Amazon Partnership with British Police Alarms Privacy Advocates | Hacker News Reader

Amazon Partnership with British Police Alarms Privacy Advocates

theintercept.com

73 pointsdsr1231 comments

Reminder, Amazon's UK site already reports your purchases of many electronics to a police database. There is no opt-out. You could argue that this makes sense for mobile phones, but they do it for many other things, too. Here's a completely ordinary television that gets you listed in yet another police database: https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B015EL27TQ/

In fairness, they do disclose this up front. "Please note that devices dispatched from and sold by Amazon are automatically registered on CheckMend and the National Mobile Property Register (NMPR), this information is shared in accordance with the Amazon.co.uk Privacy Notice"

For phones, its so your phone can be locked when stolen. For TV, it is to ensure everyone pays the TV license to fund the BBC.

Both, IMHO, are good things. My phone was stolen, I don't want the lovely person to financially benefit. Also I like everyone to pay for the BBC heck but I am a socialist.

I know a few people who got their property back because of the registry sometimes laughably years down the line when it was already useless.

The TV license is nearly impossible to get rid off these because you also need to prove you don’t or can’t use bbc iplayer or consume any other publicly funded content online.

Is this the norm for online retailers in the UK, or is it exceptional?

I'm not sure. Two other popular online retailers here, Argos and John Lewis, do not have the same notice on their website when you select a TV and view the product page. It may be a law that they don't bother mentioning but that's just a guess.

I worked at Tesco ten years ago, and whenever someone bought a TV in store, we were promoted on the checkout to enter their house number and postcode. I was told it was for TV Licensing.

There is law that TV licensing get told your address every time a TV is sold[0], which Argos etc will also do. That is entirely separate from NMPR and CheckMend, which I hadn't heard of before. So seems to be an Amazon initiative.

[0] Actually anything able to receive TV, so covered video recorders etc too. Not sure how far it has been dragged into the internet age.

I was going to say similar about the requirement to provide the purchasers name and address for TV Licensing, but I just searched for details on when it started - certainly we had to do it back in the early '80s, and discovered that it's no longer the case; "this requirement has been lifted by the Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Bill passed in 2013".

Interesting. Didn't know that had changed.

Curries registers for sure I’m also pretty sure that all the others do.

Insurance companies also require you to register any qualified property with the police if you get the contents of your home insured.

Huh?

There's nothing in the article about a partnership (despite being called that in the headline). All I see is a police department that put out an Alexa app. I don't see anything wrong with, that. I'm a bit confused on how the Echo displays the pictures the article claims they broadcast, though.

There's an Echo Show and Echo Spot product with a small display https://www.amazon.com/Amazon-Echo-Show/dp/B01J24C0TI/ https://www.amazon.com/dp/B073SQYXTW/

I think the main point is that police data is now stored on Amazon servers.

Well, data that the Police is keen to share with as much of the public as possible, as quickly as possible. It hardly seems out of the realm of the reasonable to use Amazon for something like that.

They also want to use Alexa for incoming crime reports and internal discussions.

Things that get published in news media all ready, wanted and missing reports, crime info, etc..

Doesn't the USG put lots of citizen data on the AMZ gov cloud? Is that alarming in some way?

It all depends on the details. For pure storage of encrypted data it's probably OK. But I guess for an Alexa app the data will go through Amazon's algorithms and it won't be clear what else they will do with the data.

No Alexa skill owners usually have there own backend

Because the TV license covers iPlayer and other online services also it’s not just broadcast TV.

The article does say "in a partnership with Amazon developers", whatever that means.

Alexa works on FireTV too FWIW.

> ‘The cop [would] be able to say ‘Give me the warrant details for Joe Blocks,’...

I’m assuming this site is US based because someone from the UK and especially Lancashire would know that he meant Joe Bloggs.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_Bloggs

It almost looks like Joe Bollocks this way (which wouldn't be a term universally known in the US either).

...have rolled out a program to broadcast crime updates, photos of wanted and missing people, and safety notifications to Amazon Echo owners.

One has to wonder why anyone would want this?

In a local FB group we get crime updates, allows you to be active in avoiding beginning a victim; and to be vigilant to help those around you.

Tiny example - you might not think twice seeing someone fiddling with a house sign, but knowing there had been a recent spate of thefts (yes, really) one could challenge or report as appropriate.

More serious example - several attempts to abduct children within a few days of each other allowed me to remind my kids of safe behaviour; as well as reminding myself to be vigilant.

I always read the "missing" reports in the local news as I see a lot of people and have, I believe, a good memory for faces.

Given it's easy to avoid, why would you not want it. Good citizenship makes society better IMO.

'Given it's easy to avoid, why would you not want it.'

Experience of similar programs in the UK which start off as well-meaning endeavours but soon become nothing more annoying forms of 'official' spam.

I get the point about ultra local events but, here at least, the police seem to be always the last people to know about stuff happening at this level.

The iPhone already does safety, weather, and police notifications by default, and you have to opt-out. This is essentially the same thing, but users have to opt-in.

It's to keep people afraid. An afraid populace is easier to control.

Also all shipping companies also has to report to the uk anti smuggling network.

Turn your Amazon Echo into the perfect paranoia machine!

Reply on news.ycombinator.com