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Comment by dtagames | Hacker News Reader

I smell a lawsuit coming. How can Amazon think it's ok to use people's faces in an advertisement when those people haven't been convicted of a crime?

The case of Ring is particularly disturbing. When its inventor appeared on Shark Tank, he said he wanted to create a way to hear his doorbell from the garage. Since Amazon bought the company for $1B, it's pivoted to a surveillance tool that's being offered to police as a way to freely record and review neighborhood camera views.

It's sad to see that unicorn companies today believe that surveillance capitalism is the way forward. Personally, I long for a return to old-fashioned values in business, namely making a product or service that people care about and want to pay for rather than pandering to fear and courting easy money from our soon-to-be robot overlords.

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As an attorney (this is not legal advice), I would like to know what law might be violated by publishing these videos. They're owned by the person who recorded the video; and presumably they gave Ring a license to use them for such purposes. The subject of the video, as far as I can tell, has no rights that might be recognized in law. There's no privacy right, as there's no reasonable expectation of privacy under such circumstances. There's no right of publicity being violated AFAICT, as there's no "brand goodwill" in the person's likeness to misappropriate.

So what, then?

Thank you for at least questioning this nonsense.

Video recording law is probably the worst combination of misinformation and actually coming up in someone's life.

Fortunately Amazon/Ring would get a rocket up their arse if they tried this in the UK (and presumably the rest of Europe covered by GDPR):

https://ico.org.uk/your-data-matters/cctv/

GDPR?

Defamation seems the obvious one.

Also, in Europe being in a public place doesn't mean you automatically lose your right to privacy.

Former attorney here. I'd guess it would be a claim like defamation or false light. These laws aren't typically used in this way, but I could see them being applied here.

For defamation, for example, the claim would be that by including someone's face in an advertisement about home security videos, Amazon is implying that the person pictured is someone whom you would not want snooping around your house because he's a criminal. This would tend to hurt that person's reputation, which is the legal test for defamation.

If others similarly situated could prevail on similar theories, TV shows like "COPS" and the like wouldn't be possible. The fact that they've been successfully running for over 20 years suggests that this is not the case.

Second, there's no "false light" if the recording shows the plaintiff plainly performing a criminal act.

Finally, a disclaimer of innocence until proven guilty would likely tend to negate such a defamation claim.

>If others similarly situated could prevail on similar theories, TV shows like "COPS" and the like wouldn't be possible. The fact that they've been successfully running for over 20 years suggests that this is not the case.

I haven't seen an episode of COPS in almost two decades, when I was a kid, but if I recall correctly, a lot of suspects faces on the show were blurred out so that they wouldn't be identified. I don't know if that is because they didn't sign a consent form from the show (or if the show even needed that), or what, but a lot of faces we're definitely censored.

>I haven't seen an episode of COPS in almost two decades, when I was a kid, but if I recall correctly, a lot of suspects faces on the show were blurred out so that they wouldn't be identified

Yup. Faces of suspects were often blurred. Victim/witnesses would also have their faces blurred sometimes, I assume they were offered some compensation in exchange for showing their face.

This is out of an abundance of caution, not necessarily because the law requires it. This explains it: https://www.quora.com/Does-the-Cops-TV-show-need-to-get-sign...

I'm sure the attorneys at Ring have already been through this discussion to decide whether similar actions were warranted, and concluded otherwise.

Also, a big difference between COPS and the instant case is that in the TV shows, law enforcement have already identified the suspect, while here, the suspect is at large. I think it would be difficult to convince a court that you were the intentional target of defamation when the defendant hasn't identified you yet.

I think you'd have to hit an edge case like a repo-man who the ring owner has falsely identified as someone trying to steal their car.

Every person whose face appears on COPS has signed a release allowing this.

> Second, there's no "false light" if the recording shows the plaintiff plainly performing a criminal act.

While pulling on the handle of a locked car door and then moving on is certainly shady, I expect it's not a criminal act, right?

Attempted burglary is a criminal act.

Then what is the problem showing a person doing nothing wrong then?

That person is on camera attempting to open a car that is (presumably) not theirs, on (presumably) private property. Unless the recording was edited or taken out of context, proving that statement is false is going to be difficult.

There is an additional nuance as to whether a sponsored post is an ad or not. They are paid for posts to reach a larger audience, but not necessarily to advertise a product. In this case, the police are asking for more information about this person, and Ring has paid Facebook to reach a larger audience.

I agree that in this instance a lawsuit would likely be unsuccessful. I was just putting out a couple legal theories that could be applied to this general fact pattern (Amazon putting a Ring video of you in a security-minded advertisement).

Perhaps defamation? If this person isn't actually guilty of their suspected crime, especially since no conviction has been made, couldn't this post ruin the person's reputation?

Not a lawyer, but to me this sounds like libel to me. There's an implication that the people are committing a crime despite not being convicted. Doesn't sound like a clear cut case because it doesn't outright say they're a criminal. That said, I could be missing some of the nuances with these laws.

The actual question being asked in these cases isn't "Is this currently legal?" but "Should this be legal?".

Would you be ok with it if the video stayed local?

The companies that insert themselves into every equation are the ones that make me upset. "Registation required to enable", "cloud based device", etc.

Also, Telsa cars now have 8 cameras and users have access to the footage with Dashcam Mode (while driving) and Sentry Mode (while parked). Lots of youtube videos are showing up, showing interesting things like autopilot saving the car, or people keying parked cars.

Additionally: why would it be ok to use people's faces in an advertisement even if those people HAD been convicted of a crime?

(I agree with your main point.)

Ring's mission is all about safety. Jamie has talked extensively about how they actively rejected ideas to just build connected things for the home, to focus on & foster a sense of safe homes and safe communities. The floodlight is a great example of a pre-acquisition product that piggybacks on that mission.

That "mission" came from Amazon. It wasn't any part of the pitch Jamie gave on Shark Tank. This is just another example of surveillance capitalism and it's pretty sickening.

I long for a return to old-fashioned values in human behavior, but since I live in the real world I'll just have to settle for security cameras.

Probably not going to generate any lawsuits but kind of shows how complicit the general public is about constructing a surveillance state. We bitch when the government spies on us. But with this we're effectively making it so that the we spy on each other for the government.

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