1. Users opt to share video clips
2. Police can't view unshared videos without requesting
3. The whole thing is opt-in
I don't see an issue here. It's a technical framework around something that already exists: police going door-to-door and asking for video clips. Why not make this more efficient?
I can see the potential for abuse, as it is all centralized. But I think "portal for mass surveillance" is a bit of an exaggeration.
But that is the problem. The potential exists, and without proper governance and oversight, you don't have the ability as a citizen to walk back abuse when it begins to occur. You only have the options of submitting to continued abuse, moving to a more sane locale, or the uphill political battle of defending your rights.
Authoritarianism is a slow boil, and doesn't happen overnight (usually; occasionally it does!).
I would cooperate with the police to help solve an actual crime, but I certainly would not opt in to this. I would even go one step further and say that I likely wouldn't buy this product at all.
I would prefer home automation systems that have basically no cloud infrastructure. It is unfortunate that, if such a thing even exists, it is poorly marketed.
The last frogs out of the pot before it boils always find whatever pot they migrate to to be far too cold for their taste and insist upon turning up the burner.
Relocating only buys time. At some point you have to make a stand if the problem is to be solved. The culture that tolerates authoritarianism and paternalistic government needs to actively be stopped if we want to see it relegated to history textbooks. You can't just keep moving away from it.
What are the actual abuse scenarios that we would fear could occur?
These technologies aren't either-or; they're a tradeoff of possible benefits and drawbacks. What concrete drawbacks should we be concerned with here?
Abuse by police for non-official business (stalking). Targeting of individual citizens and their daily activities because they attempt to hold public officials accountable. Constant surveillance of the wrong individuals. All off the top of my head from events that have occurred ("ripped from the headlines"). I could go on, but only because I take time to hold my public officials and government accountable as a hobby.
It is deeply unsettling, based on history (not just global, local US history alone), when technology professionals retort to issues like this with, "What's the big deal?"
... if you ask around, you may find the average neighborhood resident's answer is "yes." Especially if one finds the average neighborhood citizen isn't living under a corrupt police hierarchy, but instead an underfunded / understaffed one.
FWIW, the bias I approach this from is that we can't order packages delivered to my relatives because petty theft is so rampant in their area that packages will, on average, go missing. And the police are too underfunded to do anything about the new trend of theft right now. This technology would be life-changing in terms of convenience to them; it's a non-trivial expenditure of resources to schlep out to an Amazon pickup center of the post office to get anything large.
My neighborhood does have the occasional Amazon package theft. Why do you assume consumer convenience is so important compared to fundamental rights?
> it's a non-trivial expenditure of resources to schlep out to an Amazon pickup center of the post office to get anything large.
This doesn't excuse the implementation of a surveillance machine.
I think we're just coming at this from different biases. You see the risk of abuse of power as much, much higher than street crime (if I take your "occasional" literally, then I humbly suggest you haven't experienced it to the level my relatives have). I see the threat of street crime as much, much higher than risk of abuse of power (because while those abuses do happen, they are so rare relative to the street crime this system could prevent that it's a viable tradeoff).
That, and a lady posted a photo of a vehicle and license plate that she followed several days after a recent minor crime was associated with a vehcile of the same make and color. Not sure if it ended up being the vehicle, but this should’ve only been shared with law enforcement since it could’ve been anyone’s car that happened to be similar.
I'm all for neighborhoods policing themselves, but this isn't even close to that.
I would be fine with there being additional tools that assist the individual consumer with reporting crimes or providing video evidence to police. Amazon/Ring/whoever doesn't need to be involved with what is a local/neighborhood issue.
In what way? Who on Earth is going to set up and maintain those tools, pay for the hardware, provide service channels for the hardware, etc.?
Technological sophistication is by no means uniformly distributed.
There's a big difference between a feature that allows consumers to report a video and a feature that allows police to demand a video.
If we have no problem with the police having the tool at all, why would it be bad for Amazon to implement it?
(Unless the issue is you don't think the police should have the tool at all, in which case the question is "Who should? Can private citizens be trusted with this information aggregation? Can private citizens' designated / elected representatives? Or should we just make sharing of private video feeds for surveillance purposes illegal, uh... somehow?").