a fitting expression. Is it true that individuals themselves are the only means of self-defense?
- 1970-01-01 8mo agoJust give them fake information when signing up. They want your money more than accurate information.
- woah 8mo agoyou think they can't de-anonymize you extremely easily from all the other data they have?
- 1970-01-01 8mo agoI know they can. They can also breach all that under a false identity so I have nothing to worry about.
- catlikesshrimp 8mo agoRegular where I live: I don't use google maps, I use Waze I don't use messenger, I use whatsapp I don't upload my pictures, contacts (sync is enabled by default) Anyways. What are the options? It will be another free cloud hosted service.
- velocity3230 8mo agoIsn't Waze owned, operated and share infrastructure with Google Maps?
- catlikesshrimp 8mo agoIt has hard sarcasm my part: Waze is google, whatsapp is meta, and phones are uploading all your data by default
- UltraSane 8mo agoI don't respect Glenn Greenwald after he decided to become a Kremlin spokesperson.
- quinncom 8mo agoMuch ado about nothing, this link has been going around the Fediverse: https://www.resistandunsubscribe.com/ https://www.resistandunsubscribe.com/
- shevy-java 8mo agoI mean, this does not come as a surprise. If you look at the US corporations, not just Amazon or Google but Facebook, or more recently Discord - and our all-time favourite chummer, Microsoft - this all screams of strategic mass sniffing and snooping after people. There is 0% chance that this is done solely on a per-corporate level. This is systematic sniffing. I think the long term solution will have to be to become as independent as possible on these sniffer-corporations and to get real people into office rather than those lobbyists who work for those corporations. This will require a complete re-design of the whole system though. I am not sure we'll see that in our lifetime.
- an0malous 8mo agoThere’s more posts that get to the front page complaining about Apple’s frosted glass than the surveillance state being built by every other tech company
- lern_too_spel 8mo agoOther? No other company makes you register with the company before you can install apps on your own phone. No other company makes you send your location to it if you want to access GPS on your own phone.
- Lamad1234 8mo ago[dead]
- dhbradshaw 8mo agoI really like this passage: >It is always the case that there are benefits available from relinquishing core civil liberties: allowing infringements on free speech may reduce false claims and hateful ideas; allowing searches and seizures without warrants will likely help the police catch more criminals, and do so more quickly; giving up privacy may, in fact, enhance security. > But the core premise of the West generally, and the U.S. in particular, is that those trade-offs are never worthwhile. Americans still all learn and are taught to admire the iconic (if not apocryphal) 1775 words of Patrick Henry, which came to define the core ethos of the Revolutionary War and American Founding: “Give me liberty or give me death.” It is hard to express in more definitive terms on which side of that liberty-versus-security trade-off the U.S. was intended to fall.
- jaco6 8mo ago[dead]
- roywiggins 8mo agoI think the security/liberty tradeoff is actually often a false promise. You can end up trading away liberty for nothing at all. I don't like buying into this, even to say "liberty is better, we should do that instead" because it implicitly concedes that you would really get the security on the other side of the bargain. And if you don't get the security you were promised, it's too late to do anything about it.
- zugi 8mo ago> "Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety" -- Benjamin Franklin The key phrase is "a little temporary safety". 250 years ago people understood that the "security" gains were small and fleeting, but the loss of liberty was massive and permanent.
- weaksauce 8mo agobasically the patriot act was a big piece of temporary safety that never produced any.
- KingOfCoders 8mo agoDropped Alexa years ago. They sure can do the same thing, and listen into every house "to find a missing child". Or some other BS. Or let all Alexas say "This is a national emergency. Do not leave the house. This is ..." East Germany spent millions to spy on people. Now people spend millions so the state can spy on them. Madness.
- belter 8mo ago"...While the “discovery” of footage from this home camera by Google engineers is obviously of great value to the Guthrie family and law enforcement agents searching for Guthrie, it raises obvious yet serious questions about why Google, contrary to common understanding, was storing the video footage of unsubscribed users. A former NSA data researcher and CEO of a cybersecurity firm, Patrick Johnson, told CBS: “There's kind of this old saying that data is never deleted, it's just renamed.”..." Its another copy of their MAC data storage scenario due to a "rogue engineer"
- notepad0x90 8mo agoI don't think people grasp the gravity of the situation. I see everyone talking about how to stop using products. I even thought about legislation that could help. But that's just it, none of that is possible. You can't even employ a "torches and pitchforks" approach. For any of this to be possible, people would have to coordinate. The means by which people communicate and coordinate are under the influence and control of the very entities that the people are trying to bring under control. The only way to win this war is by means of economic warfare. And I don't mean "vote with your wallet". If I could spell out what I mean here, then the previous paragraph would have been invalid.
- Gud 8mo agoNo, the only way to win this war is to reform your system of governance, decentralisation and democratisation. Power to the people.
- notepad0x90 8mo agoHow can you do that if you can't coordinate and communicate with others to that end?
- JCattheATM 8mo agoThe people are part of the problem. They're largely fine with all this.
- rcMgD2BwE72F 8mo agoThat could be said prior to all revolutions.
- Gud 8mo agoThe people are brainwashed by corporate controlled media. In a functioning democracy, there is counter balance against the oligarchs.
- JCattheATM 8mo ago
- gbriel 8mo agoReminder: Glen Greenwald doesn’t think Jan 6 was an insurrection and now aligns with people like Tim Pool and Alex Jones.
- gruez 8mo agoIs he pro Jan 6 because he's anti-establishment or he's pro Trump? Seems like he's the former and doesn't know when to stop being anti-establishment and that puts him weird places.
- NoImmatureAdHom 8mo agoJan 6 wasn't an insurrection. Nobody was armed except one guy with a pistol and the dude with a spear. It was a bunch of obese methbillies trashing the place. Insurrections do not look like that.
- gbriel 8mo ago- Jan 6, the day the votes are certified by Congress. - The goal was interrupting the peaceful transfer of presidential power, a foundational element of U.S. constitutional governance. - Force was used to disrupt lawful governmental authority. - Part of a larger conspiracy to use alternate slates of electors to dispute the election and send it back to state legistatures (see Eastman memo and resulting lawsuits).
- NoImmatureAdHom 8mo agoAll these things are true except - Force was used to disrupt lawful governmental authority. In the end, it wasn't anything history books will recognize as an insurrection. Because it wasn't an insurrection. That word means something, and this wasn't it. Was it bad? A bad thing? Yes, it was a bad thing I'd say. Not an insurrection though. Whatever those people did, it wasn't going to change anything. The powers that be could have had every last one of them killed with a snap of their fingers. They didn't because that would have been an overreaction to a bunch of methbillies trashing the place.
- canadiantim 8mo ago
- lern_too_spel 8mo agoGreenwald demonstrating his technological illiteracy once again. This time, he doesn't say that PRISM is mass surveillance, though he writes about it right next to where he talks about mass surveillance and has never admitted his mistake. Now he's complaining that Nest had video footage without a subscription as if the user wouldn't know this. Nest still processes video for motion detection alerts for people without a subscription. It just deletes the video after processing unless you have a subscription to pay for the storage. Even though I am not a user myself, I'd be surprised if this isn't clear to the people who use the product. I am not at all surprised that Greenwald doesn't understand it though.
- jesse_dot_id 8mo agoIt's pretty disappointing that there are engineers enabling all of this.
- barnacs 8mo agoAgreed. "Be the change you want to see". In this case, both as a user and a professional.
- hermannj314 8mo agoWe have a branch of government called Congress, here are some things they used to do that made it a crime to read your mail or listen to your phone calls. 1. Postal Service Act of 1792 2. Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA) of 1986 Anyway, Facebook can read your DMs, Google can read your email, Ring can take photos from your camera. We can very easily make those things a crime, but we don't seem to want to do it.
- dylan604 8mo agoDon't confuse the public's want with the current situation controlled by the power and money being used to prevent these things from being a crime
- kakacik 8mo agoIts a nice outrage wave, but I have very hard time believing this will be a major topic in 2 weeks. People simply don't give a fuck en masse. Accept that many folks are built differently than you and me and stuff like actual freedom you may be willing to lay your life for may be meaningless fart for others, especially when its not hurting them now. For example US folks voted current admin willingly second time and even after a full year of daily FUBARs the support is still largely there. If even pedophilia won't move some 'patriots' then reading some communication doesn't even register as a topic. Also, anybody actually concerned about even slightest privacy would never, ever buy such products, not now not a decade earlier. Ie for my family I don't even see any added value of such devices, just stupid fragile something I have no control over, but it sees everything. Why?
- tokyobreakfast 8mo agoThe Epstein stuff is a distraction. The previous admin had 4 years to do literally anything about it and they did nothing.
- collingreen 8mo agoA distraction from what? If anyone with power picks and chooses who gets justice then there is no justice, those people are corrupt, and they need to be removed from power and charged. Whatabout whatabout whatabout. Charge, try, and imprison the guilty regardless of how much money they have, which political party they are part of, or how they vote. Anything else is madness.
- xpltr7 8mo agoRing camera spyware, Amazons....excuse me Department of Defence/War..whatever the name, they have contracts with Amazon, which had the Super Bowl ad reveiling a new feature called "search party"...which it uses AI face/pattern recognition under the guise "search for missing dogs" to scan all its cameras videos for the "missing dog"... .Now this scans all Ring cameras, inside houses, outside houses, wherever theres a Ring camera....but its really to find people, dissenters, "criminals" in the eyes of the satanic surveillance system. The minds involved always play on the emotions of people to bring this about, such as a child who lost their dog or an "illegal" immigrant who commited a crime...they spread the propaganda, stir up emotions, then get the results...more gullible Americans accepting more surveillance and spying on their neighbors like the psychos did with fake "covid" hysteria. Part of their propaganda the so called missing lady Nancy Guthrie...how convenient, right around the time of Amazons search party, Google Nest has the psyop. With a sherrif saying the videos were not saved, she didnt have a Google Nest subscription..lol, see where thats going?
- yunnpp 8mo agoIt is remarkable that it took an ad from the same company that makes the product to make (some) people come to the realization of the surveillance they are subjected to and uninstall their cameras. The public is truly clueless despite all the messaging from the EFF and other organizations.
- sega_sai 8mo agoIt is also interesting that US seems to be getting the surveillance state without any of the benefits such as low crime rate. In my view it is a valid choice for the country of having more crime Vs more surveillance, but in the US such a choice is not offered.
- tonymet 8mo agoIt’s baffling and makes you wonder about the strategic mission of the surveillance state. Surely they must be achieving some objectives – since they are heavily resourced, and capable. If not crime prevention, it must be political influence. There’s a ton of evidence of foreign state intervention since WW2. And there are hints at domestic intervention since the 1960s . The likely focus is domestic political intervention, since it takes time for whistleblowers and stories to see the light of day.
- rolph 8mo agoif you really want users to see an outward sign of your respect for privacy, start building cameras with lens covers, and microphones with mute switches, and a "flag" of some sort that clearly demonstrates the position of the privacy hardware.
- syngrog66 8mo agoThe surveillance industry has gotten out of hand. It is also true that there is ample reason to ignore and avoid anything coming out of the OA's author, who has a strong history of Russian-aligned propaganda efforts. Please don't cite him or amplify him further. Propaganda and disinfo ops worldwide are just as big of a problem as accelerating, unchecked, abused surveillance.
- Animats 8mo ago> This language moves beyond platform-level age gates and toward infrastructure embedded directly into hardware or operating systems. This is lurching toward what the US military calls the Common Access Card. This is a security token carried by most US military. It's used for everything from logins to building access to meals.[1] Merely having a Common Access Card doesn't allow access to anything. The system reading it has to recognize the identity. So there are lots of databases of who's allowed to do what. Is that where we're going? [1] https://www.cac.mil/common-access-card/ https://www.cac.mil/common-access-card/
- Bengalilol 8mo agoAs a side and probably fully off topic note (although...), I asked ChatGPT an innocent code question while not giving my code. It basically answered with the variable name I had written in my own code (da.ma.st) (a variable inside an object inside an object : data.main.stance). I still have to understand how and why it happened (I am not using anything else than ChatGPT in my browser and I absolutely never provided this chunk of code to the AI). I further noticed that while I had a chatgpt window open, my dev site window was becoming laggy after many refreshes as if something was deliberately trying to scan it every time it got refreshed. I suspect the AI to scan other open tabs and simply reading through everything it can encounter. It is actually the only explanation up to date (but I unfortunately don't have much time to try to validate this speculative opinion: I will surely give other shots in order to narrow my suspicions). I tend to think that this kind of data extraction frenziness may be a big problem in the future. Read it as : "let's collect everything, just tell everyone we are not collecting it, and then we'll see what we can get from it." Imagine such data being used in the future versions of governments if things get wild.
- xve 8mo agoSo, what's currently going on to fight back against all this? Here's what I found. Does signing a petition actually doing something? It's hard to tell but if you are inclined, at least take a look at some current efforts. -Active Petitions and Campaigns to Limit Surveillance: End the Surveillance State (Action Network): Petitions call on Congress to permanently end the PATRIOT Act, stop warrantless surveillance, and oppose the expansion of surveillance technology. -Ban Facial Recognition (Amnesty International & ACLU): Amnesty International is running the "Ban the Scan" campaign, while the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) targets the use of face surveillance, arguing it poses risks to civil liberties and disproportionately impacts marginalized communities. -Stop Surveillance Data Brokers (Mozilla): Mozilla Foundation is targeting major websites to stop sharing data with surveillance technology firms that track user movement and interactions. -Protect User Data from Subpoenas (EFF): The Electronic Frontier Foundation is pressuring tech companies to resist lawless DHS subpoenas for user data. -Oppose Localized Surveillance (ACLU/Action Network): Local petitions aim to limit technologies like Automatic License Plate Readers (ALPRs) that create massive databases of personal movement. -Federal Legislative Reform: Advocates are pushing for the "The Fourth Amendment is Not for Sale Act," which aims to restrict intelligence agencies from purchasing data from brokers without a warrant.
- keernan 8mo agoAs a trial attorney for more than 40 years, I'd say these are examples of egregious illegal surveillance of American citizens by the current government: 1. A retired US citizen emailed a DHS attorney urging mercy for an asylum seeker he had read about. Five hours later he received an email from Google advising him the federal government had served Google with a subpoena demanding information about him. Then they followed up by knocking on his door. The federal government's concerted effort to intimidate citizens should concern every American. https://archive.ph/b9ON8 https://archive.ph/b9ON8 2. NYT: https://archive.ph/W5FwO https://archive.ph/W5FwO ICE’s New Surveillance State Isn’t Tracking Only Immigrants A memo from a Department of Homeland Security official reviewed by CNN and sent to agents dispatched to Minneapolis last month asked them to “capture all images, license plates, identifications and general information” on “agitators, protesters, etc. so we can capture it all in one consolidated form.” And the official reportedly provided such a form, called “intel collection.” 3. Moreover, ICE officers have traveled to the homes of protesters. Not to arrest them, because they have done nothing illegal. Rather, ICE was trying to intimidate them by letting them know ICE knows who they are and where they live. https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/13/us/minneapolis-ice-agents https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/13/us/minneapolis-ice-agents
- inquirerGeneral 8mo ago[dead]
- beyondCritics 8mo agoThey must love dogs really deeply to go to such length to rediscover them.
- epolanski 8mo agoI don't want to say I give up, but after seeing how powerful modern facial recognition softwares are, mostly by Israelis, and what I mean is: if you're walking randomly in an Uzbekistan's mall with a moustache and sunglasses this information is instantly known by lots of actors with 99.9%+ accuracy, I kinda give up. 1984 is here and we are allowing it bit by bit by normalizing at every small step stuff that would've been madness ten years before.
- thunky 8mo agoI don't understand the issue with the nest cam video. The data is only accessible to us for 3 hours but why would we expect them to shred the drives at the 3 hour mark so it's not accessible to them?
- petterroea 8mo ago> while Flock is unrelated to Search Party, public backlash made it impossible, at least for now, for Amazon to send Ring’s user data to a police surveillance firm Not the same, but ring is a common target for police warrants already
- jakogut 8mo agoFor anyone who doesn't know yet, there are a wide variety of ONVIF supporting cameras that you can setup with a local NVR running Frigate. You can block internet access to the cameras, so they can't create outbound connections, and only inbound connections to the video streams are allowed. Tailscale has a free tier that's a good option to remotely access your network and cameras.
- brutal_chaos_ 8mo agoThese comments: Citations needed
- Whatarethese 8mo agoMaybe if congress gave a rats ass about consumer protections and privacy we wouldn't be in this spot. But money talks and shit walks.
- b00ty4breakfast 8mo agoit took a while, but Bentham finally got his Panopticon.
- misiek08 8mo ago> Flock Safety, a police surveillance tech company Interesting - few months ago this was private, illegally tracking people and cars company. I’m amazed how well US progresses!
- whycombigator 8mo agoLand of the free. Home of the Brave.
- cobbzilla 8mo agoRelated: Apparently even non-subscribing Nest cameras send video to Google, where it’s stored for an undetermined length of time. [1] https://www.reuters.com/world/guthrie-doorbell-video-delayed-by-difficult-data-recovery-privacy-advocates-2026-02-12/ https://www.reuters.com/world/guthrie-doorbell-video-delayed...
- neop1x 8mo agoIt's simple - if a camera sends pictures and images to a cloud (other prople's computers) you must expect that thay process and store the data (and it's often in their ToC anyway). It's sad that many non-technical people don't realize that.
- bmitc 8mo agoIt's always been curious to me how Americans have pointed at places like China, mocking their government surveillance state, while also just allowing U.S. (and foreign) corporations to surveil everything under the sun, including our schools. Those corporations then sell or give information to both other corporations and the government. These corporations have nothing in mind but profits and would sell your sould if it meant a tick up in their bottom line.
- irenetusuq 8mo ago[dead]