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> No one expected doorbell cameras to join a mass surveillance network, but later the manufacturers added that feature. Plenty of people did? That was obviousl
by phil21 2mo ago
> No one expected doorbell cameras to join a mass surveillance network, but later the manufacturers added that feature.
Plenty of people did? That was obviously one of the end goals for cloud connected devices pushing recordings to a remote side for processing and storage. Especially when stuff like facial recognition was implemented server side.
I would be highly surprised if this was not pitched in the first internal product meeting.
While I give some grace to the regular population on this topic - anyone posting on HN should have trivially seen this outcome as not only likely, but nearly written in stone. Even if all your imagination captured was “secret NSA warrant” it would be one of the first risks you’d imagine for such a product.
It was obvious that this was the final outcome even back when Facebook first implemented tagging friends in photos before image recognition got cheap and good enough to go back and time and correlate the social graphs of everyone.
- malwrar 2mo agoI don’t doubt it was intended by the manufacturer, but do you think the average customer knows this? Every normal person I’ve ever told this to, that their Ring cameras can also be looked through by the police, has looked at me like I’m crazy. I’m sure some people would buy a Flock camera for their porch, but I’d bet many others wouldn’t if they truly knew what they were signing up for. The Super Bowl commercial that Ring put out about finding lost dogs spooked people for a reason!
- pseudalopex 2mo ago> do you think the average customer knows this? > I give some grace to the regular population on this topic
- LoganDark 2mo ago> Plenty of people did? That was obviously one of the end goals for cloud connected devices pushing recordings to a remote side for processing and storage. Especially when stuff like facial recognition was implemented server side. There is a huge difference between storing and processing recordings for a customer's own use, and aggregating them from multiple sources for organized mass surveillance. With that said, most corporations do not have the principles to resist the latter.